Claire, this is excellent. And I enjoyed the Ellsberg conference too, thanks to your heads up, though I was only able to catch about half of it. But one thing about the Big Lie then and now that is still rattling around my head unresolved: I think one can argue that in the 1960s a whole narrative about America broke open for many people, and while for some that meant heading on a path toward sanity, others were unmoored and have never found sound footing again. Without writing a long essay about it now, I'm thinking of how things like JFK's assassination and the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, along with broader questions about the 1950s version of White Male Christian America, caused a lot of people to quite sanely start to distrust the "authorities." And some distrust of our government and elected leaders is quite healthy. The problem is when it feeds a corrosive cynicism that makes all forms of the "establishment" into targets of distrust. If all presidents are corrupt, why care about Trump's corruption, for example? If they all lie, why care about his lies? And by the way, from time to time, his willingness to tell unexpected truths, like how he "bought" favors from politicians of both parties. Arguably, we are just living at the tail end of a long decline that began with the Empire overextending itself in Vietnam. My two cents for the moment.
Claire, this is excellent. And I enjoyed the Ellsberg conference too, thanks to your heads up, though I was only able to catch about half of it. But one thing about the Big Lie then and now that is still rattling around my head unresolved: I think one can argue that in the 1960s a whole narrative about America broke open for many people, and while for some that meant heading on a path toward sanity, others were unmoored and have never found sound footing again. Without writing a long essay about it now, I'm thinking of how things like JFK's assassination and the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, along with broader questions about the 1950s version of White Male Christian America, caused a lot of people to quite sanely start to distrust the "authorities." And some distrust of our government and elected leaders is quite healthy. The problem is when it feeds a corrosive cynicism that makes all forms of the "establishment" into targets of distrust. If all presidents are corrupt, why care about Trump's corruption, for example? If they all lie, why care about his lies? And by the way, from time to time, his willingness to tell unexpected truths, like how he "bought" favors from politicians of both parties. Arguably, we are just living at the tail end of a long decline that began with the Empire overextending itself in Vietnam. My two cents for the moment.