Even if there have to be compromises , just pushing through programs that address the chronic insecurities that most Americans face in their lives is a statement .
Photograph by Alexi Rosenfeld / Getty
Still , even if there have to be compromises , just pushing through government-spending programs that address the needs and the chronic insecurities that most Americans face in their lives makes a statement . It says that capitalist economies , left alone , do not provide a social safety net , or an affordable health-care system , or job security . They don ’ t promote wealth and income equality , or guarantee everyone access to education and decent jobs . Markets don ’ t do those things , so governments need to do them . And that could be the start of a reinvented politics .
But , just as we are adjusting to ( we hope ) a post-COVID world , we are still trying to de-adapt from the Trump world , a world in which media culture , on the right and on the left , was built on outrage . It would also change the subject . What was bad about Trump was not that his company may have avoided paying some taxes . After all , Trump avoided paying taxes for many years , and voters did not seem to care .
It would also change the subject . What was bad about Trump was not that his company may have avoided paying some taxes . After all , Trump avoided paying taxes for many years , and voters did not seem to care .
What was bad about Trump were the perfectly legal policies that he tried to enact as President and that millions of Americans still support . We should not care ( too much ) whether Trump and his family are subjected to prosecution about their business , or whether Allen H . Weisselberg goes to jail for not paying taxes on money that went to his grandchildren ’ s tuition . We should care that the rhetoric of white nationalism be fully discredited . For which is the greater threat to the kind of democracy we thought we had become ?
The best way to make Trump go away is to use government to do the things that he and his party were either ideologically allergic to doing , such as reinvesting in government services and redistributing some of the country ’ s enormous wealth , or simply incompetent to do , such as rebuilding infrastructure .
Americans complain about government largesse — unless they are its beneficiaries . The key to the success of Roosevelt ’ s and Johnson ’ s domestic policies was that those Presidents convinced millions that their lives could be made better through government programs . Achieving that level of buy-in might make some of the hate go away . But it won ’ t happen overnight . The Supreme Court is unfriendly ( as it was to the New Deal ), and local political weather reports are not encouraging . Fresh starts usually need a long runway to take off .
Louis Menand , a staff writer at The New Yorker , teaches at Harvard University . His most recent book is “ The Free World : Art and Thought in the Cold War .”