Sometimes I read an essay or an op-ed that hits me–a sentence or paragraph or analysis that seems so on-target that I feel impelled to share it. That was my reaction to a recent op-ed by Fareed Zakaria (always one of my favorites) in the Washington Post.
Zakaria began by noting that partisanship has become the lens through which Americans interpret reality. Although a majority of voters still say the economy is their top concern, for example, they interpret the state of the economy through that partisan lens. “When their party is in power, they think the economy is strong; when the other side takes over, that same economy suddenly looks dire. In effect, politics now shapes people’s sense of economic reality, not the other way around.”
And as Zakaria notes, people have chosen their political tribe guided by “two markers the left has long struggled to navigate: culture and class.”
Those two markers aren’t unique to the U.S.–they are global. Social changes wrought by globalization, the increasingly digital nature of our environment, immigration, and the emergence of new gender and identity norms have engendered a cultural backlash.
Over the past 40 years, billions entered the world market, millions crossed borders, the internet collapsed distance and hierarchy, and women and minorities claimed long-denied rights. Scholars celebrate this as progress, integration, emancipation. Yet to many, it feels like dislocation — a dissolving of familiar identities and moral coordinates. A 2023 Ipsos Global Trends survey showed that in many advanced democracies, large majorities think the world is changing too fast, including 75 percent in Germany and nearly 90 percent in South Korea. In the United States, a 2023 Gallup poll showed that more than 80 percent of Americans believe the nation’s moral values are getting worse. These numbers cut across income and region; they reflect not poverty but that much of America feels culturally adrift.
Hence the paradox: Populism thrives in countries that are, by virtually every measure, richer, safer and freer than at any point in history. Its fuel is not deprivation but disorientation. The right has learned to weaponize that unease, offering a story that is emotionally coherent even when factually thin. It promises a return to the world many people remember — a society of stable hierarchies, recognizable roles and shared norms — if only the global elites are cast down. It is, in essence, the politics of nostalgia.
Zakaria points out that this isn’t new. A similar “cultural nostalgia” erupted in the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution, when figures like Benjamin Disraeli and Otto von Bismarck appealed to the working class through “nationalism, religion and pride, pairing social reform with cultural conservatism.” Our contemporary populists are following the same formula.
There is, Zakaria tells us, one difference: what constitutes class in today’s societies. Today’s divide is no longer between capitalists and workers; it’s between people who flourish in a credential-driven economy and those who don’t.
The commanding heights of business, media and government have converged into a single, credentialed class. In principle, it is open to all; in practice, it has become self-replicating…. And the party that once spoke for the working class is now seen — fairly or not — as the party of the professional elite: urban, secular and fluent in the idioms of globalization.
The reactionary Right has exploited that cultural resentment. Trump’s cabinets– packed with billionaires– have been “ferociously anti-elitist.”
His enemy is not the hedge-funder but the Harvard professor, not the CEO but the columnist. “The professors are the enemy,” Richard M. Nixon once quipped, and JD Vance has repeated the line. Trump turned it into strategy, waging war on America’s cultural institutions — universities, the press, the federal bureaucracy — and convincing millions that the real ruling class was not the wealthy but the educated…
That divide isn’t imaginary.
Among White voters without a college degree, Republicans now win by more than 25 points. Democrats typically win nationally by around 16 points among college graduates. The urban-rural divide is at heart a class divide that has become a political one as well.
There are ways, Zakaria insists, to bridge these gaps. We can build a more democratic meritocracy, one more open and welcoming. And Democrats can “embrace the party’s best instincts — compassion, inclusion, reform — with a tone of respect for those uneasy about rapid change.” Progressives can show their patriotism. Liberals can speak the “language of tradition.”
Right-wing populism is not destiny; it is nostalgia. Liberalism has been counted out many times before, only to prove itself remarkably resilient — because, in the end, it addresses the most powerful yearning of human beings: for betterment, progress and freedom.
Nostalgia, after all, isn’t progress. It’s a dead end.
“The reactionary Right has exploited that cultural resentment. Trump’s cabinets– packed with billionaires– have been “ferociously anti-elitist.”
Overnight I again watched the movie “A Few Good Men” and realized a good description of our current Trump control can aptly be viewed as he has “issued a Code Red” on this nation. The sitting “billionaires” have footed most of the bill which put him in his current global “high” position. Known for decades as not paying his taxes or his lawyers and pushing smaller businesses into decline and collapse by paying a few cents on the dollar of his bills, IF he was forced to pay that.
He is afforded this high position by taking his tokes from other people’s doobies.
Clearly, the Republican party is racing toward that nostalgic dead end … and wants to take the entire country with it. My last non-fiction book, “Racing to the Brink: The End Game for Race and Capitalism”, discusses the mechanisms by which this dead end will occur.
Every day, it seems, adds more fuel to the fires of democracy in the United States being replaced by the mindlessness of creatures like J. D. Vance.
I think the MAGA Cult members are an example of the pool of citizens Republicans want to reproduce en masse, which is why they attack education. When you see a group of working-class stiffs cheering for the absolute corruption of billionaire oligarchs, while looking down upon the working poor, the oligarchs know their propaganda is working. Edward Bernays is cheering in his grave! Did you know that Eddie was the one who introduced fluoride into our water as a means to eliminate coal plant waste? Rather insidious.
I’ve watched these idiots like Bongino who demanded that the Epstein Files be released for years. Now that they depict Trump as a disgusting creature and an evil man, they are nowhere to be found. How did they not know? How can they believe their leader when he is still claiming it’s a “democrat hoax?” LOL
Here is my contribution to “nostalgia” since we are deep into the Gilded Age 2.0 in this country – FDR stated:
“We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace—business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering. They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.”
FDR, Madison Square Garden Address on October 31, 1936
“Nostalgia is a word we use
to color what one borrows
from half-remembered yesterdays
and unfulfilled tomorrows.”
–J. Allan Lind
Nice, Michael!
Nostalgia can easily be called “Fake news!” It depicts, alto often, what never was.
Change is! But, it can be scary, especially for those who are powerless.
Gosh. Nostalgia. I remember when in my civics classes in high school, voting was the absolute representation of patriotism. And we 18 year-olds weren’t yet allowed to vote. Yet, when it was our turn, we showed up eager to display our zeal for preserving our democracy.
Ah, the memories. I guess those 81 million registered voters who stayed home last November will have the nostalgia of remembering when they denied their patriotism for me-ism, self-ism and cockeyed ideology.
Well, I have my nostalgic memories to tide me over for the next couple years. I have good doctors too.
This highlights a key root cause of today’s political situation – the decay in our overall culture – politics is like a mirror from it. Our language had become crude; our behavior often is self-centered; many folks values are whatever they want. Why are we surprised by our politics?
The world that we built is changing much faster than many can keep up with. Humans are not sports cars. Each change that drags us from our upbringing is hard for us to navigate. They all require purposeful studying, learning, and practising, and we are too busy doing other things, like watching endless commercials and programs that advertise themselves to drag us back next week. We could learn online, but we are too busy with social media there to understand what we don’t know.
So we complain about the injustice of a world we don’t understand.
The world is not listening, though. Armies of others keep changing things so that the flow of wealth gushes towards the few, and those left behind struggle with too many and too high expenses required to maintain their lives.
Our solution? Watch more TV and spend more time on social media.
South Korea is one of the most misogynistic cultures in asia, so
i can see how any change could alienate 90% of the population. But at the same time, they face serious problems caused by this entrenched culture, mainly falling birth rates. So if a country is in the midst of a self imposed crises,
I can see where “conservatives” are going to exploit every trick in the book to convince people they are right.
The example of elite billionaires calling out other elites seems like another example of “look over here, there guys are really the problem” type of misdirection.
While this article points out perceived truths (and people’s perceptions shouldn’t be ignored), it feels a little like misleading propaganda.
If you want to talk about misleading cultural nostalgia, here is a great history lesson on drug addiction in the US.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/15/opinion/fentanyl-trump-drug-war.html?unlocked_article_code=1.1U8.iWjn.0v6m8UxQueA_&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
However.
I had a conversation yesterday about Trump as a businessman. A fellow in his mid-twenties said Trump was a good businessman. That idea always makes me grind my teeth, so I was foolish and shot my mouth off. Another twenty-something jumped on my saying he failed at a casino business. He looked something up on his phone about Trump, showing he had gotten salary and bonuses. Therefore, he was a good businessman. I realized that Trump had completely enchanted them, and they had a different idea of a successful businessman than I did. That the two might connected seems a likely thing.
What came clearer since then is that they had no sense of history. They do not have Ted Turner or Bill Gates or Steve Jobs to judge Trump.
Your post, Ms. Kennedy, now has me thinking that the nostalgia they feel has been constructed by Trump and the segregation of information and our schools being used for vocational training over educating citizens.