Ask HN: Good articles or books to understand the current zeitgeist? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Good articles or books to understand the current zeitgeist?

11 pointsbdhe16 comments

My classical liberal outlook (with maybe a propensity to support higher quality regulations) has been seriously rocked over the past few years culminating of course in the elections last year and the outlooks of elections to come (Trump, FPÖ, AfD, etc.)

* It appears that the US and the world-at-large is moving towards an era of inward-looking nationalism, protectionism, and a return to the Great Powers carving up of the world. Where does this go?

* My ability to empathize with the rise of the power of trollish dialog and rhetoric (see @elonmusk or @pmarca) and memes is fundamentally broken. What happened to Good Faith? Humility? Kindness?

* What happened to the rule of law? Or even the veneer of accountability at some level?

* What values do I pass on to the next generation? Those of having careful principles that you defend and practice or a cynical view of "getting what you can" because everyone's doing it at every level of society?

Do I lean into philosophy? Or history? Or something else - to make sense of a very different 2025 compared to what I was seeing, in the US, a mere 20 years ago.

Well, if you want some really odd stuff, the anarchist texts "Desert" and "Against His-Tory, Against Leviathan" both point... in a way.

James Scott will, by contrast, sound a bit more moderate. "Two Cheers for Anarchism" and "Seeing Like a State" are interesting (to me) texts.

But really, I'd suggest more direct volunteering. I am gonna go do the 10:30p-2:30a shift at my local warming shelter tonight. Food Not Bombs has a lot of jerks in it, but a lot of those same folks are really helping people who need help.

Doing that kind of direct work can teach you a lot, I think. More than reading, at least. You have to approach it as if you know little about the world, though.

There's no such thing as zeitgeist. It's a fairy tale. And you're reading too much into election victories, which are almost always by very narrow margins. For example, the vote totals of Trump and Harris were separated by only 1.5%.

I'm not sure what you thought you were seeing 20 years ago. In 2004, George W. Bush was reelected on a very nationalistic campaign, and the US had literally invaded two sovereign countries, Afghanistan and Iraq, during his first term.

What happened to the rule of law and accountability? Do you remember the "War on Terror"? Do you remember the Iran-Contra scandal? Do you remember the Pentagon Papers? Perhaps you ought to lean into history.

> Do you remember the Iran-Contra scandal?

I know of the scandal. I don't think it compares to the pardon of 1500+ people - that feels unprecedented. Or maybe it isn't. That's what I'm trying to understand.

George W Bush was flawed and caused a lot of damage, but he publicly supported Muslims and wouldn't say a fraction of the puerile statements (that are more often than not just rants) coming from the current POTUS. Maybe that demand for decency and decorum from the highest office of the land never existed (I think it did .. until 2016). These are the shifts I am trying to understand.

> I know of the scandal. I don't think it compares to the pardon of 1500+ people - that feels unprecedented. Or maybe it isn't. That's what I'm trying to understand.

Iran-Contra was so much worse. The Reagan administration directly ignored a law passed by Congress. And at the end of his term, George H. W. Bush issued pardons to multiple officials implicated in Iran-Contra. This was a cover-up, because Bush was knee-deep in it himself.

> George W Bush was flawed and caused a lot of damage

Understatement of the year. There's more blood on his hands than almost anyone in the world. Where's the "decency" in that?

You raise fair points but I think the guardrails of US democracy are coming off in a way we haven't seen before (such as how Nixon resigned under threat of impeachment but the SCOTUS ruled that the President is mostly sort of a king as long as it is an official act).

The US has never been a democracy. Did you notice that the person with fewer votes won in 2000 and 2016? It's a plutocracy, designed as such by the so-called founding fathers, wealthy men who were explicitly skeptical of democracy and of course denied the vote—and much else—to women and black men. The electoral college, the Senate, the Supreme Court, the veto, the weak federal government granting much power to the individual states, the difficulty of amending the Constitution, were all intended to curb democracy.

I'm not saying that the founders wanted someone specifically like Trump, though of course they did envision wealthy men in positions of power. But those today who clutch their pearls over "democracy" and "norms" are actually, perhaps ironically, yearning for a stable plutocracy. Many cry over January 6 2021, but I wonder why we didn't have a new American revolution on December 12 2000, for example. The answer could be that Al Gore had more loyalty to plutocracy than to democracy, and was rewarded with great wealth after leaving office, like Clinton and Obama too.

It is reasonable that things got bad on Dec 12 2000, but I contend that things have gotten worse (at least from a liberal PoV). I don't know understand the goal of projecting it as always being bad. I think that hides nuances or details that matter.

> It is reasonable that things got bad on Dec 12 2000, but I contend that things have gotten worse (at least from a liberal PoV).

What could be worse "from a liberal PoV" than the Supreme Court, on a 5-4 party-line vote, stopping the recount in Florida and thus giving the 2000 election to Bush, who then went on to become President for 8 years?

Even Hillary Clinton doesn't dispute that that she lost the electoral college in 2016, democratically, according to your definition. She conceded on election night.

January 6 was ugly, but Trump still left office at the end of his term.

> I don't know understand the goal of projecting it as always being bad. I think that hides nuances or details that matter.

The goal is to break you out of a dogmatic slumber, in which you seem to think that everything was basically ok until Trump came along. It wasn't.

The United States is a constitutional republic and that's a good thing.

Based on some interesting quotes, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 by Milton Meyer.

An excerpt: https://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.htm

> "The dictatorship, and the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting. It provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway. I do not speak of your ‘little men,’ your baker and so on; I speak of my colleagues and myself, learned men, mind you. Most of us did not want to think about fundamental things and never had. There was no need to. Nazism gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about—we were decent people—and kept us so busy with continuous changes and ‘crises’ and so fascinated, yes, fascinated, by the machinations of the ‘national enemies,’ without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us. Unconsciously, I suppose, we were grateful. Who wants to think?"

“The Story of Civilization” may do you some good. Audio segments are on YouTube.

I think you just want to be reassured that your position is correct; it doesn’t seem like this is a good faith reflection. You’re saying “what happened to the rule of law” without showing evidence that it doesn’t exist anymore and tacitly implying the left has been yhr virtuous party of laws. People on the right might ask a similar question. They might wonder why a leftist DA would think someone that kills a baby and assassinates others should be given “non-carceral punishment”. I mean, come on. Can you really look at the state of the UK abs think “this is going in a great direction and we need more of what the left is doing”?

Au contraire, I'm trying to find persuasive literature from the right that helps me understand things better.

My understanding of the abortion debate was that it was wholesale manufactured by Southern Baptists to generate a cultural rallying point when they lost the segregation debate. I would argue that a party that chooses to punish abortion so harshly while refusing to support child tax credits, free preschool and daycare, and increase maternity leave and support us not a party intending to help babies. They are interested in controlling pregnant women.

What is your persuasive argument that they claim to support babies yet do so little to help them after they are born?

Where do you get this idea that "the abortion debate was that it was wholesale manufactured by Southern Baptists to generate a cultural rallying point"? You are really just proving my original claim; this is hardly a charitable interpretation. In fact, it is quite absurd. There is a clear reason for people to have a problem with abortion. Providing or not providing welfare to parents is a separate issue from whether babies should be killed. By your position, why do pro-abortion states not allow poor mothers to kill their toddlers? As well, it is not as if everyone that is against killing babies is against providing child tax credits or vouchers for preschool and daycare, many such states that oppose abortion do provide things like VPK, etc.

If someone thinks an act is murder or that a baby is a human life and not "just a clump of cells" it does not have to be because of some kind of leftist, John Oliver fever dream about boogeyman conspiracies and scare organizations. It can just be that people are against literally murdering innocent life.

First, a small bit of optimism :). People hate inflation; I don't think there has been an election this year that hasn't ended with the party-in-power losing the election. Given how small the election was won by in the USA I wouldn't see that as a mandate.

Background: https://www.marketplace.org/2024/11/14/incumbents-are-losing...

Second, the USA has some fundamental rot at its core that both parties have ignored for the last 30 to 50 years (housing, monopolies, health care, ports, etc). This is finally coming to a head as people have grown more and more dissatisfied with the status quo. This is going to result in a fair bit of political choppiness as the masses try to find someone who will fix their pain. Historically, these types of periods give rise to fascism, popularism, and other worries. Hopefully, that won't be the case with democracies, and peaceful transfers of power will stay the norm. Democracies must deliver results to their people or people will turn on them.

Third, you have this massive move to social media, podcasts, and influencers for news/truth. That is a bit terrifying, and there is no stopping it. You could say it is like the transition from newspaper to radio to TV, and it is going to produce similar carnage. It will be interesting to see how it shakes out. Will the government pass strict reforms (see what they did with TV to prohibit monopolies in TV ownership and equal airtime rules - both of which were upturned recently)? I agree with you that there is a lack of humility and kindness. I don't have any answers and feel equally frustrated. I think people are tired of slick answers that don't say anything, and for now, they are fine with raw outbursts because they are frustrated.

I've interviewed some historians, experts, and authors lately. Here is what they recommended on a few subjects that you are talking about:

https://shepherd.com/best-books/where-the-republican-party-m...

https://shepherd.com/best-books/saving-democracy-from-populi...

https://shepherd.com/best-books/radicalization-and-extremism

https://shepherd.com/best-books/talking-to-people-who-dont-a...

Two books I've read recently that I found illuminating are:

Savage Peace: Hope and Fear in America, 1919 by Ann Hagedorn

This was a fantastic day-by-day account of 1919 (right after WWI as the world tried to clean up). It really helped me see the chaos and politics of that year at a slower pace, and it makes the last 10 years feel a bit less crazy. Reading about the Spanish flu, bombs going off across the country, and everything else just reminded me that stuff is always crazy. You still have to fight it, but this isn't anything new.

M: Son of the Century by Antonio Scurati

This isn't an easy read. It is historical fiction about Mussolini's rise to power. It was an illuminating look at his rise to power, using historical records and some guesses. It shows what a bunch of clowns they were and what luck was involved in it happening.

The Invisible Doctrine, by George Monbiot and Peter Hutchison. 4hr audiobook, concise text. If by "classical liberal" you mean "laissez-nous faire", this might be easier to be open to reading. If you mean Hayek's now-maligned term "neoliberalism", and you're still trying to find a way to justify that well-meaning (as a reaction to nazism) but flawed approach (the need for bailouts, for one, and the Hobbsian "competition all the way down" lens), this may rub you wrong.

Of the two, I'd lean into history, and go way back, like 50kya.

We need a new story to guide us, other than the time-tested authoritarianism/fascism, and I like a messy mix generally guided by "public luxury, private sufficiency."

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