Ross Douthat says that a revolution is far-fetched, but the virus may provide the necessary alchemy for change.
My only objection to Douthat’s diagnosis is that it has little or nothing to say about elites, establishments, and plutocracies. I believe Americans have become decadent in good part because they have chosen to do so, but I also believe it is not paranoid to suggest the choices we make are rarely free ones. Rather, we are constantly tempted, manipulated, by those who occupy the commanding heights and who grasp the levers of power. That is why I recommend readers to pair The Decadent Society with James Kurth’s new book The American Way of Empire: How America Won a World—But Lost Her Way. Among much else, Kurth describes the “preferred domestic public policies” as well as the foreign policies of three American plutocracies. The first rose to power in the 1880s and 1890s on the strength of industrial sectors such as coal, steel, railroads, and oil. Its captains of industry, or “robber barons,” wanted a political system that seemed bracingly democratic, but in fact ensured that both political parties would do their bidding by supporting the gold standard, protective tariffs, a big navy, and foreign markets through the “Open Door” policy. The second American plutocracy that arose in the 1920s and 1930s was split between industry and the financial sector which rose like a rocket during and after the Great War. Wall Street favored free trade and internationalism and thus quarreled with the industrialists of the Middle West. When the Great Depression hit both were hurt badly, but did not succumb to populist or leftist movements thanks to Franklin Roosevelt, World War II, and Harry Truman.
Douthat is also ignorant of the economic collapse that is taking place, and decadence may be visible in blue urban areas, but I don't think the opioid crisis and the problems of middle red America.
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