An Age of Angry Dimwits

When the political discourse of your age has whittled itself down to such ranting characters as Donald Trump and Greta Thunberg, you may be certain that politics has ended, and something else has taken its place — something ugly, soulless, and brutal.

Donald Trump is a laughably stupid vulgarian “businessman” who has successfully raped the fragile minds of tens of millions of true believers who would happily install him as U.S. President for Life if they thought they could get away with it — and in fact many of them still believe they did get away with it in November 2020, until, as they see it, they had their orange utopia stolen from them by the Lizard Men Who Control All Computers, or something.

Greta Thunberg is a real or performative one-track mind, lacking education, experience, and the basic humility before one’s elders appropriate to an ignorant teenager, but nevertheless certain — whether due to mental or parental deficiency — that she has the universe by the backside, and therefore has both the right and the duty to spit and sneer her way to a global communist revolution as “the voice of her generation.” (And she may indeed be that, to the discredit of her generation.)

Such nonsense, in a nutshell, is what has become of the so-called war of ideologies that was the twentieth century. It has boiled itself down to a dry pot of overheated, blackened residue. Raw Greed vs. Naked Envy. Hatred of Goodwill vs. Hatred of Independence. Ignorant Propaganda vs. Propagandized Ignorance. Two sides joined in a frantic, invective-spewing lunge away from all rational argument, moderate self-doubt, and ironic critical distance.

An angry, shouting advocate has no room in his soul for irony, thoughtfulness, or historical perspective — in other words, for the things most needed in an age of decay. For such a person, as for a world made in his image, everything must be now, must be “me,” must be final.