Testifying before the congressional committee investigating the Iran-Contra affair in 1987, Secretary of State George Schultz repeatedly declared, "Nothing is ever settled in this town." History suggests that humanity has a deep yearning for certainty, for a resolution of certain fundamental questions, and for a guarantee of a stable future. Yet history also shows how illusory all that is. Somehow my life has prepared me for what is happening to the United States now. By 1983, when I wrote a 20th anniversary piece in The New Republic looking back at the Kennedy years, I felt that our political system had been on a wrong track for over a decade. In the next thirty years I saw the decline of my own profession and intellectual life in general, and now a near-contemporary of mine, backed by battalions of eager ideological warriors, is undoing the government and many parts of the world that I grew up in. That, I am convinced, reflects another cornerstone of human nature--a tendency of certain younger generations to rebel against conventional wisdom, regardless of how wise it was. And last but not least, every human institution, no matter how praiseworthy and inspiring at the moment of its birth, seems to grow old, lose its vitality, and become easy prey to those who can imagine a world without it.
I have pointed out here several times in the last 20 years that the historian Henry Adams made a related point well over a century ago in his presidential address to the American Historical Review dealing with the future of history as a science. Historical science, he argued, could reach one of three obvious conclusions about the future of humanity. First, it might decide that mankind would adopt socialism. Secondly, it might eventually conclude that earlier generations were right and adopt a religious view of the past, present, and future. And lastly, it might conclude that mankind would not change, and that evils like war and economic exploitation would continue. Yet any one of those conclusions, he thought, would arouse determined opposition among powerful elements of our society. I think that is a good analysis of what has happened over the last sixty years or so, not only in the historical profession but in society as a whole. And increasingly, new forces are not merely attacking the conclusions of the historical profession, but the whole idea of science as a guide to politics and life.
Under Trump this seems to be clearest with respect to public health. My maternal grandmother died in 1923, when my mother was ten, of postpartum strep, then known as childbed fever. Within ten years, sulfa drugs could cure that frequently fatal illness, and penicillin followed within another decade. As a child I read several books about the great medical discoveries of the past century, and I was in the first cohort of kids to receive the Salk vaccine---although I acquired my immunity to mumps, measles and German measles naturally. I lived to see the end of smallpox. Now more than three generations of younger Americans have grown up under the intellectual authority of the medical profession, and enough of them have rebelled to lead to the appointment of our most prominent vaccine skeptic as Secretary of HHS. Significant numbers of parents refuse to vaccinate their children, and we are experiencing a measles epidemic that has killed three children so far.
I don't think there is any legitimate excuse for this particular rebellion, but I do see plenty of evidence that we can't trust our highly educated population to do the right thing. American medical care is now organized for profit, not simply to cure disease and save lives. That is why big pharma has failed to develop desperately needed new antibiotics, preferring to research drugs that people will have to take for much longer periods of time. And good science constantly encounters powerful enemies. We all know that the processed food industry is poisoning us, but even Michelle Obama essentially caved in to the industry when she tried to make school lunches healthier. It also seems that the fossil fuel industry has succeeded--and not only under Trump--in committing us to a continued, major role for it in energy production. I keep wondering if that industry has secretly concluded that global warming is something that we will all just have to live with.
Industry however is not the only institution to abandon the use of knowledge for the common good. The same thing has happened in universities. Identity-based ideologues have joyfully transformed literature and history over the last few decades, crippling their university enrollments and leaving themselves vulnerable to the counterattack that the Trump administration has begun. Administrators have replaced scholars as the most numerous and influential university officials. And K-12 education has apparently slipped even further, valuing students' self-esteem more highly than the pursuit of truth.
The modern bureaucratic state bases its power on superior knowledge of what we need. Human nature being what it is, millions inevitably resent those claims even when the knowledge they rely on is true, and even more when it does not intuitively make sense. Donald Trump, who has never shown much respect for anyone else's opinion, has exploited that resentment brilliantly. The Democratic Party seems trapped in a defense of a status quo which obviously has serious problems. Eventually, I am sure, the pendulum will swing back in the other direction and we shall begin restoring respect for truth--but for the time being, to paraphrase Orwell, millions are so sick of hearing that 2 + 2 = 4 that they are willing to believe they equal 5, if only for a change. That is part of the rhythm of history.
2 comments:
In the same vein as your recent commentary, another opinion on the cycle of history: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/07/magazine/trump-economy-finance-history.html
We're are in the last phase of the Fourth Turning, but its not at all as optimistic as we had hoped it to be.
New things come up which must be dealt with. Severe childhood diseases were eliminated. I saw an interview of RFK jr. He said that 60 years ago that thousands died of measles out of millions sick. Now it is miniscule but the press is obsessed with this. Meanwhile autism, nonexistent in the 60s is 12.5% in California, elsewhere somewhat less. I would add that we have lots of plastic in our organs. Gender dysphoria is spreading and obesity is an everyday problem. The mainstream tends to reflexively "fight the last war", ignoring current problems. Russia is an obsession for example, cold war habit of lazy minds. Meanwhile China, India, 3rd world populations and influence has boomed. People latch onto a narrative, simplistic black and white like climate change, Russia, and insist on a non nuanced approach. USA is exceptional country like after WWII. Meanwhile everyone else has caught up. Our current economic model may be outdated. Urbanization, industrialism, capitalism, representative democracy leads to certain problems like pollution, overconsumption, decadence, low birth rates, corruption(capture of govt. by business). Welfare state and keynesianism became a dependency doom loop, causing massive debt, state bankruptcy. Answers were simple for the founding fathers, perhaps even Roosevelt. Nowadays we sit paralyzed waiting for Alexander to cut the Gordian knot.
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