The Zen Stage of Populism

The air coming from this Trump administration is that of adults finally setting some boundaries for children.

The other side liked to say that they were ‘the adults in the room’. For a long time we have known what a laughable inversion of reality that is, as divorced from objective reality as many of the sickest sexual fetishes they also support.

If there was anything ‘adult’ about them it wasn’t the adult that means mature, experienced, responsible and informed. It was the ‘adult’ used in the porn shop sense. What they invoked to convey that they were more responsible, more informed, more wise than the rest of us, was actually a flickering neon light in a seedy backstreet.

But for some people this didn’t fully register. They could somehow ignore the Pride and LGBTQ+ excesses, the military personnel in puppy dog masks and the men in dresses. And this was not just Democrats. Many members of the public paid little attention to the culture wars, and trundled along respecting grown men and women who acted like children. What a deviant shares with a spoilt child is the idea that their most demanding and antisocial desires are more important than anything else. Both throw tantrums when denied.

Because it was not just the performative street thugs who showed us the adolescent tantrum at the heart of progressive narcissism. It wasn’t just those who howled on the street or in their cars in clips they posted online. The entire edifice of what had been considered respectable joined in those howls and screams and displayed that same toddler mentality. The bureaucracy was staffed by spoilt deviants who never grew up.