Academic Takes on "National Misalignment"

Optimism, Pessimism, Pragmatism and Cowardice

A wonderful piece with a sufficient amount of "across-the-board" varied and granular academic/intellectual assessments and prognoses. The litany of insights is rife with bullseyes.

Skocpol's final comments of being too "overwhelmed' to be coherent seems to me the obvious common obstacle. To fall victim to this nonplussedness is something to resist and overcome.

It also seems that the liberal/progressive's 'agenda' trajectory (the pro-human, common good one, that is) offers much more coherence than the other side's grievance-based static tantrum.

An unmentioned aspect only touched upon here is the efficacy of psycho-cultivation through unregulated reporting and direct-targeted misinformation that's meant the death of epistemic rationale (hence the common neglect of looming and occurring climate crisis). THAT dynamic has fed the backslide movements until this very moment, an historically unprecedented and frustrating one.

But we, as a nation and people, should accept the challenge.