I had grown accustomed to thinking of nostalgia as belonging to the conservative side of today’s debates. It is conservatives, after all, who sometimes look back with a tear in the eye at a vanished age. For me, that age lies somewhere between the 1960s and 1980s; for others, it may be the nineteenth century, or even the time before the industrial revolution. Even when we think about the future, the shadow of the past lingers—and for conservatives, this is no surprise.
But since Donald Trump’s victory, nostalgia has emerged among progressives as well. One encounters it again and again in the articles and discussions of Democratic activists. Their golden age stretched from the 1990s until the financial crisis of 2008. Factories closed, industry disappeared, the culture and way of life of the working class collapsed. Yet for urban intellectuals, managers, and activists, it was a time of triumph. Multicultural and environmental programs multiplied, the institutions of society fell one by one to progressivism—and above all, it was fashionable.
It is not fashionable anymore. Progressivism is no longer the domain of avant-garde intellectuals but the obligatory creed of a ruling oligarchy. And the consequences of its ideologies are now all too visible: impoverishment, war, violence, superstition, cultural decline. Progressives can still produce justifications for what they do, but it no longer inspires enthusiasm. The good times are gone.
Curtis Yarvin once observed that progressive eccentricities are delightful so long as they remain the private indulgence of a privileged few, serving as a marker that distinguishes them from the lower orders. But when such ideas become compulsory for everyone, they lose both their charm and their prestige.
We now face a political confrontation in which both sides look backward in longing. Yet what is needed is a step forward into the future.