A New Birth of Authority
In the ten years since DJT descended the escalator, sovereignty is back.
Writing for The American Mind again, I have an essay up on the resurgence of sovereignty around the West: or at least, the symbols of sovereignty.
There’s a world before Trump’s descent down the escalator, and there’s a world after it. The recent “No Kings” protests transmitted the idée fixe of the pre-2015 world. That idea was hostility to personal authority, or personal power—hostility to the notion of sovereignty, to the power once exercised by kings. Donald Trump, the figure who has dominated politics since 2015, is its most visible sign of contradiction. In that sense, the protesters weren’t entirely wrong. Trump’s success marks the passing of the world of the latter half of the 20th century, which was defined by hatred of personal authority.
Read the rest at The American Mind.