Deplorable Us

Call them anything but deplorable.
Conventional wisdom: the grievance is justified. They’re disconnected. Estranged from a sense of empowerment. Isolated from the state. No stake in its processes or outcomes.
But voters. As are we all. Enfranchised but somehow disenfranchised. Finding victims to fuel their sense of victimhood.
Turning against anything that has no place in a misty nostalgic dreaming. A time before all this. A place that never was. A place resistant to demography. Resistant to ecology. Resistant to economics. Choosing as champions people whose career has been to grift the system, slogans without the responsibility of either plan or implementation.
Prejudice paraded. They’re just saying what you’re thinking. Just giving licence to that shaded place in you filled with the angry notion of self-importance betrayed.
What is this famous grievance? That life hasn’t stacked the way you think you deserve? That you’re owed better.
What exactly are you entitled to ... and at whose cost should that be delivered? We can’t get better together so we need to get better at someone else’s expense. Capitalism for human capital.
They’re right. This is a project in decline. Failing its broader objectives of leadership and care, lost in self-involvement and fear of failure.
The system’s worst failure? That it can’t find a nobler solution within itself. That it can’t mine its own reserves for a compelling and optimistic vision of the future, that a torpid democracy’s knee-jerk reset is to boost a bitter populism.
Radicalism is called for but instead we pick a radical reaction. We’ll slouch from the centre to violence and mistrust.
The worst of human possibilities. But still a human possibility. Deplorable.