“Zeitgeist”

“Together we are in a position to… end decades of suffering, stop generations of hatred and bloodshed, and forge a beautiful, everlasting and glorious peace for that region and for the whole region of the world.”

Such was the soaring promise of US President Donald Trump as he inaugurated his new Board of Peace on the stage of stages that is the Davos Economic Forum this week.

The world of all too much suffering and strife badly wants to believe him.

That’s one reason, well the only reason to root for the BOP. But the UN is filled with TDS suffering kleptocrat nations and they are determined to remain at the trough.

In some of the ancient civilizations, each year was designated with a label rather than a number. For example, there was a Year of the Locust, a Year of the Flood, or a Year of Golden Harvest.

Following that tradition, what label do you think would suit 2025?

One suggestion is: the Year of Impressions. That label could be justified with reference to a dozen abortive attempts at peace-making across the globe, shaky compromises on tariffs and trade, and inertia disguised as hyperactivity. In the year ending, leaders have spent more time flying from one place to another, making speeches, giving TV interviews, cutting ribbons and pressing flesh than coming to grips with core issues here and now.

There’s a haunting quality to missing something you never experienced. The New York Times recently explored a strange but increasingly familiar phenomenon: Gen Z’s deep yearning for a time before the digital deluge — a kind of “historical nostalgia” for an analog world they never actually lived through. But this isn’t just wistful sentiment or vintage aesthetics. It’s something deeper. Something raw. Something that reflects not a desire to rewind, but a desperate need to re-ground.

I realise I’m late to this particular cultural post-mortem, but last week I watched Adolescence, the much-discussed Netflix drama centred on a 13 year-old white boy accused of murdering a female classmate at his school and the emotional fallout that follows.

Contrary to the usual refrain – I watched it so you don’t have to – I think, in fact, you probably should.

Whether by marketing design or pure coincidence, the show arrived amid a great deal of outrage: accusations that it distorts the demographics of youth violence, that it stokes panic about alienated boys, or that it offers up yet another heavy-handed morality tale in prestige-drama packaging.

The industrialist, iconoclast and thorn in the side of the Labour government, Elon Musk, unveiled a new facet to his talents on Thursday morning. He penned a long and remarkably successful pastiche of fellow tech-bro billionaire Paul Graham, who had mocked Musk’s relentless interventions into British politics.

The progressive moment is over—at least for now.

This past year showed that the progressive politics that dominated most industrialized countries over the past two decades or more is shifting to the right, fueled by working-class anxieties over the economy and immigration, and growing fatigue with issues from climate change to identity politics.

h/t DS

More than 200 years ago, Edmund Burke penned the definitive defence of tradition. In it, he denounced the revolution still burning in France and endorsed the monarchy at home.

In response, across the ocean, Thomas Paine delivered a famous rebuke: “He pities the plumage, but forgets the dying bird.”

While the ideological lines in the sand have shifted radically over the centuries, Paine’s observation serves to perfectly describe recent attempts by left-wing commentators to try and make sense of the seismic political events of 2024. Most notably, Kamala Harris’s disastrous defeat and Justin Trudeau’s slow motion car wreck of ever-collapsing support.

What happened? It’s like a spell broke. Since November’s election (re-election?) of President Donald Trump, the woke is going away, and all sorts of problems are resolving themselves. But why?

There are several reasons, but basically, it’s a preference cascade.

In law we talk about the proverbial thirteenth chime of the clock, which is not only wrong in itself, but which calls into question everything that has come before. Most of our institutions have been chiming thirteen for quite a while, and people have noticed.

One of the most intriguing recent political trends in North America is growing support for conservative parties among young people. Once a reliable source of support for left-leaning politicians like Barack Obama and Justin Trudeau, a rising share of the youth vote is trending towards candidates like Donald Trump and Conservative party leader Pierre Poilievre. Young people voting for conservative politicians might be dismissed as just a backlash against failed economic policies but there are indications of a more fundamental shift in which youth embrace at least some conservative values.

It’s not news that young people are further on the left of the political spectrum than older generations.

Of unique interest now is that the movement to the left is more disproportionate among young women than young men.

As a nation we should know this is happening and try to understand why.

The three countries that have made the greatest historical contributions to the concepts of democracy and human rights are all in an election year, and two of them, the United Kingdom and France, recently produced unusual results. In the British election, the public did what was necessary in severely punishing the Conservative party (which is not in the slightest conservative), for its unprecedented accomplishment of producing five consecutive thoroughly failed prime ministers in eight years. David Cameron completely bungled Britain’s relations with the European Union; Theresa May interpreted the Brexit vote to leave Europe as an authorization to remain while calling it a departure. Boris Johnson got Brexit done but engaged in such hypocrisy during the COVID shutdown and strained the parliamentary requirement for truthful answers so severely that his own MPs, who largely owed their election to him, deserted him. His initial replacement, Liz Truss, produced an admirable budget but failed to support it with adequately persuasive funding projections and was dispatched as if in an ejector seat after a record-breaking 45 days. Rishi Sunak followed and raised taxes, which British Conservatives don’t do if they have any wish to be re-elected. Naturally, the electorate had to punish such a horrifyingly, if at times comically, inept performance.

In 2002, I discovered a 1927 lecture by Bertrand Russell entitled “Why I am Not a Christian”. It did not cross my mind, as I read it, that one day, nearly a century after he delivered it to the South London branch of the National Secular Society, I would be compelled to write an essay with precisely the opposite title.

When raw food influencer Zhanna Samsonova died in July at the age of 39, after reportedly eating only fruit for the past seven years, she was just the latest person to join a tragic club: anorexic influencers who have starved themselves to death in public. Other recent examples include Amy Ellis earlier this year, who had 140K followers on TikTok, and Josi Maria in 2020, who had 138K followers on Instagram. There was also Kylie Jaye, a so-called fitness guru who died a few weeks before her birthday, and Nikki Grahame, a reality TV star, who was found dead the following month in her London flat in April 2021.

Boys are increasingly becoming conservative while girls become liberal.

It is popularly held that the younger generations are becoming increasingly liberal while conservatives dominate the older demographics. While this tends to be true, a recent survey conducted on seniors in high school demonstrates nuances.

The 90 minutes or so I spent listening to Tucker Carlson’s Friday interview with Russell Brand was time well spent. Tucker was open and relaxed, and Brand was a generous host, making sure that Tucker had all the time he needed to make his points.