Opinion by Paul Waldman: To hear Republican presidential candidates tell it, America is at once perfect in its majesty, and a cesspool of depravity and corruption.
a terrifying monster whose tendrils supposedly reach into every corner of our national life. A DeSantis speech is little more than a litany of powerful enemies destroying Americans’ lives, whom he plans to finally vanquish by using the power of the government.
In this telling, every institution has become the enemy of “normal" Americans: the media, the education system, the military, big business, the government, all of it. Prominent media figures on the right that political developments are created by “demons” and Satan himself, who apparently rampage through the land as they please. It’s a wonder any of us get home alive at the end of the day.together and you get a strange combination of passivity and panic. There are certain problems we shouldn’t even bother trying to fix. Racism? Solved. Inequality? A myth. Our health-care system is deeply dysfunctional? No, it’s the greatest in the world.
Yet supposedly, there’s a powerful conspiracy at work to turn your kids gay and trans, so we have to start banning books, lest their minds be infected with dangerous ideas lurking in every school library. But reality is both more mundane and more hopeful. Ours is a unique country, but not because it’s better — or worse — than all the others. We are not chosen above all nations, nor are we tumbling toward hell. That may not be as dramatic and thrilling as the extravagant claims of those who promise that in their hands politics will be an unending crusade against evil, but it’s the truth.
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