A Hole In The Culture
Why is there so little art depicting the moment we’re in? An essay by Rick Perlstein.
Why is there no great recent fiction about the American right? I have my theories. One is not unrelated to my suspicion that Section 501(c)(3) of the tax code may end up as the death of liberal democracy. Too much of liberal America doesn’t understand, or are bound within institutional confines that don’t allow them to understand, that conservatism is their adversary. Something that must be defeated if the most basic values that sustain a healthy society (whose flourishing too many liberals take for granted, or presume The Grown-Ups have under control) are to survive. For a way too big chunk of Blue America, the answer will always be more affirmations to “going high” when “they go low,” or that “there’s not a liberal America and a conservative America—there’s the United States of America.”