I have a soft spot for the Dirtbag Left now that I never used to have. Listening to them viciously destroy the Democratic Party scratches that itch. They were ahead of the curve, and the Democrats would have been better off not snuffing out the movement way back when.
But snuff it out, we did. Back in 2016, I was in a Facebook group devoted to doing nothing but hating on the “Bernie bros.” I spent too much of my precious time trying to stop them as a movement because they threatened Hillary Clinton’s win. Like every Democrat now, I was afraid of democracy.
The Democrats find themselves in that place where the three characters from Jaws end up. They’ve tried harpoons and three barrels on him, and nothing has worked. They finally decide to try Hooper’s shark cage, even though Brody knows there’s no chance it will work. “You got any better suggestions?” barks Hooper.
That Quint entertains the idea of bringing in Hooper’s cage at all was the miracle. And the desperation.
The Democrats are ready for the anti-shark cage, and so Bernie Sanders and AOC are on a western tour to “stop the oligarchy.” They finally have the exact right enemy in Elon Musk and Bernie’s “billionaires.” Musk represents the death of their dream, that no one can get there on their wits, hard work, and ambition alone. No, this is a country where no one can rise unless everyone can rise.
Trump’s tariffs are a potential solution to America’s crippling problem of income inequality that has destroyed the middle class. That’s the MAGA populism at work. Bernie's populism fixes the problem with much bigger government. The rich pay more to redistribute the wealth.
Is this finally the moment when we can Make America Socialist Again? A major step forward from FDR’s New Deal and Johnson’s Great Society? Do the Democratic Socialists have a real shot at winning the nomination away from the feckless, flaccid centrists?
Is this finally the moment when the Dirtbag Left and the identity politics utopians merge to create one big movement, a Green New Deal? Will Trump’s radical change finally be the thing that pushes the majority in a direction they never would have gone?
Recent polls show that younger generations are much more accepting and fond of socialism than older generations. It's not that hard to do the math and see what might be coming next.
How it Started
According to Neil Howe and William Strauss's 1997 book, 2008 was the crisis that sparked our Fourth Turning. This pattern plays out every 80 years, with each generation being born and living a lifetime before everything radically changes to restart America in a new direction, like the American Revolution, the Civil War, the Great Depression, and World War II.
We still don’t know how big or how bad our Fourth Turning will be. To Strauss and Howe, the $700 billion bank bailout was the moment the public woke up to the imminent disaster of income inequality and a bloated oligarchy. The bailout birthed two populist movements: Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party.
Occupy Wall Street became the Bernie movement which, after Hillary’s loss in 2016, was dissolved into the Democrat machine. The Tea Party became Trump and MAGA. The question we have to ask is which side will prevail when the Fourth Turning comes to a close, when the policies are cemented and the country is united?
According to Howe’s new book, The Fourth Turning is Here, he edges ever so slightly to the Left’s side of things because the dominant generation, the Millennials, are a “go along to get along” personality type.
At the moment, at least to me, the MAGA side offers more for ambitious millennials, especially young men. MAGA is now the side of innovation and economic growth. If they succeed, there will be no need for a rescue mission.
But if they fail? Ben Shapiro has been dropping the prediction for a few weeks now that if Trump’s economy begins to fail, the power that will rise is the equal and opposite reaction to Trump’s populism: a lurch to the hard left.
Bernie and AOC are ready to bring the movement back.
Is this finally the moment where both Bernie and AOC have the right kind of anger and the right enemy they need to tap into the collective outrage of all of those crazy people out there losing their minds? People like this: