01 May 2017

If you really respect Trump voters, tell them the truth

The ultimate irony of today’s era of nostalgia politics, after all, is that the era people are nostalgic for was itself an era of incredibly rapid change. The “good old days” were a time when new industries were rising, the population was growing fast, and the built environment shifted rapidly in the direction of suburbanization. The country didn’t dig out of the trials of the Depression and World War II by “bringing back” the economic conditions that prevailed during the McKinley administration. Instead, a country that embraced new ideas built new communities populated by people who moved to new places to work in new fields.

Matthew Yglesias