The left’s response to Trump and Brexit feels like a surrender to the cycle of history. But nothing is a foregone conclusion
A friend posts a picture of a baby. A beautiful baby. A child is brought into the world, this world, and I like it on Facebook because I like it in real life. If anything can be an unreservedly good thing it is a baby. But no … someone else says to me, while airily discussing how terrible everything is: “I don’t know why anyone would have a child now.” As though any child was ever born of reason. I wonder at their mental state, but soon read that a war between the superpowers is likely. The doom and gloom begins to get to me. There is no sealant against the dread, the constant drip of the talk of end times.
I stay up into the small hours watching the footage of triumphant white nationalists sieg-heiling with excited hesitancy. My dreams are contaminated – at the edge of them, Trump roams the Black Lodge from Twin Peaks. But then I wake up and think: “Enough.” Enough of this competitive hopelessness.
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