After the Fall: Being American in the World We've Made

by Ben Rhodes

That distinctive charm and resonant history, he noticed, was being replaced by new buildings without any character—the stale sameness not of Communism but of utilitarian capitalism. “Ugly, irrelevant buildings,”

“If there is a scandal in the society,” he lamented, “it’s the fact that the upper ten thousand are building themselves up again using public money.”

Many Hungarians recall Orban’s rise by citing the Hungarian flag cockades that Fidesz members started to wear on their clothes, which recalled for me the ubiquitous American flag lapel pins that appeared on the suit jackets of American politicians after 9/11.

Orwell’s 1984 was a warning, but not about the potential totalitarianism of a capitalist, technologist dystopia—it was a portrait of Soviet Russia, and the mustached Big Brother was Stalin.

I feel like boomers being taught this is not only ironic but why so many of them have so much incorrect framing around large scale systems of dysfunction and injustice and why so many of them resort to a default mode of victimhood and projection whenever they're confronted with the consequences of their own actions. Hashtag are we the baddies; it was capitalism all along; etc

A group of amateur hockey players beating the Russians in the 1980 Olympics was the sports miracle that shaped my young consciousness, just as Rocky Balboa knocking out Ivan Drago was the movie version of the story (in these narratives, America was the underdog).

And there it is.

Germany, the nation that America defeated twice to make the world safe for democracy, was now better than America at democracy.

‘Why do they not kill you? Could you explain why they haven’t killed you?’ ” he mimicked his critics. “And I have to explain, ‘Sorry, guys, for not being killed.’

Back in the USSR,

Hm

With everything that’s gone wrong in the world, why are we entering our fourth decade talking about this one man, George Soros? Because he offers a target that strikes the darkest chords of historical memory and nationalist, reactionary politics: an immigrant, a financier, a globalist, a Jew.