A funny thing is happening on the American scene: a powerful upwelling of decency. Suddenly, it seems as if the worst lack all conviction, while the best are filled with a passionate intensity. We don’t yet know whether this will translate into political change. But we may be in the midst of a transformative moment.
You can see the abrupt turn toward decency in the rise of the #MeToo movement; in a matter of months ground that had seemed immovable shifted, and powerful sexual predators started facing career-ending consequences.
You can see it in the reactions to the Parkland school massacre. For now, at least, the usual reaction to mass killings – a day or two of headlines, then a sort of collective shrug by the political class and a return to its normal obeisance to the gun lobby – isn’t playing out. Instead, the story is staying at the top of the news, and associating with the NRA is starting to look like the political and business poison it should have been all along.
This isn’t what anyone, certainly not the political commentariat, expected.
After the 2016 election many in the news media seemed all too ready to assume that Trumpism represented the real America. There have been hundreds if not thousands of stories about grizzled Trump supporters sitting in diners, purportedly showing the out-of-touchness of our cultural elite.