The U.S. invasion of Iraq was the most consequential political event of the past two decades. But it doesn’t feel that way. It has the faint whiff of youthful indiscretion, an episode that many Americans would rather forget. I was 19. The tenor of that time in American life—after the September 11 attacks—seems ever more foreign to me.
Donald Trump will be remembered as one of the most consequential presidents in American history. On a political level, he attempted to overturn an election—an unusual enterprise for a president—and popularized the idea that democratic outcomes can be rejected outright if you don’t like the results. Oddly enough, however, Trump’s impact may prove more distinctive and perhaps even more lasting on an intellectual level.
In the early days of the war on Ukraine, tens of thousands of Russians protested an invasion launched in their name. This was encouraging. Americans could content themselves with the possibility that Russian citizens might take matters into their own hands, challenging and weakening their president, Vladimir Putin. In recent weeks, however, such protests have become rare.
This is the era of expecting the worst while hoping for the merely tolerable. Some might say that the worst is already happening—economic disaster and 190,000 dead from a pandemic—while the president and his surrogates insist, in a feat of self-delusion, that the “best is yet to come.