Tribal Politics In the New Washington

Janan Ganesh: “Join me in a thought experiment that has been circling my mind for a year now. Imagine, at the very start of the pandemic, that it was the world’s progressive leaders who strove to keep things open and the populists who imposed lockdowns. You won’t have to force it: there is nothing innate about liberalism that favors stricture, or about the right that deplores it. In this counter-factual timeline, I wager that such culture war as there has been over the virus would be exactly inverted. Masks are something of a heartland staple in this Bizarro 2021. Open schools are a progressive statement. On the basis of early cues from tribal elders — draconian Donald Trump, lax Jacinda Ardern — people thus arranged themselves. Only then came the rationalization.”

“If this is too cynical, remember that we have already lived through a much profounder switcheroo.”