> The success of politicians like Nigel Farage and Donald Trump come from their ability to reject the party line in favor of surprising constructions of speech,

> The success of politicians like Nigel Farage and Donald Trump come from their ability to reject the party line in favor of surprising constructions of speech, even as these creations drink from the same poisoned well of dull thought. Many have their theories to explain the current reincarnation of nationalism, few are prepared to admit they don't know why. Right now I think such explanations are unhelpful. In their haste to pretend to understand, I think many prevent themselves from reaching any kind of usable explanation at all. And the application of their pet world view is more a shield protecting them from new evidence than a useful tool to help them understand. Maybe people would often be better off, just saying, I don't know, and keeping an open mind. Aside from that, I like how this article throws some light on how language encodes power and systems. If people can be aware of how that works, maybe they won't be so bound by a discussion that was framed deliberately to disempower them, to prevent criticism of itself, and to confine their possible responses, and even imagination of responses to those least effective. I just don't think anything good can come from systematically disempowering people. The human spirit always pushes back. Oppression simply guarantees reaction and conflict. And ends up destroying whatever order that the oppression was meant to create. Instead of crushing people into the shape you think is most desirable, I think things work better when you can inspire them and guide them to take on that shape, and discover the possibilities of that shape, themselves. Not tyranny, not anarchy, but some kind of enlightened leadership. I think the American Dream was a good attempt at this, but maybe it got depleted by over-emphasizing consumerism, and got knocked off balance by, possibly, spurious, conflicts that eroded its moral legitimacy, and resulted in the corrosive self-doubt that stagnated progress and undermined the Dream's appeal. To reach for a theory, maybe this reincarnation of nationalism is about trying, somehow, to design a new Dream.