12-24-2016, 09:34 AM
We liberals need to stop belittling the mass culture -- the accessible, home-spun, traditional, rustic culture that beckons people when times get hard. The avant-garde may be richer and more satisfying for educated sophisticates, but it does not fit people no longer concerned with being aligned with the cosmopolitan cultures of urban sophisticates.We might as well quit ridiculing country music whose enjoyment probably correlates strongly to support for Donald Trump.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.