Donald trump

The recent US adventures in Venezuela and Iran have not, on the American side, wrought the same losses of life and limb as those of Vietnam or World War Two. No field medics ferrying the dying and the dead. No trenchfooted cripples waiting for their commanders to find the difficult words for the difficult hour. Nobody in front of whom one might feel it inappropriate to begin a speech with: “Warriors, good afternoon.” Hegseth reached for an epic register only to be let down by his B-movie rhythm and hiccupy delivery Or, as Pete Hegseth, the self-styled Secretary of War, put it last month: “We are no longer the ‘Woke Department’ or the ‘Weak Department.’ Simple translation of that: No fatties. No trannies. No beardos. No weirdos. No wimps. No radicals.

This is not an edifying election. That’s putting it delicately. Any honest survey of the quality of the candidates and the arguments they are making will leave you deeply depressed. All across the country, voters are being asked to choose among truly dreadful candidates, whose main argument is that “the other guy is much worse.” Both parties do it. They do it because it works.   Unfortunately, the candidates don’t have to exaggerate to underscore how bad their opponents are. That doesn’t stop them from making it their battle cry. “My opponent is more corrupt than Tony Soprano.” “My opponent believes transgenders should play in your kid’s sport. After he’s rammed that outrage down your throat, he’ll force your kid to marry one.

For decades, we on the liberal right have been sold the fiction that Republican lawmakers are fighting for small government. There are many reasons why the state seems to relentlessly expand no matter who is in office; an important, though overlooked, one is that it is incredibly difficult to persuade voters that smaller budgets and reduced employee counts can achieve equal or superior results. Voters might dislike bureaucracy, but they fear what happens when the machinery behind it is dismantled – what if the alternative is worse? One needs look no further than the backlash against DOGE to see that the right needs to prove a smaller government can improve citizens’ experience in dealing with it.

There were many reasons why John Ruskin hated Rococo. The overly decorated style was a bête noire for the great architectural critic because he thought it the supreme example of excess and by its excess it concealed its true meaning. We are in an era of British life which I can only think of as ‘late Rococo incompetence’. The excess of bad news, government ineptitude and baffling decisions made by the state is now so great that we are struck dumb, incapable of meaningful reaction. The news cycle abounds with evidence of this tidal wave of depressing or destructive acts. The sheer number of hideous stories has desensitised us.