A certain breed of conservative—over-read, much too sedentary, prone to debilitating nostalgia for gone-away worlds which might never have existed, dyspeptic, and given to morbid fantasies about our decadent culture
’s fast-approaching totalitarian terminus—thinks of America as a patient suffering from an incurable illness and inures himself against empathy in order to watch the ordeal without flinching. I confess I have been such a doomer. On my better days I believe our predicament is like that of a patient with Type-II diabetes who won
’t be persuaded to put down the Cheetos bag until he starts losing toes.