I have been thinking a lot about narrative formation, about how the taken-for-granted atmosphere of opinion forms and diffuses such that tout le monde internalizes its gospel. One credible—or at least listened to—pundit or politician opines in a way that the media approves, and presto, a new bit of conventional “wisdom” is born or at least reinforced. A mere opinion, often ill-informed and frequently at wide variance with the truth, is repeated ad nauseam. Suddenly, it acquires the carapace of general currency that, at a distance, can easily be mistaken for fact.
Some years ago, I started a folder marked “Conservative Gloominess.” It is full of articles and animadversions by various hands: dire prognostications about who the next occupant of the White House will be, harrowing descriptions of disarray among conservatives, and despairing portraits of U.S. or European society. What’s odd, or at least uncharacteristic, about these bulletins from the abyss is not their substance—to be candid, I have written plenty of items that could justly be filed there—but their tone and what we might call their existential orientation.
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