Although her tone has more alarm, I want to second Peggy Noonan’s observation in her WSJ column that Donald Trump’s second inaugural and first week of his second term feel like a particularly propitious moment. She deems it, correctly, I think, the collapse of the old order. That is fitting. It feels like a giving up and a giving over. Even those who oppose Trump, and for whatever reason, there is a feeling that the old answers are unwanted and the new ones must be given their day. Much of this attitude is full of Menckenesque resentment that democracy means the people get what they want, good and hard.
For the true Trumpista, the words of Irish revolutionary Patrick Pearse might come to mind:
But the failure of the last generation has been mean and shameful, and no man has arisen from it to say or do a splendid thing in virtue of which it shall be forgiven. The whole episode is squalid. It will remain the one sickening chapter in a story which, gallant or sorrowful, has everywhere else some exaltation of pride.