Dear @DouthatNYT - Xers who are not like you grew up in a very different world. For us, growing up in the ‘70s & ‘80s, “coming of age after liberalism’s last high tide,” was to see the possibilities created for women, for LGBTQ people, for Black and Brown people, slowly undone by

The self-righteous, violent actions of conservatives in power in the federal government & the courts. Your “bourgeois realism” was an ease made possible by unearned privileges for some portion of our generation. What you dismiss as the “emotivism & narcissism” of liberalism might

More usefully, and more humanely, be understood as the escalating pitch of communication from fellow Americans being systematically crushed by the institutions that can & should ensure the basic conditions and rights for their survival. Institutions that *have* done that, during

Both that last high tide of liberalism, &, to some extent, during the Obama Administration. An Administration characterized by having people in charge who understood the life-saving, opportunity-giving nature of federal action to secure rights & create space for human happiness.

May that Generation X be the one to inspire our future politics, polity, society, and soul.//