When I reflect on the fading of liberal arts from public life, one element that stands out the most in the last four years is the widespread inability to tell totalitarianism apart from cultural phenomena one happens to find unpleasant.

Which is why I think we've reached a cultural moment where someone your dad's age can read a book on 1930s Germany and think "Wow, this reminds me of the Rachel Maddow Show."

Meanwhile this hardly registers as problematic at all. https://twitter.com/ShotOn35mm/status/1321352709899907073?s=20

I thought about this yesterday while reading about Rod Dreher’s approval of Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán, who has fought the rising tide of of social progressivism by closing universities and dismantling free media.

Dreher apparently likes this because it combats the “soft totalitarianism” of a culture shaped by academic inquiry and the free exchange of ideas that is transforming in ways he doesn’t like. Apparently Dreher sees no irony in combating this with actual totalitarianism.

This makes me think of conversations I’ve had with people back home who I truly believe are unable to recognize the dangers of dismantling a free press and curtailing academic freedom because the restrictions enforce the world they would rather live in.