Why is so much of American culture pervaded by this intense nihilism, this thrill to the raw and transgressive exercise of power and domination and cruelty, from the president on down? In her book In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West, political theorist Wendy Brown argues that neoliberalism has played a powerful role. Not just as an economic program that crushes labor, privatizes public services, deregulates industry, unleashes capital mobility, and slashes tax on the rich. But also, as Brown puts it, as a force that has
prepared the ground for the mobilization and legitimacy of ferocious antidemocratic forces in the second decade of the twenty-first century. . . . [T]he rise of antidemocratic politics was advanced through attacks on society understood as experienced and tended in common and on the legitimacy and practice of democratic political life.
Brown warns against the intellectual temptation to rely on one big idea like neoliberalism to explain everything. The damage done by neoliberalism also explains much about liberal and Democratic troubles countering Donald Trump. Brown writes, “Outrage, moralizing, satire, and vain hopes that internal factions or scandals on the right will yield self-destruction are far more prevalent than serious strategies for challenging these forces with compelling alternatives.” That’s in part because liberals in the Democratic establishment have been looking for an exit from nihilism; Joe Biden, because he represents a sort of normalcy, appeared to offer just that.