Disenchantment - "The vibes are off"
People crave a narrative, not a spreadsheet
In this piece, I will provide a glimpse on why old-school charismatic politics is making a return, while stuffy liberalism will fade – where stories are told, people congregate to be told of the good, not to be scolded, and they crave to be uplifted and not overwhelmed. By having a story, we participate in the events as we narrate them to ourselves, whereas the most democratic “system” will forever remain an unjust machine if it only spews numbers and instructions at us, with nothing to tell us about ourselves.
“The vibes are off”, “the mood is bad”, “people are disillusioned”. The public in Europe today is not interested in the offerings of the public policy makers and politicians – like a blended lukewarm soup, something that once might have smelled and tasted good is now an unappealing and unwanted course. The relentless dose after dose of liberalism, globalism and technocracy invoke ever greater feelings of disgust and exasperation. The people in charge of the menu are somewhat perplexed – “we’ve always served this soup, what changed?”
Well, the soup is bland. There is nothing interesting or appealing about it, the soup itself is now cold, as we sit in front of the plate and eye the blended broth with exasperation. There is nothing to set your teeth in, nothing interesting floating in the bowl, only a uniform, grey fluid.
The food analogy might seem strange, especially in a political piece, but I have set a tone, I have provided a small story that got your attention, there is a narrative that seems to draw you in – “what is he on about, where is this going?” Unlike our politics, there is a story, you can imagine the scene as it is going on. And humans, as story-telling social creatures, need a narrative to understand what is happening. We need cause and effect, we need the ups and downs to motivate us emotionally and give us something that we feel invested in. The politicians today are totally devoid of that talent, and whatever is the narrative of the day, it’s produced by the increasingly inept and paper-thin agitprop unit (also known as legacy media).
We can smell something cooking however. There is a blonde man in a cook’s apron, waving at you and smiling. This is politics of MAGA, overtaking the liberals of yesterday. The cold soup is being replaced with a hot cheeseburger. How can you not sink your teeth into that?
But this is just the start, as the menu is gradually being rewritten.
Perhaps for us, tradition-revivers, we can bring back a full three meal course?
Depoliticization as disenchantment.
The roots of the apolitical and technocratic rule, as presented by our current crop of leaders originates in the post-war consensus, that war and nationalism was to be abandoned forever and the gradual transfer of power to specialists and administrators would occur, who could steer society clear of nationalist excesses. Where large, transnational organisations begun to take shape to deliver, they needed their staff and that staff could hardly rely on a democratic mandate for their work. The likes of Robert Schuman or Jean Monnet envisioned bodies, like the European Coal and Steel Community, as precursors to an “ever closer Union”. In America, the growth of federal bodies and bureaucratic involvement under FDR only picked up pace after the reforms of 1947, which enshrined a permanent administrative state in America, for the benefit of the country as a whole. Both sides of the pond fell under the liberal delusion of technocratic administration of the state, for the ultimate betterment of mankind by “freeing” politics of those pesky questions of nationality, morality and choice. The project of democracy was too important to be left to chance, so it had to be controlled. The politicians willing and wanting to enter the system were moulded to fit this and the gradual slip into grey boredom begun.
Jurgen Habermas lays out the framework for the depoliticization idea in his writing on democracy, suffice to say that replacement of participatory democracy with representative one worked to deliver a state, where instrumental treatment of policy goals and political objectives rendered whole swaths of public debate sterile of any narratives that would be meaningful. Technocracy, as described above, arose through needs and objectives of bureaucracy, which engaged in precise social engineering, gave rise to the autonomous “expert” class . Furthermore the capitalist, materialist and liberal devices stripped any kind of story and narrative from the national discussion, as all matters were subordinated to personal choices and personal limits. The narrative was still in play, yes, but it was one that was governed by submission to the cold calculation of the unelected administrators. Politics were stripped of the political, and all that was left were the numbers.
Liberal narrative
We all know and all see how the liberal narratives of today are played out – a serious-looking person drones on about this or that, his latest program for diversity, or to how combat inequality, or to improve the world with the latest economic plan, would you please consult the chart and the spreadsheet for details. This is the world of experts, specialists, policy wonks and thoroughly unenjoyable people whose main goal in life seems to be the morally upright person, and to lecture you on your failings. The entire world has been turned into a classroom, and all the politicians resemble hectoring teachers, who grade you on your commitment to “democracy”. Of course, you have no say in that, because why would you? You aren’t qualified to make those decisions, only unserious people who are up to no good would meddle with things beyond their ken.
This mode of politics is devoid of narratives. There are no stories being told, nothing about you, or your place in the world, or your country, anything that would make you excited about anything that is happening. This is partially by design, the jargon, the theatrics of parliamentary debates, the sitting in committees and the serious faces. You are supposed to switch off, and leave the ruling to the rulers. In the past few decades, they have done so successfully, but in the process, lost the public entirely. When a crisis moment came during COVID, and a narrative needed to be told, they faltered, people saw through it and the jig was up. No one trusts the politicians today and it is unsurprising why. There are no emotions being presented, nothing that would make you care about what is said. The quiet compliance that is achieved with boring politics means that there is no resilience or energy built up in the system to make a difference during a crisis.
And because no one is invested in the project of liberal politics, it has no legitimacy. No one wants to keep the structure going, because there is nothing in it for them, nor is it inspiring. People in the UK, for example, talk about general malaise of the country, there are countless Youtube videos or entries here that state that the people are leaving. Kier Starmer, British Prime Minister, plays his role well - that of a humourless schoolmaster, or a mid-level bank manager. There is nothing inspirational or charismatic about him, and he projects his aura of grey mediocrity across the entire country. He is insisting on participating in global affairs (COP 29), or in projecting Britain’s supposed great power status (Ukraine involvement), but the situation at home is deteriorating, and his international adventures generate little, if any enthusiasm. This is reflected in his abysmal polling and the continuous sinking in Labour popularity. There is little in terms of narrative here coming from the top, but the people are clearly writing their own: “King John is back.”
“This is MAGA Country”.
Compare it with America today. People are talking about a different country, and the “vibes” are shifting towards hope, exuberance, power. Nothing changed about America materially between now and a year ago, yet the US is now filled with energy and spirit that has been long since dormant. There is something, or someone, who picked up the thread of story of America, and started spinning it again. We know of course who it is. But there is a reason why it is him.
Donald Trump is a great storyteller. The greatest, he will tell you. He will make storytelling great again. The narrative he spins, and the story he is telling to America and the world about America, is the kind of narrative that a vast majority of people were hungry for. The narrative that you can “just do things”, that America is not a place of the great sin of whiteness, but is instead a country seeking to be great again, which wants to grow and expand its energy in all directions. Harkening back to a vaunted past, Trump is tapping into people’s memories and emotions, but also hopes and wants, and promises them that which they want, and does so in a frame of a story about what will happen under his administration. There is a logical narrative and a path for people’s desires, and it is not expressed in negatives, but in positive assertions about the qualities and abilities of the people themselves.
His talent comes from his celebrity status, which allowed him to take on the challenge of leadership in the first place. As a veteran of TV programming, and a business tycoon in his own right, Donald Trump leveraged his brand identity and allowed himself to embrace a specific persona. While not always wholly flattering or even realistic, he is willing to play it out for sake of the message he is sending out, and the public want to hear it. This talent is one that has been discouraged in politicians and technocrats until recently, and a shift can be observed where those narratives are being picked up as well. Trump’s VP, JD Vance, is also taking cues from his boss and is setting out a narrative, as he did in Munich recently. He is a storyteller too, as his book of personal recollections shows. Trump picked his running mate based on that quality, and on his ability to appear genuine.
This mode of politics is one that was buried in 1945, with brief bursts of charismatic leadership, such as JFK, but overall one that has not been invoked in the West very much, out of fear what a spirited narrative might bring. To the shock and horror of the plodding technocrats in Washington and Brussels, the end of history ended, and the newest episode in the history of the world began to be narrated. It imbues politics with authenticity that has been in demand for so long, buried under cynicism and ironic attitude to everything. You will note my absence of the word “populism”. At this stage, its a meaningless shibboleth of the fading regime, supposed to invoke plebeian and unsanctioned power grab from the bottom. The narratives have shifted though, and it is “our democracy” that became a tainted codeword.
“Man does not live by bread alone”
There is little room for surprise in considering that in suppressing human instincts and forgetting about the needs of the people at large, the system of democratic-technocratic rule delegitimized itself.
The legends which people tell about their past are reflections of what a nation thinks of itself, of the memories it holds and of the character its people are supposed to display. The ruler who sits inside an enchanted mountain, ready to return at a moment of grave danger, gives hope. The story of the national liberation from occupation after a centuries of oppression inspires devotion. The motivations of people as groups and a motive force that constitutes the strength of a country must find an expression in their politics, as that is how the country is able to reflect upon itself and its choices. Dry polls and vote-counting only take you so far, they give you a binary choice of option A or option B, they lack the context and moral resolution that inform people’s choices.
But there is more to it than mere politics. These narratives generate the emotional investment in both oneself but also the community one lives in, which more often than not is of the same ethnicity. You are given a stake in the greater whole in exchange for your participation. The anchor of meaning allows us to move on with our lives, without having to be weighed down with existential questions that are otherwise impossible to answer in a lifetime - the very trap of liberalism.
We need world to be a story, be it where God creates Adam and Eve, or where Olympians gift Pandora with the infamous Box. Those stories encapsulate our morality, and anchor it to the world around us, it manifests it, and that reification allows us to live by precepts of that morality. Universal values are so universal as to be irrelevant, hence why dry liberal humanism never generated a story that would compel anyone, it needed a communist utopia to operate on a level of a narrative that would inspire people. But that narrative was devoid of moral good, it only sought to fill a hole in meaning that liberalism brought into world in its wake. Only when the technocrats sought to purge liberalism of a narrative, did they “fix” it, and rendered it into an unappealing, grey soup.
Modernity itself, with growing technological intrusion into everyday life, and disenchanting the world through mechanistic explanations of everything around us provides a base for this technocratic takeover – if every discipline of human endeavour can be rendered into a scientific discipline, then why not politics? The very creation of the term “political science” sought to uplift politics into a field of study, not a living process of social engagement.
And they lived happily…
It will take time for the liberal world order to collapse. The grey concrete of institutional inertia will take effort to shift. But it is our job as restorers of the human narrative in politics to provide the motivation and the effort needed. By reaching into our ancestral stories and customs, we are picking up where our forefathers left off. There is little to ponder about here, because their narrative is a narrative about ourselves. And who doesn’t want to be a character in their own story? This time however, we are not living it out through digital surrogates, but through our real actions and decisions, which are beginning to reverberate around the world ever louder. We cannot march on blindly however, the story needs a goal, and a moral lesson. And I don’t mean trite “happiness” even though that is the traditional conclusion to our fairy tales. I rather mean the growth of our culture and civilisation as an edifice that celebrates humanity itself, and with a job of restoring that, we have our goals cut out for ourselves.
Narratives in politics are important. They generate engagement, and they generate investment from the public. And no matter how outrageous the headlines get, Trump knows that they are key to his agenda – he provides a story, and by providing it, he is the one leading by telling it. There is no one else who is spinning a thread, no one that would act, but only reacting to the twists and turns as they are thrown up. And that is what people see, when they see their president speak, and they love it. They know that he is aware what will happen, as he is the one telling the narrative – he manifests the future people want by telling of it, and guiding people towards it. After decades of climate change fear porn and the spectres of endless disasters mixed with abolition of humanity itself through androgynification of all, Trump’s narrative about American greatness is inviting, comforting and warm, like a slice of freshly baked apple pie.