10 Jan The Positively 4th Street Election
I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoesAnd just for that one moment I could be youYes, I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoesYou’d know what a drag it is to see you
–Bob Dylan, “Positively 4th Street,” 1965
Earlier this week, Timur Kuran, the economist who, among other things, identified the phenomenon known as “preference cascades,” posted on Twitter/X about how the fires in California are likely moving the “Overton Window” on DEI: “With every screw-up, failure, and disaster, fingers will point to DEI and its enablers.”
Of course, time will tell if Kuran is correct, and DEI becomes the scapegoat for the fires and for the incompetence state and local governments have shown through the crisis. One thing we know for sure already, however, is that people will be angry, and they will be angry with government at all levels. They will blame the president, the governor, their mayors, county executives, fire chiefs, water resource managers, and everyone in between. They will be p*ssed.
Part of this is only natural. When government fails – as it clearly has here – it gets blamed, rightly so. People will always be angry and frustrated when those they’ve elected to help protect them fail to do so.
Another part of it, however, is the mood of the country at the moment. There is no reason, for example, that keyboard warriors in New York or Washington or Florida should be as angry as they are with California Governor Gavin Newsom or Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass. But they are. In some cases, they’re even angrier than the Californians who have lost their homes.
What’s interesting here is that this anger is not unique to the fires and their causes. People are, generally, ticked off and they’re ticked off in particular at “government.” It’s really hard to quantify what I’m talking about here, but there just seems to be a palpable sense that people are exhausted by their so-called leaders. They’re exhausted by Joe Biden and his pretenses to competence and mental acuity. They’re exhausted by Kamala Harris and Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer for lying to them for four years about Biden’s mental state. They’re exhausted by the pretentious and petty media who covered for Biden and the Democrats. They’re exhausted by school boards that pass policies enabling schools to hide their kids’ problems from them. They’re exhausted by teachers who put rainbow flags all over their classrooms and pretend that teaching kids about “gender” and “sexuality” is part of their job. They’re exhausted by all of it – and more.
Ever since the election, various analysts and demographers have been talking about how this might have been a “realignment election,” that is to say a moment at which political alliances and preferences have shifted enough that they now constitute new voting patterns that can be expected to remain fairly constant until the next realignment. Working-class Hispanics are now Republicans. The GOP is now the party of the working-class and of men. Minorities in general have broken their dependency on the Democratic Party. Married white women, for all the stereotypes about “Karens,” remain fairly Republican-aligned, while single women of all races now constitute the Democratic Party’s largest voting bloc. And so on.
I don’t doubt that this is the case, but even more importantly, I think November’s election constitutes an even rarer moment, one at which the American people threw their collective hands in the air and said, “enough!” We’re done with all of you and with your politics! Leave us the hell alone!
Although partisan realignments take place every couple of decades or so, this is only the second such anti-government/anti-politics election in my lifetime, the last one taking place )just over) 44 years ago, when Ronald Reagan beat the incumbent (and dearly departed) Jimmy Carter in a massive landslide.
To be fair to Carter, he saw it coming, and in some ways, his presidency laid the groundwork for the revolution. Carter understood the people’s frustration with government and did, indeed, embark on a course of deregulation. Nevertheless, his incompetence, weakness, and prejudices got the better of him and only exacerbated the electorate’s patent frustration.
Biden, by contrast, didn’t see it coming at all – and still doesn’t. The actions he (and/or his surrogates) have taken since the election – pardons, executive orders, etc. – have served only to fan the flames of the voters’ anger and confirm the rightness and righteousness of their decision in November.
Over the years, music journalists and other observers have speculated about the subject/target of Bob Dylan’s iconic 1965 single “Positively 4th Street” (quoted above). Some say it was about Edie Sedgwick, also the subject/target of “Like a Rolling Stone.” Others say it was about Irwin Silber, the editor of “Sing Out” magazine. Still others say it was about Dylan’s fellow folk singer Phil Ochs.
I don’t have any inside information or, really, any particularly great insight, but I think the song was most likely about his soon-to-be former friends Pete Seeger and Joan Baez, among others. Seeger, of course, was a full-throated communist, and Baez wanted deeply to be an integral part of the protest movement. Dylan, by contrast, just wanted to make music, and he wanted his youthful encroaches into politics to be forgotten and for Seeger and Baez to leave him alone. He wanted to be free – free from politics, in particular. He was, in short, not all that different from American voters today.
The American people’s last rebellion against their political masters lasted only as long as Reagan’s presidency lasted. George H.W. Bush, for all his virtues, was a much more political creature, and his presidency cracked the political door that Bill and Hillary Clinton kicked wide open.
How long this rebellion will last is up in the air, obviously. It may last until the evening of Inauguration Day. It may last the entirety of Trump’s presidency. Or it may even outlast him.
If the events of the last week in California are any indication, though, people will have a lot to be angry about for a very long time. Perhaps Timur Kuran is right. Perhaps the Overton Window has shifted. Perhaps the Total State and its perpetual obsession with all things political has reached its end.
I kinda doubt it, but I can hope, right?
