American politics has become center of gravity for culture. I’m not thrilled about this as I have utopian high mindedness in my bones and that never pairs well with the real politic of a nation.
I felt being open to change was a part of my cultural upbringing as an American. Reagan Revolution babies enjoyed Clinton neoliberal growth. Optimism meant being interested in technology.
I have never been satisfied with reality because “we can do better” was both the regional culture of frontier Western civilization but America in particular.
We can imagine better which means we can do better. Somewhere between the neoconservatives forever wars, liberalism’s tolerance of intolerance and the growth of an expensive permanent state bureaucracy we lost some shine.
Losing our can-do spirit to fear and zero sum thinking led to strange institutional outcomes. Watching fear spread over years of pandemic and institutional failures did not help.
I’m not a novel voice in this discourse but most of the startup world and technologists in general had sincere affiliations with American institutional liberalism and even in particular the flavor of Democratic neoliberalism you might have associated with Bloomberg. The Obama administration certainly acted as if we were part of the coalition. The sincerity of that alliance is a question of course.
I don’t know where the realignment lands as we go forward but I hope as many people as possible sincerely embrace wanting more optimism.