Review: Suicide of the West: How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics Is Destroying American Democracy

Suicide of the West: How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics Is Destroying American Democracy by Jonah Goldberg
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Reading this book reminded me of Dostoevsky's quote from Notes from Underground: “I even think the best definition of man is: a being that goes on two legs and is ungrateful.”

Goldberg's main theme of this book is that there are a lot of things wrong with modern western democratic tradition, but that there is also nothing that has produced the blindingly rapid and expansive growth that mankind has seen in the past 300 (or even 100) years compared to the rest of human history and the rest of human civilization. Goldberg argues that this is not a predestined fate of humanity, and in fact that human nature does not lend itself easily to this kind of human flourishing. Instead the default state of nature/humankind is that of tribalism, family loyalty, adherence to strongmen/authority/hierarchy, violence as a primary means to one's desired ends, etc.

The book is pro-Enlightenment--ma non troppo. By that I mean that it looks at The Enlightenment favorably (especially the Scottish Enlightenment), but also has reservations (e.g., the French Enlightenment) that illustrate where human nature was misjudged and led to tyranny and human suffering. In this it is helpful to read this book after reading Steven Pinker's excellent Enlightenment Now to gain a more nuanced view of some of the weaknesses and excesses of the "Age of Reason". The end of the book explores the dual tyrannies that tap into the dark side of human nature: the tyranny of pleasure (pan et circenses or the Brave New World hypothesis) and the tyranny of pain (or the East German, soviet, Orwellian 1984 hypothesis). I find the combination of sex-lib movement and the intersectionality of power politics favoring the former hypothesis as the most convincing argument for the stifling of human freedom and flourishing in our modern society creating radical savage individuals incapable or exiled by their habit from community or any meaningful society. This partly explains the rise of tribal politics on both extremes of the political/social spectrum.

This review is only a short icepick take on my immediate thoughts upon reflection of the book, but it is also packed with other themes such as the competing myths of modern democratic foundation, the historical forces/personalities that propelled the American Founding and the birth of Capitalism, the aristocratic and romantic urge in human nature that is transferring at the intersectionality of politics to a pop culturalization of government, the 'deep state' and the place for technocrats in modern government and the danger they post. This book is a must read for any thinking person from any political persuasion in order to better understand the current dangers of our new politics--especially the dangers of tribalism.

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