But the problem with new ideas isn’t just what they do to the believers. Their effect on the non-believers is corrupting, too. A lot of white people also believe that ideas like critical race theory and anti-racism are new. And so they think new bad ideas require new arguments against them. From this logic we get the riot of white identity politics and Christian nationalism belching forth from various gargoyles on the right. They, too, are mistaken when they think their ideas are new. If you feel like Marjorie Taylor Greene or Nick Fuentes have fresh and novel things to say, read a book and you’ll get over it. If you think Thomas Klingenstein is a fresh thinker for suggesting that the answer to all of our problems is a “manly man” to rule over us, you might be an unfrozen caveman. But Klingenstein’s rationale for He-Manism is telling. He thinks a strong man is required to fight what he calls the new threat of “woke communism.”

This is the dialectic of asininity that comes from new ideas under the guise of “new politics.” Whatever he thinks “woke communism” is, the answer to it isn’t a savior on a white horse (or escalator), it’s the same arguments based in fact, history, logic, and American principles.

So long as liberal democracy and the rule of law endure, there will be no new politics in America. Politics is the process by which individuals and groups decide how to allocate resources. American politics are constrained and defined by the pillars of our constitution and our rights-based tradition. There may be infinite variations to how that game is played, with new groups making new demands. New technologies may scramble the point at which we flip from prioritizing the me or the we. But the arguments are the same.