芝加哥市长选举表明，越来越多的人厌倦了现状并开始反击。
丹尼尔·亨宁格
2023 年 3 月 1 日
美国人心情不太好。大多数愿意与民意测验专家交谈的人都表示，该国正朝着错误的方向前进。大多数民主党人希望乔·拜登退休。共和党人本应在中期选举中大获全胜，但选民宣布两党都有问题，让其小胜而已。
可以用一种更积极的方式来看待这个国家的阴暗情绪。心情不好暗示喜怒无常的恐惧，除了底部什么都看不见。那不是我们现在的处境。相反，正在出现的是对美国政治和文化现状的积极的不满，有越来越多的意向取而代之。
在周二的市长投票中，芝加哥试图将自己从混乱中解救出来，解雇了无能的“进步”现任洛里·莱特富特，决定了在反犯罪候选人保罗·瓦拉斯和教师工会组织者布兰登·约翰逊之间的四月份的决选。
如今，没有什么是在 Covid-19 大流行的背景外可以理解的。流行病是异常动荡的事件。 1918 年西班牙流感大流行之后是咆哮的 20 年代，这十年以放弃对个人行为的限制而闻名。我认为，我们的大流行病扭转了这种经历。
在大流行之前，我们度过了咆哮的 20 年代。十年来，我们认为我们可以做任何事情——政治、商业或生活方式——而不需要付出代价。取消对警察的资助，使大麻合法化，扩散她他代词，在你自己的对冲基金中窃取。都很好。
我们的流行病并没有导致爵士乐时代的狂欢。相反，它正在产生一个清醒的时代。 Covid 可能在纽约消失了，她曾被称为欢乐之城，但没有人参加派对。这座城市每晚 10 点前有效关闭。家和壁炉正在卷土重来。
高通胀使许多人清醒了过来。 10 年来，金钱几乎是免费的，这使得“冒险投资”的概念成为一种生活方式，例如在MEME股票热潮期间期望所有的赌注都会得到回报。杰伊鲍威尔提高利率既是一种经济工具，也是一种道德风险护栏。
公民的抵制正变得司空见惯，而不仅仅是在弗吉尼亚郊区的学校斗争中。
为了增加税收，21 个州和哥伦比亚特区已将休闲大麻合法化。大麻的刺鼻气味在纽约无处不在，无证大麻店也无处不在，纽约市无法控制。但是，当该州试图在哈莱姆区西 125 街设立一家合法药房时，发生了一些有趣的事情。
当地人进行了反击。有人说，这对他们的孩子不利，因为他们每天都会路过。它会吸引流浪者到一个犯罪和垃圾问题已经够多的社区。该州的大麻管理办公室（说真的，它确实存在）一直说药房不会有问题，但现在社区不会让步。
纽约绝大多数左翼市议会最近因为进步核心小组试图让其成员签署目标声明而破裂，其中包括“减少警察部门的规模和范围”。结果：核心小组 34 名成员中约有 15 人拒绝签名。当当地人在枪击和刺伤事件发生后对着电视摄像机大喊他们需要更多警察在他们的社区时，甚至一些进步人士也无法将目光移开。
各州近期最显着积极的立法发展之一是颁布了通过教育储蓄账户选择学校的法律。仅自 1 月以来，犹他州和爱荷华州就颁布了择校立法，阿肯色州和俄克拉荷马州的法案尚待审议，这在很大程度上是因为家长们对教师工会在教师工会迫使公立学校大流行期间关闭对他们的孩子造成的伤害感到厌恶而施加压力。
关于性别、种族和身份的“觉醒”想法并不是在大流行期间开始的，但它确实在这一时期得到了提升，似乎到处都在传播。尽管如此，“觉醒”总是感觉像是一种渐进的罪恶感，一种充满软弱思想的意识形态无法持久。因此，我们最近看到出版商企鹅兰登书屋对儿童作家罗尔德达尔的书籍进行了令人难以置信的重写，例如在“The BFG”（友好的大巨人）中将“男人，女人和孩子”改为“人”。
“觉醒”的大多数最古怪的想法都必须来自某个地方，而那个地方就是学术界。现在房间里的一些成年人决定适可而止。例如，北卡罗来纳大学的受托人正在创建一所公民生活和领导力学院，以重振自由探究的理念。择校涉及高等教育。
最后，让我们把新的清醒直接带到顶层——总统政治。大多数选民意识到国家大流行后的挑战，希望超越乔·拜登和唐纳德·特朗普之间的默认选择，这是一种严肃的迹象。不要再时间。
这是很生动的注解：自称进步的民主党人找不到超越拜登的人选，而过去几周共和党人的谈话包括尼基·海莉、蒂姆·斯科特和企业家维维克·拉马斯瓦米。也就是说，甚至多样性也在寻找新家。
我们不会夸大美国更加清醒的理由。现代回声室确保错误的想法可以长时间反弹。但在一个健康的民主国家，人们不会永远愚蠢。系统会自我纠正。芝加哥人本周进行了尝试。其他人可以效仿。
Post-Pandemic Americans Try Political Sobriety
The Chicago mayoral election shows that more people are fed up with the status quo and pushing back.
By Daniel Henninger
March 1, 2023
Americans are in a sour mood. Most of those willing to talk to a pollster say the country is going in the wrong direction. A majority of Democrats want Joe Biden to retire. Republicans were supposed to win big in the midterm elections, but voters declared a pox on both parties and kept the win small.
There is a more positive way to view the nation’s dark mood. Sourness suggests a moody funk, with nothing visible but the bottom. That’s not where we are now. What’s emerging instead is an active dissatisfaction with the political and cultural status quo in America, with the intention growing to replace it.
In its mayoral vote Tuesday, Chicago tried to save itself from chaos, firing incompetent progressive incumbent Lori Lightfoot and setting up an April runoff between anticrime candidate Paul Vallas and teachers-union organizer Brandon Johnson.
Nothing is understandable these days outside the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. Pandemics are events of extraordinary upheaval. The Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 was followed by the Roaring ’20s, the decade famous for discarding restraints on personal behavior. Our pandemic, I would argue, has reversed that experience.
We had our Roaring ’20s before the pandemic. For a decade, we thought we could do just about anything—in politics, business or lifestyle—and not pay a price. Defund the police, legalize marijuana, proliferate pronouns, steal from your own hedge fund. It’s all good.
Our pandemic hasn’t led to a jazz-age fling. Instead, it is producing an age of sobriety. Covid may be gone in New York, once known as Fun City, but nobody is partying. The city effectively shuts down by 10 o’clock every night. Home and hearth are making a comeback.
High inflation has sobered many. For 10 years money was virtually free, making the concept of “risk on” a way of life, such as the expectation during the meme-stock craze that all bets would pay off. Jay Powell’s real-world interest rates are as much a moral-hazard guardrail as an economic tool.
Citizen pushback is becoming commonplace, and not just in suburban Virginia school battles.
Chasing tax revenue, 21 states and the District of Columbia have legalized recreational marijuana. Pot’s acrid odor is everywhere in New York, as are unlicensed cannabis shops, which the city can’t control. But something interesting happened when the state tried to install a legal dispensary on West 125th Street in Harlem.
The locals fought back. It wouldn’t be good for their kids, who’d walk past daily, some said. It would attract transients to a neighborhood that has problems enough with crime and litter. The state’s Office of Cannabis Management (seriously, it exists) keeps saying the dispensary won’t be a problem, but for now the neighborhood won’t budge.
New York’s overwhelmingly left-wing City Council broke down recently over the Progressive Caucus’s attempt to make its members sign a statement of goals, including “reduce the size and scope” of the police department. Result: Some 15 of the caucus’s 34 members refused to sign. Even some progressives no longer can look away when the locals are shouting into TV cameras after shootings and stabbings that they need more cops in their neighborhood.
One of the most strikingly positive recent legislative developments in the states has been the enactment of laws enabling school choice through educational savings accounts. Since January alone, Utah and Iowa have enacted school-choice legislation, with bills pending in Arkansas and Oklahoma, in no small part because of pressure from parents disgusted by the damage done to their children when teachers unions forced the closing of public schools during the pandemic.
The idea of being “woke” about gender, race and identity didn’t start during the pandemic but it did gain elevation, seemingly spreading everywhere. Still, wokeness has always felt like a progressive guilty pleasure, an ideology dripping with too much soft thinking to last. Thus we arrived recently at publisher Penguin Random House’s incredible rewriting of children’s author Roald Dahl’s books, for instance in “The BFG” (Big Friendly Giant) changing “men, women and children” to “people.”
Most of woke’s flakiest ideas had to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is academia. Now some of the adults in the room are deciding enough is enough. Trustees at the University of North Carolina, for example, are creating a School of Civic Life and Leadership, resurrecting the idea of free inquiry. School choice comes to higher education.
Finally, let’s take the new sobriety straight to the top—presidential politics. It is a sign of seriousness that most voters, aware of the country’s post-pandemic challenges, want to move beyond a default choice between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Time’s a-wasting.
What a telling commentary that the self-described progressive Democrats can’t find a way past Mr. Biden, while the Republican conversation of the past few weeks includes Nikki Haley, Tim Scott and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy. Even diversity is looking for a new home.
We won’t overstate the case for a more sober America. The modern echo chamber ensures that errant ideas can bounce around a long time. But in a healthy democracy, people aren’t stupid forever. The system self-corrects. Chicagoans tried this week. Others could follow.