Crisis of Confidence

Wednesday, June 17th, 2026 • Blog / Politics

[NOTE: This Substack post, from November 7th 2024, got me a lot of attention—still the most I’ve gotten on that platform. I re-present it below in the interests of blogging continuity (since it’s been an embarrassing number of years since I’ve blogged here). The sentiments presented herein were, I think, appropriate for that moment in November 2024, but times have changed—as Tarantino wrote, “It goes that way…but it goes the other way, too.“]

I’ve had to accept in the last 48 hours that what we (American liberals) are doing is not working. But I’m also forced to accept that what I, personally, am doing — living as a political junkie, connecting my sense of myself to a raft of issues and causes; wading into online debates; inflating my sense of my own “social responsibility” by latching my emotions onto social causes — isn’t working either.

What I’m saying is that Zawn Villines (below) is correct: I’m a white man in a privileged environment exploiting the luxury of being able to devote my time and energy to “politics” — and, therefore, to nurturing the great wound I am suffering right now (in solidarity with the rest of the Left; the downtrodden; the Ukrainians etc.). Am I actually helping anyone or making a difference? No. Am I advancing myself personally or professionally? No; I’m doing the opposite, holing up alone and scrolling and posting and worrying and obsessively watching videos and reading deep, probing essays (and conversing with my white economically-comfortable friends who fit the same description).

It’s not sustainable. I’m not saying I’m going to “drop out” or become hedonistic (or immerse myself in “paintings; music; cinema; going to the park” as other emotionally shellshocked liberals have recommended). I’m simply saying that my sense of myself as someone who “needs” to be “involved” is an illusion of privilege. All I am is a man with a hobby — and one that’s damaging to myself and potentially to the people around me (or at least tedious for them to endure).

Everyone is saying “Don’t give up!” “Fight!” And I support that, obviously; I admire to the point of fetishization the resistance movements of the 1930s in Europe or in this country in ‘68, or the people on the real front lines today. But I have to stop lying to myself that anything I’m actually doing lives up to those noble icons of revolutionary activism; of storming real barricades or creating a legitimate intellectual and political foundation for advancing social justice.

I’m not making an old-school internet “Goodbye Cruel World” gesture (which are always more about self-aggrandizement, self-victimization and humblebragging than the self-preservation they claim to be focused on); I’m not making a big show of my departure from anywhere because I know it makes no difference; I’m not important. 

And I’m not saying that I’m abandoning the idea of social utility or “making a difference” — it’s more that I’m realizing (again) that people like Villines are correct: I’ve never “made a difference.” If I want to start, there are things I can do, but in the meantime, I have to face the harsh lesson of November 2024: Collectively, privileged white liberals who are very good at getting very upset about politics and exchanging description of their emotions and analyses with other privileged white liberals, don’t really have much — or any — meaning or purpose in today’s world (certainly not the kind they had in ‘68 or even post 9/11). I don’t know how anyone could possibly miss this lesson from the staggering failure of the Harris campaign (which in retrospect was a culmination of what our opponents sneeringly deride as “virtue signaling,” whether from the celebrities or the politicians or even the hardworking volunteer crowds, in their own way).

I’m not endorsing or recommending any course of action for anyone else. I’m simply trying to face a hard truth, which is that my own “wokism” accomplishes nothing and ultimately does great psychic damage to me in the course of chewing up all my time and thinking and keeping me from being legitimately productive and contributing to society in a way that I’m actually capable of doing. If I want to actually do something politically (“getting involved” as they said in the Nixon era) — volunteer; run for office (as friends of mine have done); make donations — then I will; but the Harris campaign has taught a brutal lesson: people like me don’t really “need” to do what we’re doing, since we don’t make any difference. Nobody in this country who’s actually suffering wants to see my concerned white Manhattan face or hear my little lectures about why it’s all happening and who’s to blame. It’s time for me to change, because my living like this isn’t any good for anyone.