Everything was going smoothly these holidays just past. Then, on the last day of the year, David Ignatius published an opinion piece in the Washington Post that subverted the mood somewhat.
“Making New Year’s predictions is tricky in this turbulent world,” the longtime Post columnist wrote, “but here’s one fairly safe bet: The next president will propose a more assertive U.S. foreign policy.”
I had not boiled things down to quite this extent. So Ignatius got me thinking—precisely what I had looked forward to not doing for a few meager days of guilt-free ease.
Not much to think about on the Republican side, of course: To one or another degree, these people remind me ever more of Mussolini. They promise to feed Americans a more aggressive, militarized foreign policy the way hunters use red meat to bait big game in the jungle. The only interesting aspect of this phenom is why it appeals to so many of us, and I will come back to this.