Editor’s Note: This newsletter was published before Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos published an op-ed explaining his decision to prevent the Post’s editorial board from issuing an endorsement in the 2024 presidential election. He denied allegations of a quid pro quo involving his business interests and Donald Trump, and claimed the timing of his decision was the result of “inadequate planning, and not some intentional strategy.”
If you spend any time on Elon Musk’s propaganda platform, you’ve surely run across this quote from the author G. Michael Hopf: “Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And weak men create hard times.”
Practically every populist on Twitter has approvingly tweeted or retweeted that line at some point. And while I don’t agree with them on much, I confess that I see some wisdom in it too. Our disagreement is over where to locate modern America in the “hard times/good times” cycle that Hopf describes.
Populists think we’re at stage one. The country has fallen on hard times, but fortunately those hard times have forged “strong” men like Donald Trump who stand ready to rescue us. Yes, really: “Hard times” in this case refers to an America that isn’t at war, where unemployment is a hair above 4 percent, where the Federal Reserve is now cutting interest rates, where the stock market hits a new high seemingly every month, and where most people are quite happy with their personal financial situation.
Nick Catoggio is a staff writer at The Dispatch and is based in Texas. Prior to joining the company in 2022, he spent 16 years gradually alienating a populist readership at Hot Air. When Nick isn’t busy writing a daily newsletter on politics, he’s … probably planning the next day’s newsletter.
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