This is the weekly paid post; it’s too long to be emailed.
Saddam Hussein’s Cheesecake Factory is a good litmus test for the state of the Western World. In remarks in Cleveland, Ohio, Barack Obama made a joke that Trump was turning the White House into the Iraqi dictator’s version of the Cheesecake Factory. Predictably, the Far Right missed the point and started focusing everyone’s energy on the wrong thing, hoping to keep their base focused on hating Obama instead of the dismal economy in the last days before the midterms. But this moment helps us think hard about the potential fall of the Western World.
Western World
Who qualifies as part of the Western World? Like most of the socially constructed terms, inclusion has shifted. The West is a complicated idea, made simple so as to support dumb men like in Trump's campaigns. In his idea of the West, he draws on a kernel of historical truth. What he takes and what he ignores are both equally telling. Naoíse Mac Sweeney's excellent book, The West: A New History in Fourteen Lives, offers a strong long-form discussion of how this concept was created and how it frames so much of our current moment in history. For this essay, I think it’s important to see that the idea of the West is mutable. The most telling part about the changes to the idea of the West is who gets included and who gets excluded.