Kevin Mattson

The Trumpian Personality

ABSTRACT:Trumps ascendancy is an opportune moment to revisit The Authoritarian Personality, a book published just five years after the Second World War came to its fiery end. The book allows us to better understand the authoritarian conservative personality of Trump, as well as the pyschic and politico-economic factors behind its expanded popular appeal.

Kill Your Idols

It’s hard to remember the sorry state that pop music fell into during the 1980s. Who wants to recall the silky synthesizer sounds of Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet that became the musical equivalent of Valium? Or heavy metal bands like Van Halen, who airbrushed technical guitar chops over idiotic machismo and emotional absence. Or the “classic rock” radio stations (before the advent of the internet) that suggested all good things came from the past, from the charmed late 1960s and early 1970s. In 1981 the music critic Lester Bangs asked a young acquaintance what bands she liked. She spat out bands like The Yardbirds, Cream, and The Doors. For Bangs, this indicated how young people of the eighties had “absolutely no culture” of their “own.” Rock felt old and staid, dull and dated.

Brother, Can You Parse the Times?

Need it be said we live in gloomy times? The most optimistic among our commentariat talk of a jobless recovery: the banks and Wall Street recuperate while more Americans face unemployment or watch their wages and benefits stagnate. All this, of course, follows massive mortgage defaults and rising homelessness. Numerous journalists now speak of a “lost generation” coming of age—young people unable to find jobs and sinking into psychic despair. Depression 2.0, the Great Recession, or whatever you want to call it, has renewed a sense of what it means to get the blues.Which brings us to Morris Dickstein’s marvelous new book that explores “the crucial role that culture can play in times of national trial.”

Getting Right with the Cold War: A Debate with Joanne Barkan

It would seem that Dissenters and others on the left have a hard time getting over the cold war. Pieces about the cold war not only filled the Summer 2006 issue but have appeared before in the magazines pages- including my own reconsideration of Arthur Schlesingers The Vital Center (Winter 2005) and Jeffrey Isaacs brilliant defense of the Congress for Cultural Freedom (Summer 2002). There was also George Packers fine collected set of essays (it included pieces by Dissent editors Paul Berman and Todd Gitlin) that evoked the memory of 1930s fascism and 1940s communism and made explicit linkages between cold war liberalism and the sort of liberalism that Packer hoped to recover.