How To Resist Political Nihilism

In a recent article, David Brooks compares this moment in U.S. history to the era of Andrew Jackson. He says, “We've reached a point of traumatic rupture. A demagogue has come to power and is ripping everything down.” In this dark political moment, how do we resist nihilism? Is there any hope for what comes after MAGA? (From Holy Post Podcast 664: An Atheist Says America Needs Jesus with Jonathan Rauch)

David Brooks Article: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/05/trumpism-maga-populism-power-pursuit/682116/

 Kaitlyn: At some point Trump will make mistakes. At some point there will be failures, and if we, he doesn't say this explicitly, this is me now, but like if we have not cultivated. The posture, the spiritual formation, the fortitude against all of the, the temptations toward nihilism to create something good in the aftermath we'll just create something bad. Like there's such great potential here for us to be so hardened and twisted by all of this that he still wins in the end. Yeah. Even if he doesn't win politically in the end. 

Phil: Okay. Less than halfway through the article… 'cause it does sound from what we've said so far, like it's a downer article. It is not. 

Skye: That's why I like this article so much. 

Phil:  (Quoting article) “The presidency of Andrew Jackson and how he was probably the most Trumpian, nihilistic president that we had before Trump. And that the response to him was the creation of the Whig Party, which was responsible for a great reformation of American systems and building of new institutions to help the common man and to hold up human dignity so that the response to Jackson was more lasting than Jackson.”

And then he goes on to say, and I think this is my favorite part, he says, “We've reached a point of traumatic rupture. A demagogue has come to power and is ripping everything down, but what's likely to happen is that the demagogue will start making mistakes. Because incompetence is built into the nihilistic project, nihilists can only destroy, not build. Authoritarian nihilism is inherently stupid. I don't mean that Trumpists have low IQs, I mean, they do things that run directly against their own interests. They are pathologically self-destructive. When you create an administration in which one man has all the power and everybody else has to flatter his voracious ego, stupidity results. Authoritarians are also morally stupid. Humility, prudence and honesty are not just nice virtues to have, they are practical tools that produce good outcomes. When you replace them with greed, lust, hypocrisy, and dishonesty, terrible things happen.” 

So his conclusion is, terrible things are going to happen, which will not be pleasant for anyone. People will get hurt, but it will also probably mark the beginning of the end of this particularly, you know, populist and nihilistic moment. 

Skye: I really hope so, but I'm not convinced. 

Phil: I know you're not convinced. 

Skye: I'm not convinced. I mean, I think it would be fantastic to see a new Whig movement that is virtuous and moral and constitutional and seeks the common good. And for those who don't know their history, the Whig Party kind of morphed, eventually, into the Republican party under Abraham Lincoln. I appreciate him making parallels to 19th Century America, to Jacksonian America, to the Whig Party, but there are certain conditions which are fundamentally different in the 21st century that are unprecedented. We can't know if they will go the same direction. 

Phil: Skye, are you gonna make the positive story less hopeful? 

Skye: No, I hope he is right. I just think there's a fundamental missing piece here, which, and, and I think he maybe talks about this a little bit…

Kaitlyn: You talk about the fundamental missing piece you think is there, and then I'll talk about the one I think is there. 

Skye: Okay, I think one of the fundamental missing pieces here is digital media. 

Kaitlyn: You're right, you're right, you're totally right. 

Skye: Like, obviously, it was newspapers primarily in the 19th century. It was before radio, it was before any of that. And there was a fragmentation of American media, but there were fewer fragmentations. And with algorithms and digital media it's just exponentially worse.

And it makes it that much harder to try to unify a country after a rupture like what we might be going through. So I hope the pattern holds, that he's describing, but I think there are variables that we don't know what effect they may have, and can the rupture be mended the way it was almost 200 years ago or not?

So Kaitlyn, what is the piece you think is missing here?  

Kaitlyn: The return of Jesus Christ to make all things new. Okay, listen though, I'm serious. Here's what I think is actually really cool about reading this piece in anticipation of Easter. Truly there is this movement he's making in a very earthly political sense of like, “Hey, things look so bad, but inside this really bad thing are there actually these seeds of something positive that could come out of it.”

And we're about to spend all of Holy Week and then many weeks of Eastertide, but especially Holy Week, just thinking about the fact that from the perspective of humans, at the time, this is the greatest defeat of what Jesus was trying to do. He is humiliated, he is killed, and his movement is over. And then what's actually happening behind the scenes is the resurrection.

I mean, not only is the resurrection coming, but happening behind the scenes in the death, in the crucifixion of Christ, is the redemption of all things. I mean, not to get on my harrowing of Hell soapbox, but he's literally pulling God's people out of the realm of the dead and proclaiming his victory over sin and death to demons in hell. 

Phil: So what you're saying is, the good news is that's missing here: Jesus. The bad news that's missing here: smartphones. So it's Jesus versus the smartphone. Who can win? 

Kaitlyn: Here's the thing, the other part of this that is important, our friend, Malcolm Foley, who just did a Holy Post live event with us, who's been on the show, who's been on like all of the shows, he was telling me recently about a sermon he was giving on the book of Revelation at his church in Waco. And he said one of the messages of the book of Revelation is not what you might think would comfort Christians in the midst of persecution and violence and injustice and evil. You might think the word that God would give to those Christians is that things are not that bad.

The word that God actually gives those Christians is that things are actually so much worse than you think they are. And I actually think something similar needs to be said to us today when we're looking at this long list of everything horrible going on. I'm not talking about the resurrection of Christ to be like things aren't actually that bad.

Actually, the death and resurrection of Christ that we are going to remember in our bodies and communally in Holy Week, and then for many weeks of Eastertide, is that even though things seem really horrific and violent and unjust and evil right now, the truth is it's actually even worse than that.

Like things actually are really worse than you think they are, and that is why such an extreme response from God was necessary, and thank God that He did it, and that we have hope to address these political evils not to withdraw from political questions or to pat ourselves in the back and say, “Okay, well everything's fine, I don't have to worry about the injustice that's happening.” But to say, “I'm actually deeply motivated to care about these things because I know the end of the story is justice and reconciliation and redemption. And so I can work towards that end without feeling like I just have to be hopeless about everything horrible that's happening,” which is mostly what I'm actually seeing on the left right now.

I'm in a really progressive city in a school that has a lot of progressive activist type students. Most of them, when they hear this long list of awful things, are not inspired to do more. They're exhausted, they're overwhelmed, and they feel like there's nothing possibly good that can happen. So the death and resurrection of Christ should not be like a pious whitewashing of everything that's happening. “Oh, it's fine. Jesus is coming back. Everything's good.” It actually should be, if the alternative is hopelessness, if the alternative is everything will just continue to get worse and there's nothing we can do, that doesn't actually spark the kind of political activity that you think is necessary. Actually in most of Christian history, it's been a return to remembering the resurrection of Christ and the resurrection of our bodies that we are promised, that's actually provoked great movement towards political justice.