Politics today is best described not as triumph or collapse but as a 'disjunctive present' — an interregnum where established institutions are losing authority while no coherent replacement emerges, producing paralysis, performative spectacle, and proliferation of 'morbid symptoms' (extreme rhetoric, administrative overreach, culture‑war stunts). This frame shifts attention away from who 'wins' individual skirmishes toward the structural problem of failed consensus formation.
— Framing contemporary politics as a 'disjunctive present' reorients debate toward repairing institutional mediation and intellectual labor (how to build durable consensus) rather than merely scoring partisan wins.
Damon Linker
2026.10.16
100% relevant
Damon Linker's use of Gramsci's interregnum (quoting 'the old is dying and the new cannot be born') and his reflection on John Ganz's podcast discussion of the right‑wing intellectual scene exemplify the diagnosis and point to concrete actors and episodes (e.g., Trump‑era denaturalization efforts) that manifest the condition.
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