Nostalgic?

What is nostalgia? Salena Zito writes in American Greatness,

Many professionals who live in larger cities and communities and have made the decision to embrace our current culture of dramatic and rapid change with gusto face a complication, their refusal to listen to the people who sometimes want the world to slow down. To them, nostalgia often simply means racism. To many others, though, nostalgia means seeking something that was lost.

...The more cosmopolitan class—caught up, living and enjoying societal and political upheaval—too often views those who aren’t on board—or who are more nostalgic for a more personally connected society—as less intelligent, backward, bigoted or too tied to the tenets of their faith. These views are not new to the Trump era. They have been building for years and went largely unnoticed—until their class lost a presidential election in 2016.

Why this rejection? The list of reasons is long. In his riveting and important new book, “Alienated America,” my Washington Examiner editor, Tim Carney, explores those deeper reasons and unearths the true losses that lie inside that nostalgia.

What cosmopolitan critics have gotten wrong about nostalgia since this populism began is the assumption that it is rooted in racism. They firmly believed then, as they do now, that “Make America Great Again” is code for something nefarious.

Yes, some who were rallied by the MAGA promise were motivated by prejudice and vice—every political movement has its bad travelers. But ask President Trump’s earliest supporters and most of them would share a vision of making America great again by rooting it in a wholesome, inclusive vision of the American dream, a dream that was dead or dying for voters in blue-collar communities.

What Carney gets right is that our betters ignored the root of America’s angst. Some focused on purely economic decline, but the people living it knew it was cultural collapse. Carney’s book digs deeply into that collapse and outlines the decline of America’s blue-collar communities, religious institutions and civic institutions that is fraying their bond to one another.

Nostalgia is a big part of America’s commerce. It plays a role in fashion and furniture. There is a reason we search for vintage clothing—many spend hours at flea markets or antique stores—and why top-line courtiers look backward for retro designs.

It seems that half of eBay’s products are for people looking for something that embodies a time that was.

And sometimes collective nostalgia has power. Here in this northwest Ohio town, 65 miles southwest of Toledo, the Spangler Candy Co., a fairly joyful candy company to visit and home to Dum Dum lollipops, has bought Necco Wafers and Sweethearts and will begin producing them sometime this year.

Read more here.