Establishment thinking in the Machine Age

In recent weeks, The Free Press, Substack exemplar, announced that Niall Ferguson had been added to its stable of writers. Niall is a journalist and historian whose work is always interesting and provocative.

His first piece for Free Press did not disappoint. Niall’s central premise was that the United States was beginning to resemble late-stage Soviet Russia as an empire in decline. The main thrust of his argument focused on the drop in life expectancy that the United States has been experiencing for the last 5 years.

It is difficult to overstate the magnitude of this development. It is a serious, serious crisis. We have never experienced anything like this in our nations’ history. Life expectancy has increased rather steadily since 1860 with a few dips (i.e., the Civil War and the Spanish Flu).

Reductions in life expectancy are largely concentrated among working class Americans who have been experiencing steady declines since at least 1998. The deaths are primarily explained by a spike in “Deaths of Despair,” including drug overdoses, alcoholism, and suicide. The only similar decline in a modern industrialized country occurred in the Soviet Union before its collapse, which is why Ferguson makes this comparison.

His essay sparked a small storm on Twitter/X. I didn't see the storm myself, as I don't have Twitter/X;

Brandon Daily

manages that aspect of the Savage Collective's online presence. One particularly heated exchange occurred between Ferguson and Jonah Goldberg, an establishment conservative journalist formerly of the National Review. To foster a more constructive conversation, Free Press invited them both onto their Honestly podcast. I finally had a chance to listen to their exchange during my morning run today.

I am not going to discuss the substance of the argument, whether the USA is becoming the Soviet Union or not. That part was not so interesting to me.  What did interest me was how Goldberg constructed (or not) his arguments. It was reminiscent of so many conversations I have had with my university colleagues. I have found that there is a mode of thinking that makes it nearly impossible for standard establishment thinkers, both left and right, to understand and contend with what is truly going on in the world, especially the discontent that is emerging among normie working-class Americans. The conversation illustrated two particular establishment thought patterns that I hear so frequently.

First, Goldberg’s biggest critique of Ferguson’s argument was that Soviet Russia and contemporary United States are simply diametrically opposed regarding their commitment to freedom. Goldberg contended that Soviet Russia was one of the most oppressive regimes in history, while contemporary United States is remarkably free. To Goldberg, Ferguson’s comparison simply does not hold up.

What I found remarkable was how Goldberg conceptualized “freedom.” To illustrate the great freedoms of contemporary America, he used the familiar argument, “Look, we are having this conversation right now. This would never have happened in Soviet Russia.” He appealed to free speech culture as proof of systemic freedom. Many, especially establishment thinkers, seem to understand freedom primarily in procedural terms. For good measure, they would add income considerations, equating freedom with our ability to buy the "good things in life." Essentially, if the state leaves us alone and we have enough money, we are free.

This is a narrow understanding of freedom. True freedom is not just the absence of state coercion and poverty; it involves having the agency necessary to orient our lives toward what is truly good. Namely, that we are capable of loving and pursuing the right things.  The biggest threat to freedom in a Machine Age is that so much of what determines our motivations and capacities lies outside of ourselves and our communities.  

Consider the daily threats to our agency posed by The Machine, especially for those of us just trying to get by. We are bombarded by hours of advertising that create "needs" we never knew existed. These needs may not serve basic human goods but certainly benefit someone in a distant glass and steel tower. We acquire more machines and devices to meet these needs, yet we can't repair them ourselves. When they inevitably break, they must be discarded or fixed by an expert at exorbitant rates. Managing this system of devices and machines consumes more and more of our precious time.

To finance these needs, we need more credit, requiring us to work outside our homes to pay off this debt. These jobs are increasingly abstract, serving little purpose other than perpetuating the system. Day-to-day tasks are controlled by surveillance and the constant threat of automation making us redundant. To distract us, the system provides cheap drugs, consumer goods, and entertainment.¹

Sure, this sort of unfreedom is not what was being experienced in Soviet Russia, but it is unfreedom, nonetheless. How can someone not feel trapped? How can this intense loss of agency not lead to ennui, despair, and distrust? Establishment figures are so focused on procedural and economic "freedom" that they often miss the deepest threats to true freedom.

Second, I was surprised with the extent to which Goldberg was unwilling to speak of the reductions in life expectancy in metaphysical or spiritual terms. This reminded me of a research presentation I attended several years ago. The room was filled mostly with epidemiologists, biostatisticians, economists, and clinicians. I asked what I thought was a straightforward question about the root causes of "deaths of despair." To my surprise, many in the room dismissed the idea of "despair" as a source of the opioid crisis, framing it merely as a medical issue centered on addiction. They were largely incapable of accessing the metaphysical or spiritual roots of the crisis. It was not that this sort of existential explanation was considered and rejected—it was simply not a discourse in which they could participate. It was far outside their materialistic and technocratic thought world.

This inability to engage in a spiritual, metaphysical, or mythic thought world poses several challenges for the experts tasked with solving the world’s most complex problems. Ultimately, they can neither explain nor inspire.

They struggle to explain what is happening in ways that go beyond materiality. Every problem is seen as discrete and solvable through some technological fix. But if the true problem is deeper and more pervasive, it can never be solved because we cannot see or understand it. This is where

Jonathan Rowson

work has been so compelling. He argues that we are in the midst of a metacrisis that underlies all of our immediate, discrete crises. Primarily, we lack a sense of meaning or narrative to help us understand what is happening and how we might address the mess we have made.

It was remarkable to me that Ferguson continually pressed Goldberg to explain the Deaths of Despair crisis, saying something like, “You don’t like my empire-in-decline narrative. Then what is it?” Goldberg had no real answers. At that moment, what struck me most was how interesting Ferguson was and how boring Goldberg was. I realized long ago that I strongly prefer thinkers who are thrilling and sometimes wrong over those who are bland and often right. I suspect most people are this way. We long for an explanation that connects with their deep sense of alienation and unease living in the Machine Age. Many of our leaders simply cannot provide a coherent vision of what ails us or inspire us toward a better future.

Ultimately, it seems to me that establishment voices lack the conceptual resources necessary to guide us. That has been proven to me time and again. Goldberg just reiterated what I had long known.

1. As an aside, in the next few weeks, Brandon and I will be writing a review of an excellent little book called Henry and the Great Society. Published in the late 1960s’, this parable clearly articulates the assaults to freedom in a Machine Age. More to come on that.