I had a conversation with someone in their 80s last week, and what we kept coming back to was that the world he had spent his entire life in had changed. He wasn’t referring to technological change–obviously technology was different sixty or seventy years ago! Nor was he referring to the kind of change Colson Whitehead wrote about in The Colossus of New York: A City in Thirteen Parts, where ‘your city’, the city that existed when it was your moment, no longer exists. That’s just part of not being young anymore.

What we meant is that the existing social and political order in the U.S. that arose first after World War II and then was heavily modified in the late 1970s and 1980s is done. Needless to say, he felt adrift, and, again, not in that old person ‘I don’t understand how to operate the newfangled gadgets or what the kids are saying’ way. But the assumptions that have guided how the U.S. works have been blasted apart and it’s clear many people are disoriented by this, not just the very elderly. Which brings me to this discussion of impeachment (boldface mine):

The nice way to put [it]: it is difficult, when you’ve succeeded in a way of doing things, to change. Most Democrats, especially their leadership, have by definition wildly succeeded in the old system, pre-Trump.

When the world dramatically changes, such that a president is committing impeachable offenses in the open, you have two options.

One, keep up your old routines and try to shove the old ways of decorum back into the new world, hoping it changes back.

Two, adapt to the changes and find a new path forward.

Democrats have overwhelmingly chosen the first path. They have tried to pretend that the president’s behavior requires only more tinkering around the edges, as opposed to outright unequivocal opposition.

To be blunt: people who try to pretend this isn’t exactly the crisis it obviously is for any reason should be nowhere near the halls of power.

I’ll admit, as an older GenX person, it has been disorienting, but, unlike most Democratic politicians, I’ve never been an establishment kind of guy at heart, so it has been easier. But for politicians, most of whom don’t want to think outside the box, but want to be the box, everything they have learned about how to be successful is rapidly becoming obsolete. At a personal level, this must be terrifying for most of them–and professional Democrats are not noted for their boldness.

Strategically, the idea that, when you are in the minority, you act as if you’re just the junior member of the governing coalition–who, at some point, will get a chance to return to being the senior member–just doesn’t work when faced with incipient fascism. And yes, Democrats will have to understand that’s what Republicans are and stop acting like Republicans are friendly colleagues.

Anyway, if an 84 year-old can figure this out, our elected officials need to do so too. If not, they need to be replaced with those who do understand the new order of things.