Tom Nichols: A ‘Poisonous Nostalgia’ Keeps Us Looking Back For A Better Year

In his new book 'Our Own Worst Enemy,' national security expert and writer Tom Nichols writes about how '…the threat to democracy now in America and elsewhere comes from the working and middle classes.' Nichols joins Morning Joe to discuss.

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Tom Nichols: A 'Poisonous Nostalgia' Keeps Us Looking Back For A Better Year

59 comments

  1. Lincoln warned us:
    On Jan. 27, 1838, Lincoln spoke before the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois, about “the perpetuation of our political institutions.” During that address, he said: “At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”

  2. It is an insult to those who have suffered true oppression to call wearing a mask, an expectation that you do not use sexist and racist terminology at work, or someone else’s demand for simple equality “oppression.”

    1. @Mác Đam How could you possibly arrive at these conclusions from watching this clip? Are you commenting about an entirely different book? Perhaps a different YouTube clip?

    2. @Mác Đam I see you are using the race card there. Exactly the troll mentality used to cause problems. Once again you have denigrated yourself by doing so and have shown your true colors.

      You are actually being the actual racist here by doing so, because racism does go both ways.

      I stand by my observation of you, not only from this conversation but from previous conversation I seen you have on other channels .

    3. @Mác Đam you mean the trump supporter believing in MAGA
      Do you try to be this disconnected from reality or is it a family trait

    4. @Mác Đam you mean the autocratic state of COWARDS with a perpetual “president ” because they have programmed their country so throughly they have to steal ideas from other nations because of the banality of the modern Chinese culture and resident

  3. Simply put: it feels good to get angry. It feels good to hate. It’s easy, and mindless. Exactly what humans love to do the most.

    “It’s so easy to laugh
    It’s so easy to hate
    It takes guts to be gentle and kind “.
    – The Smiths

    1. trumpists would laugh at this, he’s been using hate as a marketing tool to steal elections legitimized by hus unethical and imperialist experience as a cutthroat, bankrupt, businessman.

    2. “There are some bad people on the right, theyre saving their own skins by ruining peoples lives, bad bad people on the rise…
      Young married couple in debt ever felt had?”

    3. @Peter Gianarakos Why does no-one know the difference between “to” and “too”? WTF? I learned it in the third grade! Don’t schools TEACH anymore?

    4. News outlets gain much more notice (and therefore more revenue) from alarming news than from positive uplifting stories. When women gossip, they spend most of their calories putting others down.

  4. Art always portrays the opposite of the truth to provide a contrast. So, in good times, we sing about how terrible we are & in good times we sing about how we’re gonna help each other.

  5. If you’ve always only looked at your successes and kept your blinders up to the failures you’ll be knocked out cold when reality set in.

    1. The way you develop a brain is through trial and error but those people must use cement for hair conditioner and apperantly it has seeped into their matter

  6. This is the most interesting and relevant subject. Two members of my family are very successful but are stuck in this grievance mode. I asked what is weighing on them and it comes down to culture. They both watch Fox.

    1. Fox is and has been the biggest threat to democracy. Murdoch leaves a mess wherever he broadcast or prints “news”, his propaganda played a big part in the UK leaving the EU, they fed the exact same bs about immigrants coming to take over and played on people’s fears about Muslims.

    2. That anecdote doesn’t make Tom Nichols and his book right. Tom Nichols is a creature of the American military intelligence community that backed the invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. This book is a bad faith, gaslighting, Rorschach test from a member of the American military intelligence community.

  7. “Poisonous Nostalgia” is a Churchillian concept. It is the one element that distinguishesToryism (Conservatism) from fascism.

    1. That is nonsense. Churchill was an empiricist certainly with all the prejudices that requires. But your statement just shows your own hatreds and how little you know about fascism.

    2. @Greg Sutton Churchill was an empiricist and an autocrat. One follows the other. His will was the law of the land.

    3. @Mieke Bruin He was prime minister of a democracy. Just other words that seem to mean nothing to you, like Faciism.

    4. @Tom Churchill lost the election because the war was over. All through his career, from the Boer War, the Great War, and World War Two he had shown a great talent for leadership in wartime. His stint as Chancellor of the exchequer proved that day-to-day management of affairs during peacetime was not his thing. The British public couldn’t imagine Churchill as a peacetime PM. But as soon as the Cold War started escalating in the 1950’s, he got re-elected.

  8. Until we repair democracy in America by working to de-corrupt it by reversing Citizens United, abolishing the outdated Electoral College corrupted by gerrymandering and making all public elections publicly financed, among many other things, we have no business occupying any other country under the pretext of installing democracy. Repairing our own democracy should be our #1 priority, lest the next Trump coup attempt succeed.

    1. Part of that is their leaders on the right have pushed the idea of “I got mine, screw you” as if someone not like you doing well somehow takes away from them. It’s not a win/lose zero sum game. Others success doesn’t have to mean others lose. They are going to lead to revolution, and what will they put in place of what we have now? They have no idea.

    2. You’re a big fan of bad faith arguments from the likes Tom Nichols and Joe Scarborough? Do you even know who Tom Nichols is?

    3. @YTPartyTonight nah… take a basic psych class. You’re wrong. You’re just getting called out on your bs.

  9. Always thought it was odd to obsess on breaking things that work while not wanting to fix things that are broken.

  10. That’s when the dumbing down of America started in the 70’s and I’m sick of the ignorance and arrogance.

    1. Ignorance and arrogance? That is what I find funny about you peaple because you don’t know you are funny

  11. Simple solution, GET Rid of FOX News & hold the Republican Traitors accountable for their Criminal actions 🤷‍♂️

    1. “A Court Ruled Rachel Maddow’s Viewers Know She Offers Exaggeration and Opinion, Not Facts
      “Maddow’s show is different than a typical news segment where anchors inform viewers about the daily news,” an Obama-appointed judge ruled.”

    2. Murdoch already ran off to his home country of Australia, ….with his tail between his legs. But he’s still able to debilitate and cleave the USA from there.

    3. @Harvey Manfredsenjenson OANN ordered to pay $240,000 to Rachel Maddow for falsely claiming she promoted false news.

  12. This is wake up for these who’s really running the U.S. you give them everything and they (white America) still turned on you! # You’ll be ok😪

  13. We are experiencing the cumulative narcissistic Nostalgia and also the real life blow back due to both radical economic inequality and also the impacts of the permanent political Warfare, when it all cost attitude of the hard-right since Newt Gingrich.

  14. I don’t understand why Joe has guests. He monopolizes every interview. I am so tired of his questions using up guests’s time. The show shouldn’t be about him.

  15. I swear he is so right as a former sailor who has traveled the world we have a ton of spoiled brats here. An I was one too until I saw how ppl in the middle east an Africa live I was so excited about coming back home.

    1. Bad faith arguments from friends and members of the American military intelligence community? I’m shocked.

    2. Yea, but consumers are incessantly bombarded with ads/notices of things they’re told they need to buy. Only a few of us can resist or rise above crass consumerism. The vast majority are awash in it. I resided in Thailand for 21 yrs. I would often go into Myanmar, an hour’s drive away. Thais had embraced US-Style consumerism and were getting fat and unhappy. Burmese didn’t have any malls, and still frolicked each evening with neighbors on sidewalks in front of their houses. Burmese were more content, real and joyful overall.

    1. This is when I have been thinking about things like the internet. Did this really cause more good than bad? I truly think it has done more bad.

    2. @Danielle131
      It has revealed many people’s true selves, the thin cloak of civility has been removed from them.

  16. Maybe Bruce Springsteen has a point. In some rural areas, your best job is at the Home Depot while you try to pick up an evening job at the local diner to make ends meet.

    1. If that is all you have, move to a place that has more jobs. That’s what I did back in the 1980’s.

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