The Professional Precariat Needs Populism Too

It’s a November morning in New Hampshire. Pat Buchanan is standing among the men and women of a footwear factory, listening to the assembly-line cobblers about the threats posed by cheap imported shoes to not only their jobs but their communities and their country.

It’s February afternoon in Iowa. Buchanan is in standing shin deep in the snow, learning from farmers how factory hog farming is destroying the first rung of the ladder of the agricultural economy.

It’s an early winter evening in Wheeling. The guys at the pub are trying to figure out what they will do when the smelter shuts down, never to be re-opened.

How could we lose? Surely America will see what’s coming? Surely conservatives and the Republican Party will embrace the cause of these Americans whose efforts defeated first fascism and then communism, only to be told now that the country they were defending is inevitably declining and some New World Order must take it place.

Then you think: maybe the bells are broken. Over and over again, you pull the damn rope and hardly anyone seems to hear. The sky just grows darker, the monster lurches forward, the ravens squawk into the dusk.

It’s June in New York City. Nineteen years have passed. There’s a real estate developer coming down the escalator. He pulls the bell. It rings. You had thought maybe it just couldn’t ring anymore. But now you hear it again—and so do millions of Americans. The bells are ringing. You once again put on your coat, call up your friends. We can Make American Great Again.

The Bells Are Ringing for Me and My Gal

The bells are ringing in New York City again. They are chiming because of the election of Zohran Mamdani. The election of Zohran Mamdani should be a wake-up call for the American right.

We have spent years talking about the forgotten work