Looks like nostalgia is the buzzword of the day.
Nostalgia works as a kind of comfort food for the soul. People embrace a time, even if they never experienced it, and develop a yearning for what it involves: objects, music, habits, attitudes, and world view.
Nostalgia can be a powerful, cohesive force because it makes us appreciate things and times we treasured and were lost. And at the same time, it helps us deal with the complexities of today because it lets us compare and understand differences in time and place.
This is not the nostalgia behind the political force called MAGA. Like their leader, they claim ownership of a past and time in which they were important, and whose remembrance makes them feel all warm and fuzzy inside. But no, this isn't nostalgia because, instead of helping them face the present and its challenges, their nostalgia protects them from the tests of today. Climate change, technological revolutions, social transformations, economic complexities seem too complicated for them. Their nostalgia helps them hide their heads in the sand and deny the existence of these problems.
If that's all these folks can do about our pressing problems, their nostalgia will be our tragedy. We can enjoy nostalgia, but we cannot let it blind us to the point of driving us off the proverbial cliff.
I am Francisco Solares-Larrave and this is my perspective.
