Last Best Hope

1. Packer states that sexting with a staffer does more harm to a politician than profiteering in a national crisis (such as trading stocks on information while publicly saying nothing about the danger they knew was coming). Is this true? What do you think about this?

2. Packer explains that money alone doesn’t violate the American idea of equality—what offends ordinary people is being looked down on by those with unwarranted power and privilege. How could politicians and citizens do a better job of being passionate about their beliefs and values without coming across as looking down on the other side?

3. Not wearing a mask or wearing one became a badge of political identity during Covid. Did you ever consider putting a mask on or taking it off due to what it might signal to others politically? Have you ever noticed yourself adopting a stance based on being oppositional to a political party as opposed to that stance being what is most rational and within your values? (Or perhaps you can come to this realization right now.)

4. How can we change the culture of our country to be one that moves away from absolutist positions?

   • “The problem with moral clarity is how much of life and news gets lost in its glare.”

   • “Everyone has a voice, but everyone uses it to conform, and the consensus becomes more extreme as it hardens like plaque.”

   • “The masters of technology make anxious narcissists of us all.”

5. Packer talks about anti-lockdown protests and how he was too angry to hear the pain coming out of the protesters screaming mouths as their life savings were disappearing. He explains that his attitude had something to do with his good luck (his life savings doing well, comfortable but also afraid which shut down his imaginative sympathy). He says, “No wonder they resented me as much as I despised them.” Do we sometimes miss why our opposition’s resentment might be warranted? Would our country be better off if we all tried to engage in more imaginative sympathy?

6. In an ideal world, what kind of social safety net would exist in this country?

7. Packer explains that The Chicago Teachers Union posted a tweet: “The push to reopen schools is rooted in sexist, racism and misogyny.” Packer says that keeping schools closed became the “progressive” position even though it was destroying the futures of poor kids. Packer explains how Democratic governors, against all data, kept schools closed while opening restaurants and gyms (having more to fear from unions and lobbies than parents and children). He also talks about Republican governors who opposed any restrictions, including masks. Have we lost sight of what is best for people (and lost the ability to compromise) due to the way in which we have fallen into tribalism?

8. Is it possible that you regularly consume media that pulls you deeper into anger and self-justification? Or have you ever questioned if you are doing this?

9. Packer discusses how during Covid many books were coming out at the same time about racial injustice. He says that the experts taught people that racism was not a matter of individual wrong, but a system in which everyone was enmeshed regardless of conduct or intent. Packer explains that the experts revived the term “white supremacy” and applied it to liberal-minded newspapers and foundations. He goes on to discuss how elite private schools hired expensive trainers to eliminate bias and separated children into mandatory identity groups where they received anti-racist instruction. Does this sort of philosophy and approach reduce racism and reduce injustice? Was “defund the police” a good slogan that could inspire the best solutions? (see page 56)

10. Packer talks about how no one can live a happy and productive life in nonstop self-criticism. “Nations require more than facts—they need stories that convey a moral identity. The long gaze in the mirror has to end in self-respect or it will swallow us up.” Have some Democrats made the mistake of allowing Republicans to have a monopoly over patriotism? Would it be more effective and healthier for Democrats to promote their brand of patriotism rather than throwing it out entirely? (read page 100 & 175)

11. Do you generally believe in free-market economics? Why or why not?

12. Packer talks about Obama’s notorious statement about white working-class Americans who “cling to guns or religion or antipathy towards people who aren’t like them, or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment, as a way to explain their frustrations.” Packer says that the thought wasn’t mistaken, but the condescension was self-incriminating: “It showed why Democrats couldn’t fathom that people might ‘vote against their interests.’ Guns and religion were the authentic interest of millions of Americans. Trade and immigration had left some of them worse off. And if the Democratic Party wasn’t on their side—if government failed to improve their lives—why not vote for the party that at least took them seriously? …Thoughts?

13. Packer states that most of the books and columns and gossip aimed at the 1 percent come from people just a few percentage points below, implying that the high salaries of elite professional are legitimately earned, while the capital windfalls of business executives and investors are crooked. How do you determine what kind of wealth has been justly earned? Do you want to expand the estate tax?

14. Why did Occupy Wall Street flame out just as quickly as it flared up?

15. Packer talks about time he spent with white and black steelworkers in a town near Canton, Ohio. They had been locked out by the company over a contract dispute and were picketing outside the mill. They faced months without a paycheck, possibly the loss of their jobs, and they talked about the end of the middle class. The only candidates who interested them were Trump and Bernie Sanders. No one even mentioned Hilary Clinton or Jeb Bush. Do Democrats often lose sight of how Trump became so popular (seeing racism as the single cause and setting out to disprove every alternative)? (page 114)

16. What did you think of the author’s description of “Just America” and critical theory? (see pages 120-137) Packer describes how monolithic group thought, hostility to open debate, and moral coercion have come to characterize identity politics and social justice.

17. Do you see half of the country as your enemy? If so, how certain are you that this is an accurate and helpful perception? Do you try to listen and find common ground with those you generally disagree with?

18. How much of your core identity is rooted in your political ideology?

19. What did you think of Packer’s description of Americans and American culture? (pages 148-163)

    • “…the so-called black and so-called white people of the United States resemble nobody else in the world so much as they resemble each other.”

    • “During the war in Iraq, I noticed that U.S. soldiers tried to make friends with Iraqis in a way that occupying troops from other countries never did. They also turned to force much faster and harder, sometimes on a dime, in a way that Iraqis found terrifying and bewildering.”

    • “That we speak in loud voices, that we smile a lot, that we immediately use first names, that the answer to how we’re doing is always ‘Great,’ that we make friends easily and have no secrets but the intimacies are shallow and ephemeral, that we have no talent and little interest in foreign languages, that we think too much about money, that we lack a tragic sense, that we can’t see shades of gray, only black and white. They find us open, direct, arrogant, and naïve.” (what Packer says foreigners say about us)

    • “…the disregard for limits and sense of eternal possibility in new things. We untether, flit, and make ourselves as if nothing is too fixed or solid for change. We are world-class inventors, especially of ourselves. At the same time, we take pride in ordinariness and are suspicious of airs, especially intellectual ones.”

    • “Equality is the hidden American code, the unspoken feeling that everyone shares, even if it’s not articulated or fulfilled: the desire to be everyone’s equal—which is not the same thing as the desire for everyone to be equal.”

20. “We need an activism of cohesion. We need an activism that doesn’t separate Americans into like-minded factions but brings Americans together across tribal lines…self-government starts in ourselves. The most basic way Americans can acquire what Tocqueville called ‘habits of the heart’ is by killing their Twitter or Facebook accounts and spending time in the physical presence of other Americans who don’t look or talk or think like them. Study after study shows that antagonistic groups begin to lose their mutual hostility and acquire trust when they have to work together, as long as they’re engaged in a specific project, with outside help. The best idea for making America again as a single country might be to require a year of national service, in military or civilian form, repaid by scholarship, training stipend, or small-business grant.” What do you think of this idea?

    • “Just as Israelis and Palestinians, Bosnian Serbs and Muslims, Northern Irish Protestants and Catholics are brought together to build a school or perform a play and lower the murderous temperature in their countries, American from red and blue areas can come together in common endeavors. They might find out that the other is less a threat to the republic than they supposed. At least they will be in the company of actual human beings.”