The Horseshoe of Doom: Populists Left and Right Say America Is Failing. The Facts Don't.

Spend five minutes listening to the American left's most theatrical tribunes—Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.), or Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–N.Y.)—and you'll probably hear tales of a country on the verge of collapse, crushed by a rigged system that can be fixed only through a radical redesign of government. Then spend five minutes with the New Right—including Vice President J.D. Vance, Sen. Josh Hawley (R–Mo.), and any number of nostalgists yearning to restore an idealized 1950s America—and you'll hear much the same.

The American experiment is failing, they say. The economy is broken. Our society is in decay. Only sweeping power exercised by government can save us. For two camps that claim to despise one another, their worldviews are actually quite aligne