"Conservatives and liberals alike have been waiting for this moment for a third of a century"
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A third of a century is an oddly clinical way to measure political desire: long enough to sound like fate, short enough to feel like a grudge. Kinsley’s line works because it frames a supposedly polarized America as a country sharing the same kind of anticipation, just aimed at different outcomes. The trick is in “alike.” It’s a provocateur’s equalizer, implying that liberals and conservatives aren’t opposites so much as mirror-image institutions with their own long-running wish lists, waiting for history to finally cough up a decisive scene.
Kinsley, a journalist with a satirist’s ear for hypocrisy, is less interested in the “moment” itself than in the psychology of waiting. “Have been waiting” suggests politics as deferred gratification: decades of fundraising emails, think-tank white papers, and cable-news rehearsal for the day the argument becomes real. That phrasing quietly mocks the way movements narrate themselves as patient and principled when they’re often just strategically stalled, keeping supporters warm with the promise that the next election, the next court case, the next crisis will settle everything.
The context implied by “third of a century” is the post-1970s/1980s era: a long stretch when U.S. politics hardened into culture-war infrastructure, with each side building a case for a reckoning (on courts, regulation, abortion, taxation, war, impeachment, you name it). The subtext: the country’s factions don’t merely respond to events; they need them. A “moment” is also a product, and Kinsley is pointing at the bipartisan addiction to dramatic payoff.
Kinsley, a journalist with a satirist’s ear for hypocrisy, is less interested in the “moment” itself than in the psychology of waiting. “Have been waiting” suggests politics as deferred gratification: decades of fundraising emails, think-tank white papers, and cable-news rehearsal for the day the argument becomes real. That phrasing quietly mocks the way movements narrate themselves as patient and principled when they’re often just strategically stalled, keeping supporters warm with the promise that the next election, the next court case, the next crisis will settle everything.
The context implied by “third of a century” is the post-1970s/1980s era: a long stretch when U.S. politics hardened into culture-war infrastructure, with each side building a case for a reckoning (on courts, regulation, abortion, taxation, war, impeachment, you name it). The subtext: the country’s factions don’t merely respond to events; they need them. A “moment” is also a product, and Kinsley is pointing at the bipartisan addiction to dramatic payoff.
Quote Details
| Topic | Freedom |
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