Politics & Power Quote by Stanley Crouch

Crouch is throwing a punch at a culture that confuses constant self-reporting with thinking. The line is built on a stark contrast: “discussion of ideas” versus “American narcissistic obsession” with the self. He isn’t gently lamenting a trend; he’s naming it as pathology, one with a national accent. “American” does real work here, invoking a consumer society that turns identity into content and therapy-speak into public discourse. The syntax mimics the frustration: a long, rolling clause that feels like someone cutting through noise, then the curt shrug of “that’s the general thing people are talking about” - a sly jab at how even the critique can become another talking point.

As a critic, Crouch is defending a public sphere where argument and aesthetic judgment matter more than confession. The subtext is a critique of the late-20th-century drift toward memoirization of everything: politics as personal narrative, art as autobiography, debate as lived-experience one-upmanship. It’s also a warning about anti-intellectualism in friendly packaging. If the self is the main credential, then ideas become optional, and disagreement starts to look like an attack on someone’s identity.

Contextually, this fits Crouch’s broader role as a cultural gatekeeper who distrusted trend-chasing and sentimental pieties. He’s arguing for criticism as a discipline: not the performance of sincerity, but the hard, unpopular work of evaluating what’s true, what’s good, what holds up under pressure.