The Decadent Society

Written by Ross Douthat

Narrated by Ross Douthat

From the New York Times columnist and bestselling author of Bad Religion, a powerful portrait of how our wealthy, successful society has passed into an age of gridlock, stalemate, public failure and private despair.

The era of the coronavirus has tested America, and our leaders and institutions have conspicuously failed. That failure shouldn’t be surprising: Beneath social-media frenzy and reality-television politics, our era’s deep truths are elite incompetence, cultural exhaustion, and the flight from reality into fantasy. Casting a cold eye on these trends, The Decadent Society explains what happens when a powerful society ceases advancing—how the combination of wealth and technological proficiency with economic stagnation, political stalemate, and demographic decline creates a unique civilizational crisis.

Ranging from the futility of our ideological debates to the repetitions of our pop culture, from the decline of sex and childbearing to the escapism of drug use, Ross Douthat argues that our age is defined by disappointment—by the feeling that all the frontiers are closed, that the paths forward lead only to the grave. Correcting both optimism and despair, Douthat provides an enlightening explanation of how we got here, how long our frustrations might last, and how, in renaissance or catastrophe, our decadence might ultimately end.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
• Release date: Feb 25, 2020
• ISBN: 9781797103174

Ross Douthat

Ross Douthat is a columnist for the New York Times op-ed page. He is the author of To Change the Church, Bad Religion, and Privilege, and coauthor of Grand New Party. Before joining the New York Times, he was a senior editor for the Atlantic. He is the film critic for National Review, and he cohosts the New York Times’s weekly op-ed podcast, The Argument. He lives in New Haven with his wife and four children.

Reviews for The Decadent Society

[Andrew Wells · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Smart analysis that goes beyond all the cliches. You have heard that China will soon dominate the world? Not likely, says Douthat. AI and technological progress will change everything? It doesn't look that way. Capitalism saving the world or ending it? No. Instead we are likely to remain stagnant, stable, and stuck, endlessly repeating our recent debates, getting physically safer and spiritually sicker until a new Renaissance, perhaps originating in Africa, Israel, or Utah.

[mike starkey · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

This is a master work of sophistry. Dothat is one of the court approved intellectuals. He is to quote Ludwig von Mises, "a high priest of state idolatry." What the left does best as George Orwell proved is the use of words to mean the opposite of what they mean. Dothat is a pHD. A Harvard man. He is a golden boy of NYTx. Therefore it is axiomatic that Dothat destroys capitalism. Capitalism is worn out he claims. Guess what? George Orwell wrote the same thing back in the '40's. Go ahead and look it up. I'll wait. But George and Dothat are not the only ones. There are many who over the last hundred plus years that have wrote the post mortem on capitalism. In fact. When Capitalism really took off.
Back around 1790. You know it as the industrial revolution. Get it yet? No grade school text. No leftist or rino worth his sociopathic skills would say 'capitalist' revolution. Why you would think that capitalism had NOTHING to do with the industrial revolution. Though the chosen historians will write about two industrial revolutions. Never will they relate the IR with what caused it. Capitalism.
Dothat has such resentment and contempt for capitalism. You can smell his fetid words of envy. He tries to hide them. He discredits capitalism as worn out. When of course it is the opposite.
What is wearing out family and life in America is NOT capitalism. It is the government. The government destroys the family. Government steals your wealth.
The federal government is your enemy. NOT capitalism. Federal government prevents capital formation. When the gov.inflates and taxes the wealth production then the economy cannot grow. When government destroys capitalism industry by industry. That is not capitalism.

Dothat is a phony. Dothat has a job. His job along with dozens of other leftists writers is to discredit the only system that can make your life better. And that is capitalism.
The question is why does the NYTx and the intellectual Ivy league court approved big gov. loving intellectuals hate you. Because really down to the atom known as the individual that is who the NYTx and the university crime family of bureaurats known as pHDs along with the fed bureaucrats, the Pentagonians, the state crats hate.

Most of the chosen intellectuals have day time jobs as university professors. They do NOT get paid from the profits they create in a free market. They don't make any profits. They instead steal the profits of productive individuals.

That's who the Dothat and NYTx lovers hate. You. The leftists like Dothat are men of words. There job is to re sell you on anti capitalism. From the day the industrial revolution took off there were a hoard of hateful anti capitalists that wanted it destroyed. Capitalism took away the power of the ruling class. Capitalism made the individual king. The individual voted with dollars for what he wanted. But men like Dothat don't want men making their own decisions. The NYTx doesn't trust that individuals can make their own decisions. Humans are too stupid. Too greedy. Only IVY league elite chosen by the administrative class in DC and media know what is best for you.
So get use to it. The war on capitalism is forever. And by supporting NYTx and Douthat's hatred of capitalism Americans lose their God given property rights. That is to say their freedom..