Where people don't have attention deficit disorder is over feelings.

Feelings require no attention. They're there. They sit there in your soul.

So if what you're feeling is anxiety over inflation, you're not going to get distracted from that.

What solves that problem is the feeling going away and the feeling goes away when the macro problem

is getting resolved. In a memorable observation, Carl Marx said that history repeats itself. The first time, he said is tragedy. The second time as farce. Well the

1970s were indeed a tragedy. Inflation, rising crime in crumbling cities,

American humiliation abroad from the Iranian

hostage crisis and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to Moscow's geopolitical

advances right in our backyard in Latin America could go on.

But here we are again in the 20-20s, with inflation surging to a four-decade high, a new crime

wave and new decay in our cities, American humiliation in Afghanistan just last summer,

and the ongoing Iran deal negotiations, what could be further humiliation, and of course a new war launched by Russia. This is certainly not

farce at least as Marx would have us think as our friend Neil Ferguson said sometimes

you just get two tragedies in succession.

Are we living through another version of the 1970s right now?

What can we learn from that era?

It's a topic I've been kicking around with John Pothoritz a returned guest to this

podcast. John is a writer, public intellectual, and culture critic. He's

editor-in-chief of Commentary magazine and host of Commentary's critically acclaimed daily podcast.

I highly recommend it.

He's a columnist for the New York Post and he's the author of several books, including

one of my favorite political books,

...