SHIP OF FOOLS:
— Jonah Goldberg (@JonahDispatch) August 28, 2026
Classical reference in headline:
But, to tell the truth, I’d never met any Old Leftists. I expected them to be admirable and nasty, like Lillian Hellman, or brilliant, mysterious, denying everything, like Alger Hiss, or —best of all—hard-bitten and cynical but still willing to battle oppression, like Rick in Casablanca. I did not expect them to be the pack of thirty fussing geriatrics I met at Kennedy Airport, misplacing their hand luggage, losing their way to the ladies’ room, barking at the airline personnel, and asking two hundred times which gate we’d have to be at in three and a half hours.
They were leftists all right. In between palsies of fretting, they’d tell you how wonderful the Soviet Union was: pensions were huge, housing was cheap, and they practically paid you to get medical care. Believe me, you haven’t been bored until you’ve been buttonholed by a seventy-year-old woman who holds forth all afternoon on the perfidies of American foreign policy and shows you pictures of her grandchildren. These were people who believed everything about the Soviet Union was perfect, but they were bringing their own toilet paper.
“Progressivism” — where time stands still.