In 2018, Angela Nagle, a public intellectual who had released the book ‘Kill All Normies’, and once had been a fixture of left-commentary, was cancelled. She was labelled a cryptofascist, a Trojan Horse out to poison the purity of a supposedly ascendant left, and the usual formulaic denouncement of a political faction ruled by a puritanical mob. The reason for her cancellation? She made a left-wing case against open borders, pointing out, rightly, that mass immigration undercuts workers’ wages, the social stability of working class neighborhoods, and, is in fact, a libertarian proposal to unleash capital over state and local community sovereignty. She also had the gall to appear on Tucker Carlson (the man who might have helped stop a war with Iran– quelle horreur!) to not only promote this argument, but also, later, to mock the most pathetic display of political activism ever seen in the 21rst Century. Yikes sweaty, abelist. Cancelled.

Leaving beside the obvious point that no socialist or even social democrat government that ever survived for more than 3 months ever abolished prisons, the police, the army, borders, or, most importantly, its own geographically rooted sense of sovereignty, Nagle’s point then was correct. Bernie Sanders, before the AOC-human resourcesification of his second campaign, spent decades making this point. It was once considered a standard talking point of unions and the hard left that open borders was a neoliberal scam. Woke NAFTA. These days, as we emerge from one dark age of histrionics and reactive moralism into what could be its inverse mirror, more and more people are coming around to Nagle’s point. Canada, under the Trudeau government, has proven her tragically correct. The current fight on the American right over H1B visas shows how pertinent the issue is. Even the Democrats, finally, are starting to realize that a criticism of mass immigration policies is not automatically something rooted in racism and may, in fact, have many solid economic roots. Trump won every demographic except for more affluent college degree holders in the last election, with a more and more diverse group of people which includes the foreign born turning against open border policies. It can be very unpopular to be right before the tides shift. The tides always end up shifting eventually, though.

How could so much of commentary gotten so many issues so wrong for so long? I would contend a major part of the moralism-censorship complex is tied up with a specific world view, that of Current Year.

The ruminations of what would become Current Year arguably date back to the early 2010s, when a formerly esoteric and countercultural internet became more and more gentrified by the increased arrival of smartphones and ‘normies’ going online and becoming offended by things outside their previously cable news defined parameters of existence. These trends would later become hyper-intensified under Covid lockdowns and the general Great Awokening of 2020. Agoraphobic shut-ins became a part of discourse, leading to an adverse socialization that poisoned everything it touched and was hostile to nuance or even conceptualizing civil society as anything aside from some kind of cosmic battlefield of the forces of light and darkness. Revenge of the nerds, the left-evangelical edition. While far past peak now, this process still continues in many communities like a circular firing squad operating on inertia.

But the best summary of this blinkered and ahistoric world view comes from 2015. Specifically it was people noticing that all of progressive-beloved John Oliver’s arguments seemed to boil down to stating what the date was. Don’t you know it’s the Current Year? We have certain opinions in the Current Year? What are you, living in a past year?

Everything wrong with both complacent liberal centrism and activist left world views can be so perfectly summed up by this attitude. There is the assumption that history is linear, rather than cyclic. That newer ideas must be automatically better than older ones by virtue of novelty, that a great End-of-History style convergence is upon us. Fukuyama no longer as a ‘science’ but as a desperate declaration of faith. The Elect speaking in tongues before the promise of a moral universe. But, as I have gone into detail about before, there is no right side of history, nor an end to history. There is only competing interests, often moving in totally divergent directions. Gains are rarely permanent, and when one region or field gains often another loses. People gain strength by opposing trends as often as they do supporting them.

Think of the Current Year argument used in other historical contexts to see how foolish it really is. “Got brain problems, time for a lobotomy! What do you mean its dangerous? The experts agree that’s misinformation. Its the Current Year!” “In the Current Year we practice progressive hygiene via the proven science of eugenics.” “Don’t you know the South Vietnamese yearn for our protection, they are literally dying! Its a global battle out there in Current Year, not some halcyon day of isolationism!” “Globalization will lift all boats, stop stalling and pass NAFTA- its the Current Year!” “How dare you oppose our glorious Pharaoh Akhenaten’s war on the Old Gods and singular devotion to the sun, its the Current Year!”

It goes without saying that all this Current Year stuff has done in the long run is lead to unprecedented gains for the right across the developed world while a once surging left now seems to be a pathetic punchline, all while the liberal center continues its long slow entropic decline. Whose inevitable right side of history is this anyway?

I won’t dispute that the conservative tendency of waxing nostalgic for the past and trying to resuscitate dead and dying worlds is a doomed and misguided enterprise, but a blind faith in the present or future is just as reactive and prone to thought-terminating clichés. It is this dedication to presentism that poisons so much of discourse, prevents people from engaging in proper policy critique, and attacks cogent critics such as Nagle and countless others for doing the important work of daring to question whatever the fad of the day might be.

Now that we seem to be entering the twilight phase of this form of Current Year, it might be easier for more people to say this. But this too shows the danger of Current Year Thought. A new Current Year could arise at any time, probably right-coded now, waiting to corral critical thought into a herd mentality. “Its 2025! Time to make Curtis Yarvin National Thought Leader. Come on, aren’t you aware the Current Year?” “Ramaswamy says in Current Year we’re reconstituting feudalism and banning fun, time to get with the times!”

If you want a solid simple argument for why the humanities are important it is this: Every generation has an idiot cohort that thinks they are the protagonist of the human experience. This group of mid-wits is often over-represented in established commentary. They are always, without fail, proven wrong time and time again in their presentism assertions. Sometimes, their moral certainty in teleology damages greater society as a whole. It often leads to attacks on what turn out to be prescient critics of its blind spots. Even a little historical knowledge can prevent more people from falling into the destructive cult known as Current Year. Perhaps this is why academia was the first to be targeted and gravely wounded by the Prophets of the Present.