By David Bittinger

September 26^th ,2025

Did you discover something deep and important during your high school years that remained meaningful to you over many years (something other than an attractive classmate)? I might be the only Glenbard West graduate ever who would answer that question “Yes, the 19th century Russian writer Ivan Turgenev.”

Maybe I should have prefaced that paragraph with “Nerd Alert.”

During a trying American decade — multiple assassinations, a tragic war, tedious electric guitar riffs — the profound Turgenev novels portrayed a remote world that resonated with a suburban Chicago bookworm. Somehow the educated young gentry of feudal Russia had a vaguely 1960s Glen Ellyn feel: idealists and hotheads challenging the adult establishment and struggling with meaning-of-life issues.

The somber 19th century Russian idiom of a “superfluous man” became widely popularized by the title of Turgenev’s early novel, The Diary of a Superfluous Man. In Turgenev’s most influential novel, Fathers and Sons, the main character Bazarov, a brilliant medical student, diagnoses his world through a scientific lens that challenges most everything, including even his own emotions. A character of fiction with real versions in his generation, Bazarov was seen by some critics as a problematic but searching radical, by others as an ominous portrait of “nihilism,” usually defined as rejection of life’s meaning or purpose. A century later philosopher Ronald Nash defined nihilism more harshly: “. . . a condition in which all ultimate values lose their value.”

Depicting rebellious searching in educated young Russians and less-extroverted searching in the older generation, Fathers and Sons suggested that one generation might not be as radically different from the previous one as it believed itself to be. (This struck a chord for me during the 1960s’ hyped “generation gap.”) Turgenev’s portrait of 19th century nihilism was artfully nuanced and compelling, showing a struggling society moving toward an uncertain destination.

Lately I’ve been thinking about Turgenev-portrayed nihilism because a more desolate nihilism, extreme in its abandonment of principle, has emerged recently. It involves close to half of America’s voters and regards itself as progressive yet pushes in the direction opposite social and civic progress.

The base of this void of principle is the “Democratic” Party, and maybe we detractors are petty in our preference to pronounce just three rather than all four syllables of its name. The official name has come to seem inappropriate in this century as Democrat power brokers have made their party about as democratic as a puppet show.

What do people still voting for that party actually believe in now? What?? Do they have any coherent policies, even a bumper sticker that’s not laughable?

Sure, Republicans have their own problems with core beliefs. Their big old saw of limited government and debt avoidance shrinks to a teeny-tiny saw whenever, as Elon Musk sorely discovered, Democrats shriek “People will die!”

Still, some Republicans outside Maine and Alaska try to hold on to old-school Republican relics like respecting the constitution, enforcing law on immigration and racial discrimination, jailing serial criminals, and . . . let’s see . . . keeping steel guitars in country music?

But every favorite Democrat doctrine has turned into a dodo bird promoted by dodo birds in suits. Consider these beauties.

“We Democrats care about the middle class. We’re for the working people.”

When Democrats last sang that song with any vestige of credibility, its arrangement might have been disco, if not big band. Ask middle class people still trying to survive in New York City, Chicago, or the Pacific Coast’s most progressive re-creations of Sodom and Gomorrah. Taxing, regulation, and public pension malignancy have caused much of the cities’ able middle class to flee. Most of those remaining stay off the streets after sunset. Democrats have fixed their plutocratic sights on prosperous elites in gated enclaves and the government-dependent on street encampments.

The middle class? Let them eat caring.

“Who defends women’s rights? The party of sharing and caring and feeling and healing.”

OK, Democrats productively waved the banner of nationalized abortion rights for 50 years. Then the Supreme Court recognized in 2023 that the Court’s 1973 decision making abortion a national right had been a grand invention, nothing even considered in 1787 by the constitution’s authors. So, abortions went down in 2024, right?

Wrong, abortions increased. The issue was only properly returned to the states, and abortion was not then nor ever would be outlawed nationally. Meanwhile Democrats were busy extending “rights” to creative genders, defending big creepy guys who wanted to stroll girls’ locker rooms and score easy sports victories against girls.

And a U.S. District Court Judge, a woman of obviously limited aptitude nominated to the Supreme Court by a Democrat president with obviously limited aptitude, actually testified that she could not define what a woman is.

Ahhh, The Handmaid’s Tale For Dummies.

“Crime is hurting people in our inner cities, and police are making things worse. Democrats want to heal this hurt.”

They believe social workers are better at dealing with violence than police, sanctuary cities are better arbiters of citizenship than immigration enforcement, and bail “reform” provides more justice than harsh cash bail. Emphasizing compassion, forgiveness, and criminal nicety lectures by The New York Times, the Democrats’ crime reduction program is all heart. And with piles of campaign contributions made by currency-manipulating billionaire George Soros, the Dems’ big-city prosecutors prioritize compassion for accused criminals, including those previously convicted.

So, you get mugged by some thug who went through the Soros Turnstile a couple days ago? Too bad. Talk to your Democrat prosecutor.

“Justice for Americans demands justice for the entire world. And that’s why we Democrats keep demanding comprehensive immigration reform.”

You’ve heard Democrats repeat that “comprehensive immigration reform” line countless times without ever explaining what it means. Here’s what it means. It has the same meaning as Democrats’ calls for comprehensive education reform and comprehensive tax reform, maybe next moving on to comprehensive electric car charging station reform and comprehensive California high-speed rail reform.

Look forward to a Democrat proposal for comprehensive reform reform, loosely based on President Biden’s statements in his 2024 presidential debate. (Translations into comprehensible speech available from laid-off Ivy League faculty.)

“Democrats just want rich people and corporations to pay their fair share.”

That “fair share” piety is even more convenient than comprehensive immigration reform because it’s easier to fit on a bumper sticker. It also vaults over the threshold of taxation preference traditionally chanted in the cheerful old doggerel “Don’t tax you, don’t tax me / Tax that guy behind the tree.”

Few people inclined to vote for Democrats are aware that 31% of Americans pay no income taxes at all and the top 5% of earners collectively pay about $1.3 trillion in income taxes annually, or about 61% of the national total.

As to corporations, those same voters unaware that U.S. taxes are already steeply “progressive” are also unaware of how corporations survive and what happens when profits (depended on by investors, most of whom are not wealthy) are gobbled up by taxes.

Of course, it’s possible to use taxation and government policy to effectively eradicate corporations and similarly bring down all those fat cat bourgeoisie. In fact, such policies were enforced in one large country (and its satellites) from 1917 to 1991. Didn’t turn out well for “the people,” but the policy makers usually had nice dachas in Sochi.

“The United States is a wealthy nation. We can surely afford to (etc. etc. etc.)”

This one requires translation from virtue proclamation into reality.

Here’s what Democrats are really saying: American taxpayers must take responsibility for a needy planet. They should pay for the U.S. to serve as Soup Kitchen To The World, also Provider Of Free Heath Care, Education, and Housing To The World. Admittedly, these services require significant “investment.” (Dems’ favorite euphemism: investment.)

Try to remember that this “wealthy nation” is actually $37 trillion in debt and racing toward $38 trillion. Or just ignore that little accounting matter, as America’s Uniparty keeps doing.

Democrats’ rhetorical magic here is conflating legal immigration and illegal immigration. And it keeps moving the emphasis away from legal immigration, which in the past brought into America too many people with valuable work skills, insufficient need of government support, and an inclination to vote for the wrong party.

“Start your tape right now because I’m about to tell you the truth. And ‘f’ you if you can’t handle the truth. This version of Biden, intellectually, analytically, is the best Biden ever.” Joe Scarborough on “Morning Joe,” 3/5/2024

According to Democrat-through-marriage Scarborough, that was the truth in 2024 about Biden’s aptitude. Yes, this was the same Biden who as president often seemed to be ambling around after a butterfly nobody else could see, even conversing with it. If the nihilism portrayed in Turgenev’s work could be made absolute, more devoid of reasoning, more of a telegenic illness — Joe could be its spokesman.

Is the unprincipled blathering of Democrats the new nihilism? Seems reasonable to wonder whether they still believe in anything at all, that is, anything practical and coherent, anything beyond empty slogans and false promises.

The nihilistic void that was an intriguing element in Turgenev’s novels seems revived Frankenstein-style by 21st century Democrats. They’re even able to claim that an impaired president is just fine and to nominate closet-communist mayoral candidates to run their failing cities.

Their core belief is a pose, a fiction, though not rewarding like Turgenev’s fiction. And it’s far more dangerous than the Bazarov character, described by another character as having “The temerity to believe in nothing.”

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Long ago Bittinger moved from Chicago to a cheese-based land with Democrats not quite as nefarious as Illinois’. He misses proximity to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the occasional good White Sox game, but enjoys writing for JKN’s savvy subscribers and re-reading “A Confederacy of Dunces.”