You may have noticed I used that phrase recently, putting it in quotation marks. I didn’t make it up; it was coined by the American journalist Neal Gabler (1950), known for his illumination of the Hollywood myth and some of its icons. I read his book, Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American imagination (2006) and find it locked in my mind with an earlier novel, the 1996 Governor General’s Award winner, The Englishman’s Boy, by the Canadian novelist, Guy Vanderhaeghe (1951). You’ll see why if you read them both—excellent reading BTW.

Anyway, Gabler came up in one of my clippings—a long NYT think piece from August, 2011 with big coverage, mourning the fact that “we are drowning in information, with no time or desire to process it”. Ideas, Gabler says in this article titled The Elusive Big Idea, are not what they used to be. Ten years later we live more than ever in a post-idea world. Maybe that explains the fiascos that recent American political debates have become. No one knows how to debate an idea because there are no ideas to debate, only issues, nothing that can’t be instantly monetized (Gabler’s verb) and hardly worth thinking about.