Karl Marx wrote: “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.”

It’s not hard to think of recent American examples: The two stupid and mindlessly destructive wars on Iraq, which themselves repeated many of the false assumptions of the Vietnam War, come to mind. The endless parade of politicians who think they will not be caught out when they lie and cheat. (From John Edwards to George Santos, each one thinks he is different.) Trumpery is a repeat of the “Know Nothing” party, the nativists of the 1850s.

And yet in our time we are witnessing new follies, essentially unprecedented.

Presidents have been dreadful before, and some have been impeached. Andrew Johnson, Warren Harding, and Richard Nixon were of a type. Except that Nixon, like Bill Clinton, was a smart rogue.

But former President Donald Trump took tawdriness and avariciousness to a whole new level — not just malfeasance but a kind of madness. Never, before Mr. Trump, had a president attempted to overthrow the republic he was sworn to protect.

So too, I think the speakership election that ultimately, finally, resulted in the election of Republican Kevin McCarthy of California was something new, different, and disturbing.

The election of a speaker has been contested and controversial before. It has gone too many ballots before. But never before with no real opposition. With no issue at stake. To no purpose whatsoever.

Someone said the 15 ballots and many concessions — to the far right — were merely to humiliate Mr. McCarthy.

But, if so, why? What was his sin? He is a loyal Republican and a loyal Trumper.

But, and this is the real gist of it, he just isn’t Trumpy enough. He isn’t pure enough.

He’s not really a barn burner. He’s still a bit of a politician.

What is the faith to which Mr. McCarthy was insufficiently loyal? Trumpian nihilism; populist nihilism.

We have had many forms of populism in this country through the years. But never before one that attempts to prove its compassion for the working man by tearing down all that protects him.

That is all that the speaker election was about, and sadly, all that Mr. McCarthy has now obliged himself to be about: to obstruct, to sabotage, and to destroy.

There is no positive agenda; no proper political agenda at all.

President Ronald Reagan had an agenda. Its economics were not good for the country and badly hurt the working class. But Reagan practiced his form of politics.

So did Newt Gingrich.

Mr. Gingrich is a flim-flam man in my view. But he won the House with a program. The Contract with America, in 1994, made certain promises and more or less followed through on them.

Even the Tea Party had an agenda. It was Reaganism and Gingrichism on steroids, with lots of anger and false nostalgia mixed in.

But “give us back our country,” phony or reactionary as it may sometimes be, is different from “tear it all down.”

The radicals in Mr. McCarthy’s caucus are on a continuum with the Jan. 6 rioters and insurrectionists.

Not all of the former were also the latter, but the instinct is common to all, including, now, some members of Congress: Obstruct, sabotage, and destroy.

Populist nihilists have little precedent in my knowledge or memory of American history, except for some of the student left and radicals of the 1960s: We can’t fix a system this corrupt so rip it down. This is what we will do for you, forgotten, lost Americans.

The sheer arrogance, ignorance, and vapidity of the populist right today matches that of the left then. There is no philosophy, no program, no legislative agenda, no plan for progress, no willingness to converse or to compromise. Just tear down.

The only good news I can think of is that Mr. McCarthy is now uniquely qualified to, one day, take on the extremists in his caucus.

But, make no mistake, this is the triumph of nihilism; of a politics that is not about anything.

Reaganism and Gingrichism were regressive forms of politics.

This is the end of politics.

There is another force that has corroded our politics. And that is the banality, ugliness, and moral rootlessness of our culture.

I thought of this, oddly perhaps, after the death of Barbara Walters.

I grant that she was a trail blazer and a person of great tenacity and will.

But this is precisely why I was left thinking, “She could have done so much more.”

Ms. Walters was an often brilliant and almost always fearless interviewer. And she did interview presidents and dictators.

But I wish she could have done more of that and less of her celebrity and “how-do-you-feel” interviews, in which she was obliged to probe the half-baked views of stars on matters beyond their ken. She could have been Edward R. Murrow. Instead, Murrow, in his last years, became a kind of Barbra Walters, doing celebrity interviews.

It’s a testament to the steady decline of journalism over the last 50 to 60 years, matching the decline of politics and ending with the triumph of “social” media.

Social media is the name we now give to what used to be called gossip and prejudice.

At a time when newspapers are perishing by the day, one looks at Ms. Walters and her generation of news broadcasters and thinks: Even if pap is what we want and expect, you could have given us something better.

At least The View is often a discussion of things that matter to Americans. So good on Ms. Walters for that.

Finally, good on Ralph Nader, who at 88 is still in there pitching and has started a newspaper.

It is called The Capitol Hill Citizen, and its September issue is full of stories that are actually substantive: corporate power and the ways it works in D.C.; legislators who don’t legislate; our addiction to our electronic devices; wokism; our government’s mismanagement of NATO; unsafe highways.

It’s a print product. And its motto is: “Democracy dies in broad daylight.”

Keith C. Burris is the former editor, vice president, and editorial director of Block Newspapers. Contact him at: burriscolumn@gmail.com.

First Published January 15, 2023, 5:00 a.m.