Liberals always seem to be asking why it is that so many people of modest economic means choose to vote against their own interests for a party that wants to cut their entitlement benefits, give huge tax cuts to millionaires, do less to protect their environment, deny them access to health care, and undermine their public schools. For those of us who have explained that race-hatred, provincial ethno-religious bigotry and fantasies of revenge are more important to them, the ascendency of Donald Trump has been a vindication. We’ve been accused of cultural elitism, of playing the race card, of making “everything about race,” and it hasn’t been pleasant to take that criticism over the years. Even now, there are folks like Damon Linker who insist that we’re unrealistically oblivious to human nature and that our accusations are mostly nonsense.
But the real problem with the way [Zack] Beauchamp and so many others on the center-left talk about those on the nationalist right is that it displays outright contempt for particularistic instincts that are not and should not be considered morally and politically beyond the pale. On the contrary, a very good case can be made that these instincts are natural to human beings and even coeval with political life as such — and that it is the universalistic cosmopolitanism of humanitarian liberalism (or progressivism) that, as much as anything, has provoked the right-wing backlash in the first place.
Underlying liberal denigration of the new nationalism — the tendency of progressives to describe it as nothing but “racism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia” — is the desire to delegitimize any particularistic attachment or form of solidarity, be it national, linguistic, religious, territorial, or ethnic.
As recently as yesterday, I acknowledged that liberal cultural dominance is causing a reactionary response. It’s not that I don’t understand human nature. I’m just not inclined to give people much of a break for being primarily motivated by religious bigotry, white supremacy, and fear.
It’s clearer than ever now that the Republican orthodoxy on economics and foreign policy doesn’t matter to their base, and that their standards on social issues are flexible enough to accommodate a leader and noted family man like Donald Trump. The base does not care about free trade. They don’t care what Trump proposes, either way. As long as he’s giving the middle finger to the people who have failed them and all their traditional enemies, Trump can do no wrong.
Jennifer Rubin describes this as the literal death of the Republican Party. But she has no idea how ridiculous she sounds when she talks about being part of a post-election #NeverTrump vanguard that will decide who has and who has not irredeemably sinned against the tenets of the faith.
Any who excuse Trump’s involvement in birtherism and defend his current lies should not have a seat at the center-right political party…
…The verdict will not be pretty on the GOP voters who supported him, but going forward the goal must be to never again nominate someone who appeals to our most negative, darkest impulses…
…Anyone who refused to embrace Trump, who stood up to his lies, who refused to put party ahead of country should be at the vanguard of the future center-right party. That may include people with exceptionally different ideological views (e.g., former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson and Sen. Ted Cruz [Tex.]). But it will not include apologists or enablers of Trump. The #NeverTrump vanguard will be responsible for creating a home for those who can no longer carry the banner of a Republican Party that repudiated its ideological origins as the Party of Lincoln.
Rubin goes on to excommunicate Paul Ryan, Marco Rubio and Gov. Mike Pence for sacrificing the country to the party.
And, look, it’s not easy to get me to praise Jennifer Rubin, but I’ll give her her due here. I do appreciate that she doesn’t want to belong to a political movement or party that’s okay with David Duke-style politics. It’s just that I don’t think there are going to be a lot of people in her new center-right party.
We know now, because Trumpism proves it, that “small government” and “local control” and “free enterprise” and the rest of the GOP’s ideological playbook simply never had much appeal to their base except as signifiers for Trumpian impulses to smash outsiders and oddballs and anyone who discomforts them, even a little.
We have been here before. When Hunter S. Thompson, who had closely covered the 1972 primaries, realized that George McGovern wasn’t just going to lose but be annihilated, he lamented:
“America… just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.”
All you need to do to confirm the continuing accuracy of this statement, at least for a disturbingly large percentage of our electorate, is to look at the comments you see in reaction to every police shooting or, say, the riots in Charlotte last night. Did Trayvon Martin make George Zimmerman uncomfortable? Well, then let’s donate to the George Zimmerman defense fund! Are people getting unruly in the streets of Charlotte? Well, why not run over some of them with your cars?
Damon Linker can lecture me all he wants about how a proper “observation of human behavior and reading of human history” would disabuse me of the idea that anything is out of order here. But I’m not suggesting that no one should be concerned about illegal immigration or the preservation of the better parts of our culture in the face of changing demographics. I don’t expect everyone to be on board with a more ecumenical or pluralistic society.
But I do want to accurately describe how the Republican Party gets to 50%+1 and wins elections in this country. I want to properly explain why the GOP base so easily dispenses with Republican ideology when it suits them. I want people to know why they’ll vote for a guy they know deep down doesn’t have the temperament to be president.
And, no, it’s not all about bigotry and race-hatred and fear. It’s also about broken promises and shitty results. The Republicans told folks that they’d end illegal immigration and stop gay marriage and ban abortion and crush terrorism and liberate Iraq and create enormous economic growth. They either failed or failed to even sincerely try to do those things. And people have noticed.
So, Trumpism is partly about a distillation of what really motivated these conservatives all along, and partly a reaction to the fact that their political leaders failed to keep their promises or show results. You can ascribe a degree of rationality to this, at least to the degree that it’s reasonable to be pissed off and want to send a nasty message.
There’s nothing rational about Trump, though.
And there’s now nothing left of the GOP for Rubin and her center-right vanguard to build upon.
Tribal loyalty.
Same reason Democrats shrug at Obama’s record on drone warfare and domestic spying.
I don’t exactly shrug at drone warfare. I just find it odd that people fixate on it.
When I criticize American foreign policy, it’s on who, when, and why we choose to fight. I’m much less concerned with how we fight, and drones are an improvement on 500lb. bombs, which is what we used prior to drones.
In other words, while drones have a provocative effect and introduce some stimulating moral questions (do they make strikes too easy and attractive, are they sporting?), they are in general a way of limiting collateral damage even if they don’t eliminate it and even if targeting mistakes are still made.
Why people care more about drones than the decisions we make on who to support and who to fight? I’ll never understand that.
On domestic surveillance, I guess you’ll need to be more specific. Are you talking about clearly illegal surveillance of the type that causes people in the Justice Department to resign or threaten to resign? Or are you talking about the activities of the NSA in general and the inadequacies of our oversight and laws to protect our privacy?
Unless you can tell me what program or set of programs I am shrugging off and what should be done about them, I don’t know how to respond.
In other words, while drones have a provocative effect and introduce some stimulating moral questions (do they make strikes too easy and attractive, are they sporting?), they are in general a way of limiting collateral damage even if they don’t eliminate it and even if targeting mistakes are still made.
Tell that to the families wiped out by those “mistakes.”
Here we get into that weird space where a logical person would try to balance the tragedy of those mistakes against the tragedy prevented by the well-targeted strikes.
I’m a white American Jewish convert to Islam. I am well aware that most of the mistakes are upon innocent Muslims. I’m also aware that most acts of terror committed by those fakers who call themselves Muslims are also upon innocent Muslims. My guess is the drone strikes prevent a lot more tragedy than they cause, at least when the program is controlled by a compassionate president like Obama. With an idiot like W or a sociopath like Trump, another story.
To me, that’s the truly frightening aspect of drone strikes. But as Martin points out, it’s no different when the occupant of the Oval Office has access to other less discriminate weapons. If anything, it’s a lesser form of injustice.
Dead by a mistargeted gravity bomb dropped by a skilled bombardier is no different than dead by a guided missile sent to the wrong target by am analyst sitting in front of a TV screen in Washington DC.
It’s not sporting.
I’ll admit to a few shrugs at drones. It’s better than the alternative. And there is very very little political downside to drones. Most Americans care very little about brown people getting killed in our own cities, let alone in a far off country. Screaming ‘he’s a big bad dude’ WORKS. That is why police helicopter pilots say it preemptively, and it’s why the government says it.
We are going to drone the shit out of the world for many many years.
What the traditional not-completely-evil conservatives like Rubin don’t yet realize is that they’re not going to be excommunicating Trump, he’s going to be excommunicating them. Win or lose, he now has the full support of the national party machinery and a majority of Republican voters. I expected the “mainstream” elements to resist him, but they haven’t – it’s been shocking how even targets like McCain and Ryan have bended head, bended knee, and given in. He’s grabbed the machinery of power – look at Reibus kowtow – and once the election is over as some division can be tolerated, he’s going to use it.
There will be an attempt at resistance after the election, if Trump loses, but it will fail. (Obviously if he wins it’s all over.) The basic facts on the ground is that the Republicans have no chance without the Trump voters but even without the #NeverTrump-ers Trump has more or less the same chances as “regular” Republican would have. Such Republicans that can’t stand Trump are quitting the party or even endorsing Hillary but there’s not many voters following them and they’re not making a big difference. The rest of the Republicans can see this.
Once Trump loses he will have no more control/power in the Republican Party than McCain or Romney. Americans don’t like, won’t follow, and won’t take advice from, losers.
Yes, he has released a monster, and given it permission to rampage. He has also created a blueprint on how to really and truly appeal to the Republican base. And the media will continue to quote him, like they do McCain and Romney. But his ability to move his following will disapate.
.
But his ability to move his following will dissipate.
We’ll see if you’re right.
Yup!
Feel free to throw it in my face in a year. I won’t mind.
.
The Republican party is heading for a crackup one way or the other. The shills have discovered they’re shills. The fat cats have no interest in the interests of the shills and never will. They were able to tack together a constituency for things no one wants like tax breaks for the wealthy by creating an unholy alliance but, even if they could somehow stitch that alliance back together, it’s on a demographic downslope. The only question remaining is how long before it all falls apart. God willing, immediately after Trump and the party behind him are taken to the woodshed.
You write:
“And the media will continue to quote him, like they do McCain and Romney.”
Here is your root fallacy. They will indeed “continue to quote him,” if he loses, but it won’t be like they quote McCain and Romney.
It’ll be louder and it will be much more.
In fact…if he loses and the RatPubs manage to somehow freeze him out, I think he’ll start his own party.
Watch.
He’s party kind of guy.
For sure.
Once he’s experienced this kind of coverage and adulation, his jones for fame and power will know no bounds.
Watch.
AG
AG, we get it, Trump once attended the same party as Bill and Hillary….
Speaking of drones……
.
Lighten up.
AG
Et tu Rubus? hahaha
I’m fairly sure that curtadams is right and nalbar is wrong, but I’m having a hard time decide which of them I WANT to be right.
Trump has more GOP voters in his party than Rubin has in hers. That’s the thing – the #NeverTrump folks have power and media pulpits, but as BooMan points out, there just aren’t that many of them any more. I’m still assuming that Trump will lose – he’d better – and when he does, he and Ailes will almost certainly built the Trump Channel or whatever they call Fox News 2.0. They’ll have more power over the 2020 nominee that Fox News 1.0 has had over the previous ones, right?
They’re cutting the party into – not halves, but two (or more) parts that won’t be able to win presidential elections – and possibly, hopefully, won’t even be able to efficiently caucus together in Congress. Once SCOTUS has a safe liberal majority, there’ll be little motivation to compromise with each other, no? I mean, they can’t even get Rubin, Bush, Kristol et al in their corner with SCOTUS on the line
I see, so the euphemism of the day is “particularism.”
You know what? Fuck particularism.
to excuse racism, white (though he oddly “forgot” to mention that bit) nationalism, xenophobia, etc. on that bit of psychobabble jargon, too.
I likewise noticed how utterly pathetic it was.
Particularism:
A political theory that each political group has a right to promote its own interests and especially independence without regard to the interests of larger groups.
It is the perfect definition of Trumpism.
Um, if you look at the history of human societies, it’s dominantly tribal, meaning loyalties are to fairly small groups with common language and customs, often in fact being extended families. Societies in which disparate groups manage to share power have existed for all of a few hundred years, in some parts of the world; tribalism is still quite common. (For example, the Taliban come from the Pashtun people, who are organized along tribal lines.) The Trump movement seems like a throwback to a society in which tribal identification is more powerful than mere principles as listed in the Declaration of Independence, say.
I have to admit that my standard response – it’s the lack of full employment policies! – works much better for Europe than the US.
In Europe, before full employment policies you have the 30ies and WWII. With full employment policies you have massive migration and a ton of racism, yet political parties built on racism struggle. Take away full employment policies and the racist parties pop up again – immigration or no immigration.
In the US, the racist reaction starts before and leads to the undoing of full employment and thus stagnating median income, resentment and more racist politics. I think the difference is the South. Europe’s similar regions were in the colonies and the white colonial class either stayed there or moved back and lost its powerbase. Mostly at least, there are exceptions like North Ireland, where the colonial conflicts kept going.
Still think a return to full employment policies would undermine the support of blame-the-others politics outside the South.
Sad for Rubin that the emerging center-right party that holds the power of business, cultural institutions, and government might just be the Democratic Part after the upcoming election regardless of outcome.
The exception is if there is a progressive blowout in Congress and legislatures. Do you see that coming? Tell me how you see it happening.
So post-election, you have outside the establishment center-right consensus (1) all of Trump’s constituency, (2) all of the different identity politics folks who might be critical of business as usual, (3) whatever the Sanders coalition looks like. That could be a sizable big-tent center-left party save the white nationalism of the Trump constituency.
Which gets to the existential question of American politics. How do a country that was founded on the twin evils of settler colonialism: slavery and genocide–all very respectable until the mid-19th century, by the way–undo the engrained cultural deformities put in place to legitimized them as “good”?
It is existential in that failure to solve it threatens the existence of the very notion of a democratic republic and eventually drowns civil norms in cynicism. And at that point it collapses from the absence of willingness to pay taxes, willingness to serve as a public official, and willingness to vote.
There is nothing for the GOP to build on because after every schism and victory, the GOP made sure to purge the losers. The Trumpers are going against the Freedom Caucus, which goes against the Tea Party, which goes against the Gingrich revolution, which goes against the Reagan Republicans, which goes against the Nixon Republicans, who were the orginal movement conservtives.
There will be little left but Trump.
Those triple evils you describe are real and at the same time Jefferson’s vision of self-evident truths has been a kind of beacon long guiding us to a far shore. I think we’re out in the middle of the ocean, more than half way to the other shore. Actually, in fact, fairly close. Don’t forget that an African-American family has been in the White House for two full terms. What we’re witnessing is the death throws of an old paradigm and we might actually live long enough to witness landfall. Not perfection. Perfection does not exist in this world. But an end to most of the nonsense. The discrediting of the Tea Party and all bigots. A land where a person is judged not by the color of his skin but the content of his character.
All of this is based on the same lame meme upon which Trump has so cannily built his success.
“Hillary can’t lose; Trump can’t win and the anti-Trump reaction will shatter the Republican Party.”
Only problem?
So far he has won.
Let us refrain from guessing about what happens after he loses until he does lose.
Please.
“It ain’t over ’til it’s over,” said the great prophet Yogi Berra.
And it ain’t over.
Not by a long shot.
Debate Monday next will tell the tale.
Watch.
I’m gonna.
AG
It’s scary how close he seems to be at times. Can’t rule out his winning though I still think it would take him breaking through at the debates and convincing some subset of people that he’s not scary. Even with a fractured party, she should pull it out, albeit perhaps without a Senate in which case we could see four more years or eight more years of obstruction even in such once-mundane things as executive branch appointments. If we can’t replace Supreme Court justices as they die off, we’ll reveal to the entire world that we’ve descended into banana republic territory.
You write;
“I still think it would take him breaking through at the debates and convincing some subset of people that he’s not scary.”
Or that he is reallyscary. That’s the part that scares me.
Also:
“If we can’t replace Supreme Court justices as they die off, we’ll reveal to the entire world that we’ve descended into banana republic territory.”
Parallax…the “whole world” already knows this. It started to become plain when Bush II did his lame imitation of a cheap warlord and it has only accelerated since. We are a great big banana republic with a scary domestic police force, a scary prison system, an army that is not very good at what it does anymore and a nuclear arsenal that could end further life on earth in a matter of hours. No one except a few other banana republic reps officially mentions this, but the info is already out.
Bet on it.
AG
I am entirely unsurprised that Arthur Gilroy would share a quote from someone saying something ridiculously incendiary about our President. It’s how Arthur rolls.
Incendiary?
Yes.
Deserved?
How many lives have been sacrificed …quite unnecessarily and probably not only unnecessarily but truly counterproductively in the long run…in the permanent war now in progress that was started by the preceding PermaGov president, Bush II?
Again…Dutarte is a Banana Republic politician. He has nothing much to lose by calling out another banana republic president (no matter how large the country may be) considering how ineffective said country has been for decades.
WTFU.
You want respect?
Earn it.
We have not.
In fact…we have lost the respect that we earned during WW II.
Deservedly.
AG
Tell us more, asshole.
Let it all out, you courageous truthteller.
Hold it all in, cenrtistfiielder.
Doesn’t it begin to hurt after a while?
AG
its ideological origins as the Party of Lincoln.”
The GOP repudiated that origin so long ago that the event is now lost in the mists of time, though it unquestionably dates back at least to adoption of the Southern Strategy.
They abandoned Lincoln’s political legacy when they abandoned Reconstruction and the enforcement of the Civil War Amendments.
“I’m just not inclined to give people much of a break for being primarily motivated by… things I hate.”
I’ve read that line so many times I laugh. Live and let live BooMan. There is no chance in hell that you will ever find someone not motivated by one or more things you hate. The lack of self-awareness displayed by that sort of attitude is remarkable.
There really is only one way forward. Live and let live. You can’t change people and the more you try, the more conflict you create. Walk away. Take care of those you can and disregard the rest.
Too bad those fuckers are not of the same mind and determined to make my life worse. I’ll leave them alone when they leave me alone.
Yes.
But…there is always the following kicker:
When you are taking care of those you can, sometimes you simply cannot “disregard the rest” because “the rest” are often very bad people with very bad intentions.
Thus the history of defensive wars.
So it goes…
AG