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Detached from America? It depends
On Twitter, our friend Claire Berlinski (I could have just said Claire, and you’d know, but I used her whole name as a bat signal in case she gets an alert that I’m talking about her tweet) wrote:
Yes and no.
The problem with “Yes” is that different people have exactly opposite opinions.
For some: yes, they believe the country is on the brink of authoritarianism, and also there is not enough authoritarianism when it comes to masks and vaccines. The country is threatened by right-wing white supremacists who want to destroy Our Democracy; we’re always one day away from 1/6, and also, the riots of 2020 were regrettable but righteous and understandable. An astroturf cohort of “concerned parents” are violently attacking school boards in an attempt to keep schools from teaching about racism and the history of slavery.
On the other side: yes, because our expectation of minimal competence among the managerial class in government, always grudging and grumpy because they’re so sure of themselves and what’s best for us, has been demolished by two years of flat-footed mismanagement coupled with no diminution in their estimation of their abilities and importance. The current administration is empty at the top, indifferent to actual problems, intent on forcing things on the populace that the populace does not want, incapable of addressing lawlessness and public disorder, and hostile to the Moorlocks in the hustings with their retrograde ideas (like single-family zoning or the desire to buy a pickup.)
But. No, inasmuch as the real world is not the fret-fest of social media, where you stick your head into the yowling maelstrom of the tremulous and neurotic, or the locker-room of boisterous bros who bleep-post to own the libs. In the actual America people are going to bars and restaurants and grocery stores and getting along just fine, bearing up under the new problems, gritting our teeth, and holding doors open for people behind us without worrying who they voted for. Bad ideas come and go in cycles. We’ve been through worse.
Responses:
Uh huh. Comptroller of the Currency nom wants to bankrupt the energy industry, wants the nationalization of the banking industry, the FBI raids journalists’ offices, racial essentialism is the required intellectual posture in the circles of power, commerce, and education, but the real worrisome thought is ending up like Hungary.
Takes a lot longer slog to get out from under nationalized banks and no carbon-based energy sector, I think.
And:
Again, there was this thing called “The summer of 2020” when city after city, including my own, had spasms of leftist political street violence (with some assistance from opportunistic apolitical miscreants and alt-right morons) that burned down blocks, killed businesses, and increased crime; the reaction of the bien-pensants was to justify the Uprising and attack anyone who seemed to point out that property damage was bad. We have a record number of carjackings in our city, and I guar-an-damn-tee you there’s not a soul driving around worried that MAGA types are going to bracket their car and drag them out at gunpoint.
But yes, sure, Trumpian fascism is right around the corner. Be on guard! Also, report your co-worker for saying something approving about Dave Chappelle. It made you feel unsafe.
Published in Culture
And it does. Unfortunately, it leaves out “overGaulified.”
No, I disagree with your assessment. They believed and told lies and aggressed against us and believed the worse against us based on the lies they were told. I have embraced, supported and invested in too many of them only to be stabbed in the back. They have a responsibility too not to be useful idiots.
This is absolutely the wrong way to look at the split between the America First faction and the statist/globalist faction. We went along with them, voted for their nominees (McCain, Romney) believed people like John Boener and Paul Ryan, and went along albeit increasingly grudgingly until they began to openly betray and defy us. (John Mc Cain’s vote on ACA – a signature Republican issue that we all(?) agreed on as but one example)
Then when a candidate came along who gave a voice to this preexisting sentiment, it became all about his unfitness.
But then we saw their true feelings ultimately emerge. These are not people who we need to ‘win over’. They are smugly intransigent and will not take advice from people they hold in contempt. They never cared about us ordinary voters and looked down on us. That happened first.
The battleground has shifted and these folks (suddenly?) find themselves voting for Democrats and lamenting the Republican Party. This isn’t as crazy as it sounds because they were always single-issue Republicans. They gave lip service to the broader issues, but it’s clear now they always had more in common with elite centrist (globalist, corporatist) Democrats like Hillary or Joe than the ordinary Republican-leaning voter.
Building political coalitions by being nice to people is extremely risky. The moment you stop being ‘nice’ to them, or if someone else is nicer, you lose them. Will Claire vote for Biden because people on Ricochet made a joke about her cats? What was all that education for then? Where is her credibility as a pundit?
Besides, if being ‘nice’ politically is a useful recruiting tool, how come it doesn’t seem to run both ways?
Except it seems like there’s always something of a shortage of trained medical people.
She probably thinks they have the right idea.
I just want to add that I miss Claire. I’ve been around here long enough to have enjoyed her commentary, pre-Trump, and she was terrific about engaging with the members.
I realize that she probably thinks that guys like me have turned into MAGA pod people. From my perspective, I feel that I’ve lost a friend to TDS.
I don’t find myself angry about this sort of thing any more. It’s just sad. I wish that things were otherwise.
Yeah, same here. I was anybody but Trump until it was down to Trump and Kasich, then I voted for Trump because I wasn’t going to vote for the Wicked Witch of Park Ridge. Trump said stupid things, but the stuff he did was pretty good.
No one else is. Selena is great!
Just the same, I’d wager we could discuss all the major points without bringing Claire’s cats into the discussion.
I wonder if Claire has read any of Victor Davis Hanson’s comments on Trump.
I’d like to hear her thoughts on VDH’s comments. I’d like to hear David French’s thoughts too.
Are we confident that either of them has actual thoughts any more?
That sort of gets to the heart of my comment (#12). VDH still lives on the farm he was raised on. He understands the common man. Folks like Claire don’t. TDS has made it abundantly clear that they never will or better yet, never wanted to.
NeverTrump is not very fond of VDH. I don’t know about Dispatchers, but when the Bulwankers launched their little blog, Sykes called out VDH specifically as someone who was too Trumpy and had to be destroyed.
Early indication that the Bulwank was nothing but a middle school girls’ slam book.
Like Salena, I grew up in western Pennsylvania so her columns almost always resonate with me because I fancy I hear a kindred spirit from a shared gritty and hard working segment of flyover country.
Mind you, I grew up in the woods and Salena is from greater Pittsburgh. But the blue collar vibe is the same.
Note: Believe it or not, Pittsburgh has been called “The Paris of the Appalachians”. So you could conceivably say Salena and Claire are both Parisians.
I choose Salena.
You have a point, although I’d like to point out that VDH has said that he is the only conservative in his extended family, including his siblings who grew up on that farm, and some of those relatives are strong Bernie Sanders supporters. (He said this in an interview I listened to earlier this year, so please correct me if I am misremembering any details.)
What about Elizabethton, TN?
We smoke almost as much as Parisians do. Although we’re more sophisticated. In my view…
[sneering] ‘eeer is your “Pernoh-deh!”
But why would we.
I think I remember that movie.
Does Elizabethton look like this at night?
Here is a fairly recent video. If you have the interest and patience to watch, you can decide if she still makes as much sense as she did eleven years ago in her interview with some guy named Peter Robinson.
Wow, she has not aged well.
Ten years will improve hardly anything except Scotch and Bourbon, and then only under ideal conditions.
To keep it from getting overly personal.
Talking about her cats humanizes her. Talking about her policy positions, not so much.
Depending on the tone, one can make her sound like the stereotypical crazy cat lady, and that does no good at all.
Oh Chris O, you have missed one of the more revelatory comments from The Left relating to inflation and its impact on grocery prices.
Over the weekend, the liberals let Americans know that according to a recent study, we all, each and everyone of us, throw out 25% of the food we buy.
This not only shows how Americans can afford that 10% increase we might see those concerned about Climate Change will soon be insisting on. (I would much rather send that ten percent to you.)
How those on the Left think giving the government money will end problems with carbon dioxide, I couldn’t tell you.
But now that we all know we throw away 25% of the food we buy, we might be able to afford grocery prices increases up to 25% more than we paid last year. Any food we can no longer afford would have simply been food we would have thrown away.
Compared to what? Wheeling?