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Jonah Remains Unconvinced
Author’s note: This post was written one week ago but not published until today.
Recently, I found myself in the odd position of mildly criticizing one of our own. Jonah Goldberg is bright, engaging, and really more fun to read than almost anyone else on the right. However, I am incapable of giving a blanket endorsement to anybody. I don’t think Jonah would fault me. In fact, that is why he is so tough on Trump. I made it clear in my recent post, “Jonah Has Tweet Envy,” that I wasn’t demanding he cease criticism of Trump or was I questioning his loyalty to conservatism. I think the way I phrased it was that his analysis was shallow and his style counter-productive. I predicted blowback from this criticism in the form of a battalion of straw men launched at me and “my kind.” In Jonah’s defense, he did nothing like that. Instead, he seemed to be responding with an interesting new proposition of his own that clarified why he sees Trump in an extremely negative light.
When conservatives said “Let Reagan be Reagan,” they were referring to a core philosophy that Reagan had developed over decades of study and political combat. When people said “Let Trump be Trump,” they meant let Trump’s id run free. The former was about staying true to an ideology, the latter about giving free rein to a glandular style that refused to be locked into a doctrine or even notions of consistency. That’s why saying “Let Trump be Trump” is almost literally the opposite of saying “Let Reagan be Reagan.”
Although I never used the analogy or the phrases of “Let Reagan be Reagan” and “Let Trump be Trump,” it is certainly a reasonable response to my piece. The proposition that, “’Let Trump be Trump’ is almost literally the opposite of saying ‘Let Reagan be Reagan,’” should require a response from me. Here goes.
The idea that Ronald Reagan was seen in a glowing conservative light when he was elected in 1980 is what I would call 20/20 hindsight. We know now more than 35 years later how groundbreaking and successful Reagan’s presidency was. However, in 1980 this was anything but obvious. Remember, the difference that got Reagan elected was the Reagan Democrats voting for him. I was one of them. Being of a consistent philosophical bent (what Jonah thinks of as all important) I first changed my registration in 1980 and Reagan was the first Republican I voted for.
That was the easy part. My parents had evidenced their complete disdain as they couldn’t believe anybody could vote for “a B-movie actor for president.” I didn’t have the heart to tell them that to me he wasn’t a B-movie actor. The B movies were eliminated by television in the 1950s. I would come home from elementary school and turn the TV on in the late 1950s. My two favorites were “The Lone Ranger” and “Death Valley Days.” On “Death Valley Days,” a former B-movie actor had taken over as the announcer. He wore his cowboy hat jauntily to one side and was really pretty good at his job. You see Jonah, in 1980 I was voting to make the announcer from “Death Valley Days” the President of the United States. Better not to mention this to Mom and Dad.
The real reason for my voting for Reagan can be summed up in two words: Jimmy Carter. Carter’s insane obsession with the environment which resulted in the destruction of an already soft American economy was just stupid. His capacity to imagine Communism as a positive force in the world was frightening. He was the first American President to undermine the State of Israel.
Understanding all of this at a philosophical level and knowing from my very recent experience at university that these attitudes were endemic to the left and would be endemic from now on in the Democratic party, I made my decision to make a clean break. Ronald Reagan was not a plus. He was, in fact, an extreme negative. First, there was the seriousness issue. I really did think of him as the announcer from “Death Valley Days.” However, watching the industrial heartland of America being wrecked because those who were its assumed defenders had been seduced by a hopeless ideology was way too painful for me to ignore. The Carter Administration needed to end before it did any more damage. I closed my eyes and voted Republican for the first time. Then Reagan won.
I had no idea what to expect. The next thing I know, Edward Teller was on television describing “Star Wars.” If Reagan was a bad joke to my parents, Edward Teller was Satan himself. (The Satan in Judaism is not exactly Christianity’s Satan. Close, but not exactly.) I face-palmed and cried, “What have I done?” As if to answer this very question the Soviet Union collapsed under the pressure of Reagan and Star Wars. Western Civilization moved upward and into the light. After that, I didn’t worry so much. I knew that it wasn’t just that the Democrats were wrong but that much of conservatism was right.
Thus, for this Reagan Democrat, Ronald Reagan represented anything but a “core philosophy that Reagan had developed over decades of study and political combat.” He was a blind gamble to get rid of the Carter insanity. After the fact, I realized that there was a good reason to be conservative and as idiosyncratic as Reagan was, he got the job done. All’s well that ends well.
Now, what of Trump? Jonah is right that Trump is a very different case than Reagan. However, Obama-Hillary is a very different case than Carter. Carter represented the new left-wing ideology. Obsessive about the environment, blind to the threat by Marxism, and incapable of understanding the economy enough to break the malaise.
Obama-Hillary represented something even worse. Oh, of course, they doubled down on the left-wing ideology. However, it was the identity politics, victim-mongering, and deconstructionism that was new. If Jimmy Carter said something absurd you could debate him and win. If Obama-Hillary said something absurd and you made that point in a debate, you were a racist or a sexist. Obama-Hillary had perfected playing the race and gender cards to a science. A fawning, brainless, spineless media ensured that this fuzzy act could be maintained against all odds ad infinitum. Thus a clearly defined ideology became useless in attacking this bizarre cult-like gang of idiots who now covered Washington DC like some sort of bleach-resistant fungus.
In short, I don’t think even Reagan could have defeated Obama-Hillary and the transgendered, victim-mongering, sexual-schizophrenic Democrat loonies. Little did anyone, least of all me, know that there was a strange orange-haired being in the universe that had the odd characteristic of killing the fungus that was growing all over Washington DC. His very presence seemed to damage the up until then unstoppable fungal growth. Jonah, rather than continue to wildly rip the strange orange creature that neither you nor I fully understand, we should give thanks to a beneficent G-d who has heard our prayers and delivered us from the scourge of Obama-Hillary. Some things are just beyond our ability to predict or control.
Let Trump be Trump and let the fungus among us continue to die.
Good Shabbos.
Published in General
I don’t know…..for all the hate towards Jonah and Kristol I feel like they are pretty fair with Trump. I mainly get Kristol from his appearance on the Weekly Standard podcast and while he was definitely working (for too long in my opinion) to get another option to run for president, I don’t find him snarky at all about things now and has praised most of the cabinet picks extensively.
Oh dude, I could not in any way imagine serving overseas with that SOB as Commander-In-Chief. “Soldier! I am ordering you to go take a shower with that man who is sexually attracted to you and likes wearing women’s clothing!”
Thank you for sharing your history on Reagan, Jim. Still, I realize we’re all here to state our views and so on, but for me, this is where we are. I think all analyses by those we like or hate give us more food for thought. I tire sometimes of defending this one or that one. For now, I just want Trump to do good things. Maybe I’m just tired . . .
I think something else, Susan. I admit I heard it on the radio. I think people are just impatient. After eight years of a near-Communist doing everything he could to burn the Constitution and convert the low-information people into mindless Socialists, we are so anxious to start changing it back to the America we love and for which we are willing to die, that nothing being done can ever be done fast enough. Even among the non-Trump-fans, I am hearing it. In only a couple of months, he hasn’t finished Tax Reform yet, he isn’t building the Wall yet, he hasn’t got an Immigration plan yet, he hasn’t repealed Obamacare yet, yet, yet, yet.
Even I find my impatience building every day, and yet I know Tax Reform is a monster that will take months, not weeks. I know Obamacare is an octopus with tentacles reaching into every corner of the Federal and State government policies. I know we have to get bids for the wall and go through that red-tape-wrapped process. I know all this, yet I still wanted it yesterday, as they say.
This is an interesting post. I think Jonah’s response is found in this week’s G-file. Basically, it is that too many conservatives have fallen for Alinsky envy. Trump is the right-leaning Alinskyite president.
Very observant, Jct. I think we’ve become this way in general. In so many ways we are a “fast-food” society. And of course, if we can get things done, we have a whole lot less anxiety! I get impatient over other kinds of things; we all suffer from it. And I expect it will get worse, in terms of Trump, at least for the short term.
The historical illiteracy that this post hinges upon is… unfortunate.
This is wrong for a host of reasons. It’s like you dropped the ball in the 50’s and didn’t notice that in the meantime between “Bedtime for Bonzo” and getting elected President that Reagan had been elected Governor of the largest state in the union (twice) and came close to unseating a sitting US President in a primary.
Add to this the fact that Reagan was an intellectual leader in the party and movement for years before 1976.
The comparison between Trump and Reagan couldn’t be more stark. I maintain that Trump’s victory is the function of a combination of incredible luck, the unbelievable hubris of his opponent and winning in spite of his own incompetence.
Any one of the other Republican candidates probably would have beaten Hillary based upon what we know now about her campaign’s foolish attitude towards the battleground states and any one of them could easily have nominated Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court.
Thus far, I am having a hard time detecting a single thing that Trump has done or accomplished that would not have been done better or more effectively by a different Republican. There’s plenty of time yet, but that cuts in both directions and Jonah’s warnings re: Trump and his destructive capacity couldn’t be more on point.
On the right, we shouldn’t have loyalty to people as much as we should to ideas, and to that extent, Trump scores very poorly thus far in my book. There doesn’t seem to be any overarching ideological commitment guiding Trump’s administration and the absense of that guiding principle, huge promises made on the campaign trail are quickly being chucked over the transom in the name of expediency.
The Brexit post mortems by Dominic Cummings and Theodore Dalrymple offer us a picture of our political class. They point out the none of the political class in England saw the vote going for leave. The leadership was full of foolish thoughts, over estimated their own wisdom, powers of persuasion, and did not even know that the only county in England to vote to remain would be greater London, all the rest voted to leave. How could a political class be so blind to the country they lead? Just like here the BBC asked English leave voters “Don’t you regret voting to leave”, and they did not ask this question out of curiosity but out of disgust. We were in England a week after the vote and the media was aghast.
Jonah is an example of the bubble our political class and others are in. As an aside, I like many here own Jonah’s books and have learned from them, and he seems like a fine man. However, if one feels that one can not vote for Trump because of x, then one has lost perspective. This was never a multiple choice, it was Trump or Clinton. If one finds that choice too hard then one lives in a bubble and has been blinded by the walls of the bubble or one’s emotions, in either case one has lost perspective. Jonah’s protest vote means nothing, it is not a choice signifying courage or honor or anything else. Our political class was shocked that Trump won in the primaries, and even more so that he won the election. Many are still in disbelief, how could I live in country which would elect Trump.
So when our political class and analysts can not imagine how we got here and can not comment on Trump (implying his voters as well) without some cute aside, then you have ceased to have the perspective which can add to my understanding. When you show me you are smart, you can be ironic, when you got dope-slapped by reality your irony only highlights your own shortcomings.
Maj,
This is the 20/20 hindsight that I was referring to. I was a democrat between the 1950s and Reagan getting elected Governor. If I noticed Reagan during that period it was with a democrat’s rather standard dismissal of a conservative. Only the complete disaster that was Carter forced me to the conclusion that I had to try something else. Reagan was who was nominated that was all. Only after the fact, I realized how much that was positive about the conservative position.
No, don’t you see as a democrat I hadn’t dropped the ball but was running with it and scoring points. For the other team!
Regards,
Jim
Jonah Goldberg is a defender of the Black Lives Matter movement. But he doesn’t approve of Saul Alinsky tactics?
Regulatory reform is a policy prescription not a philosophy, and he didn’t make any difference in the quality of life for New Yorkers, Rudy Giuliani did.
Why is regulatory reform a good policy? If you asked him that question do you think he would give you a good answer? I don’t. I doubt he would say that removing regulations will allow entrepreneurs to invest in more ventures, and that it would allow smaller companies to compete with larger companies to provide us with better products and services. He does strike me as someone who would favor government regulations that would hinder his competitors and favor his company however.
He also wants to load up regulations for American manufacturers in this country that gets part of their materials from overseas. He wants to regulate the hell out of those types of companies and hurt the American workers who work there. That is what happens when you don’t have a philosophy that informs you that regulations are burdensome to economic prosperity and make it up as you go.
You got a link for that? I doubt you do.
I think you left out one important–probably the most important–reason: The apathy, sloth, negligence and duplicity of the GOP. That’s why Trump won both the primary and the general.
Exhibit 1: The congressional fiasco on “repeal and replace.” The GOP campaigned on this, promised this, and submitted numerous bills in the minority–when they knew nothing would come of it. Then they’re in the majority, with the White House as an ally, and we get the urine-soaked paper bag bill that congressional GOPers proffered. The fact that after 7 years to prep, the GOP didn’t have a decent bill locked, cocked, and ready to rock demonstrates one thing: the GOP is either stupid, liars, or both.
Some of us voted less for Trump as Trump than for a chaos agent for our ossified, sclerotic federal “representative republic.” After the repeal/replace travesty, I feel more than validated. Seven years and that’s the best you can do? Schmucks.
“The Conservative Principle Behind Black Lives Matter” by Jonah Goldberg
Goldberg: “Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (who did not lose his lazy certainty) spent the weekend attacking the Black Lives Matter movement as ‘racist’. He wants people to focus on the fact that most black murder victims die at the hands of other blacks. That’s true, and tragic, but fairly irrelevant.”
Read it and weep.
I am thrilled that Trump defeated HRC because IMHO after 8 years of Obama another 4 or 8 of HRC might well have been more than the country could have endured.That said,Trump was not my first choice amongst the GOP candidates and I like Jonah will call em as i see em with Trump…when I agree i will support him and when I disagree i will say so…….
You didn’t provide the link and it’s telling. Let me do it for you. http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-goldberg-dallas-conservative-black-lives-matter-20160711-snap-story.html
In this same article he states that the stats don’t backup the assertion that blacks are disproportionately shot by police officers, you know, THE WHOLE FREAKING REASON FOR THEIR EXISITENCE. That doesn’t sound like a defender to me. How about you?
He is simply stating that the right and the left have blind spots on the issue. The right will reflexively defend cops even when they mess up as Giuliani did, and the left is undermining the very people who we need to keep our streets safe.
Guys let’s remember that Johan’s wife works in the trump administration for the UN ambassador. Why everyone has to paint him in a black or white criticism is really just laziness and emotional based thought process. The mindless name calling gets old and adds nothing to the debate and only goes to show you tend to be more of a traditionalist tyrant ( who in the old days would be called a reactionary) than a small l classic liberal. The sad part off some of these comments is you actually prove a lot of what Johan says about a major segmet of trump supporters which you probly find offensive or at lest really dislike.
Disagree. It’s a matter of asymmetric motivations. Jonah probably gets 65% of his feed from the weirdos on the fringe. They have nothing else to do than call him a false conservative, Jew conspiracy leader, etc. That will warp your cognition no matter what. He doesn’t see the great swathe of the sane Trump supporters because he is besieged by the (far fewer) insane.
The title of the article says “The Conservative Principle of Black Lives Matter” and Goldberg puts Giuliani’s characterization of BLM as racist in scare-quotes. I’ll look at the plain text of the article and not try to give the words as creative an interpretation as would a liberal SC Justice.
Afternoon Tony,
What is the point the Jonah is making? I see nothing in the article that would cause me to recommend it to anyone. For something useful on this topic read “War on Cops” by Heather MacDonald. We are stuck like the election with a broken reality. Blacks commit nearly 50% of homicides while being 13% of the population, the policing technique which has vastly improved the lives of New Yorkers especially the law abiding minorities is proactive policing, started by Bratton and Giuliani. Stop and frisk is an intrusion, but I will choose this messy intrusion because it is minimally insulting and greatly effective at saving the lives of those especially in minority communities. Giuliani does not reflexively defend cops who abuse or kill innocent citizens. Jonah wants to say on one hand the idea that cops target blacks is false but on the other hand cops are biased as if that is even a fraction of the whole story. We are not in a time where we have the best people to solve our problems, so we are stuck picking the better choice, or even the less bad choice. Jonah want s to compare broken reality with conservative dream world. The story is not the cops, it is the killing in the minority community and how to stop it in the least imperfect way.
Jim
First of all I didn’t particularly like the article either, but it seems to be an article that is speaking to the 2 week or so period last summer and one of the events was a bad shooting in Minnesota. Even if cops are not the real issue, it’s very important to call out bad shootings.
I was only seeing if the article was a defense of black lives matter as was alleged. It isn’t.
The headline is confusing, but as we all know, the writers don’t write the headlines, editors do.
Michael Barone disagrees with you on whether anyone else would have done better than Trump in the 2016 General. The fact is that the chance that someone else could have shattered the impregnable Blue Wall is between 0 and 100%. The fact that Trump did is now 100%. As far as the Gorsuch nomination, I presume that a year ago you doubted Trump’s ability to nominate a Gorsuch, so your credibility is diminished.
You don’t like name calling, so you call people you disagree with names, and you don’t even bother to say who you’re calling out? That’s lazy.
Evening again Tony,
Using Jonah’s article to illustrate my disappointment with his political writings, understanding that everyone can have an off day, our political writers are not serious. There are deadly serious problems, there is a concentration of criminal activity and victims in the minority community, BLM as an Army of Sharptons is selling the idea that police and society at large is targeting blacks. We have increased distrust among races and the law abiding minorities are made even more vulnerable as police stand down from proactive policing. Like in the 60’s with the Black Panthers and other groups, folks are chanting Kill the Pigs. We need our political philosophers to think about these problems understanding that the answers will be imperfect and messy. What do we get from Jonah, well on one hand and on the other hand, this is useless posturing as if we are saying something insightful. Similarly, in the election we have an imperfect candidate, but one who is much better for the country than the other and what do Jonah and others do, pout, write in Hayek, or something equally as vain and silly. For Reagan the biggest threats and his biggest goals 1. defeat the USSR, 2 get the gov’t off the back of the citizens. Now, to me the biggest threat by far is a government run by an unaccountable bureaucracy whose self interests are destructive to society, write on that, or something else of lasting political note. Jonah and others want to talk about Trump’s this or that; pick the day’s topic, in my mind that is a waste of my time, help us get back control of the government, not some daily made up outrage.
@majestyk
Regarding Jonah Goldberg: From what I have seen he has consistently and fairly evaluated President Trump’s tenure so far. He has commended the President’s efforts when warranted and criticized him when needed. I haven’t noticed particularly sharp ad hominem attacks against people who have different opinions as practiced by some others (Kurt Schlichter comes to mind).
I believe you are right about President Trump’s accomplishments. They could have been done by any other Republican with perhaps better outcomes and without the added rancor and clumsiness. One problem is that most everything done so far has follow the President Obama model: executive order here, phone there. Pres. Trump has not yet worked with Congress on much of anything. (Well, there was the American Care Act – and how has that turned out?) I’ve seen little evidence that Pres. Trump many convictions other than “winning” and that’s a good criteria only if you are following consistent well-articulated principles.
Pres. Trump seems to have indicated several times that accomplishments will be “easy.” After all, the only reason things could not be done in Washington, is because people are “stoooopid.” I can only hope he is learning something about the reality of governing. From what I have seen so far, I remain unconvinced.
And that worries me, as it probably worries Mr. Goldberg. Does Pres. Trump have the stamina – the interest – to battle for conservative outcomes? Or is he going to perfunctorily press for solid conservative ideas and when the going gets tough, he gets going – right out the door. And then we’re in for four more years of “nothing gets done because of those obstructive Republicans.” And this will be coming from a self-identifying Republican President.
If this description is even half way accurate, Mr. Goldberg has reasons to be skeptical and worried.
Jim Geraghty of NR said of Marco Rubio: “His dizzying shifts on immigration make it hard to know what he really thinks on the issue.”
This hasn’t stopped Goldberg from being a huge Rubio supporter. So ideological coherence is not really a deal-breaker with him.
The key point is that with Carter you could argue rationally, the Democrat party as currently constituted is irrational in the extreme. Logic and reasoning won’t work on appeals to racism, homophobia, gender etc. Trump is the perfect antidote in that he doesn’t play the game. He is able to communicate effectively with people just like Reagan did, you might say he’s a post-modern Reagan. Much of our society has been taught to emote rather than think and argue, for these people it is true that Reagan probably couldn’t have won. Trump is the right man at the right time.
Unfortunate misdiagnosis. But it helps me understand why so many people are so wrong.
Trump is not the antidote. He is the equal and opposite reaction. The flip side of the same coin.
And Trump does play the game. He plays it better than anyone else. His whole argument during the campaign was that we need to stop complaining about the game and start playing. Playing to win.
That’s a perfectly legit POV. But a conservative opposes the game.
If one is conservative, one must oppose that POV. If one holds that POV, one must oppose conservatism.
Notice that in all of these discussions the tension arises not between Trump supporters and Conservatives but between Conservatives and Conservatives who support Trump and assert there is no contradiction.
Those weren’t scare quotes. They’re honest-to-goodness quotation marks that indicate, you know, the actual word used by Giuliani.
Quote marks to indicate that something is a quote? Who came up with that silly idea?