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Somebody Is Missing Something Here
Jonah Goldberg has written (some time ago) that one weakness of classical liberalism (aka, modern conservatism) is that it lacks an ‘other’ to hate. Most other systems of human interaction have an ‘other’ – we are naturally tribal, and respond powerfully to outside threats to our tribe. The idea that we should all help one another, even those we don’t like, is not natural. This is one reason that Jesus Christ was such a radical. He attempted to build a movement based on love. And hate is more powerful than love. That’s just human nature. I don’t see how you could look at human history and disagree with that statement. And I think it would be difficult to disagree with Mr. Goldberg’s point here.
Republicans have tended to seek leaders who are nice people. The leftist tendency to villainize whoever they disagree with is clearly apparent when their opponent is someone as benign as Calvin Coolidge, Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, Mitt Romney, George Bush, or some other vanilla, inoffensive ‘nice guy.’ Some think that President Trump has brought out the nasty side of leftists – that he inspires a special sort of hatred, due to his unpleasant personality or whatever. I really don’t think so. I think the left’s hatred is simply more obvious, now that they finally have a target that reasonable people might dislike. Now, leftists don’t go after conservatives, they go after “Trump supporters.” And the ‘nice guy’ conservatives try to distance themselves from such an obvious target of disdain as the crude, impolite, and ‘not one of us’ Donald Trump. I throw no stones – this describes my relationship with Mr. Trump as well, although I hate to admit it.
So our natural need for an ‘other’ to hate has made Trump into a convenient straw man for both the left and the right. The Elizabeth Warrens and New York Times’ of the world now have an unlikable target on the conservative side that is easier to villainize than Ronald Reagan or Mitt Romney. The never-Trumpers on the right, like Jonah Goldberg and some of my esteemed Ricochet colleagues, now have someone to blame for the Republican Party not being quite what they wish that it was.
So Mr. Trump became the ‘other’ for, well, for nearly everyone. Saul Alinsky would understand. So would Dostoyevsky, Solzhenitsyn, Machiavelli, Churchill, and many other thinkers much more profound than I. We all seek an ‘other’ to hate. Jesus Christ would disapprove of this, although I suspect he would understand. As would Pontius Pilate.
I remember the first time I heard Barack Obama speak off a teleprompter.I thought, “My God, the guy’s dumb as a box of rocks.”
When I hear Mr. Trump speak (or, heaven forfend, Tweet), the same thought crosses my mind. But it seems to work, so I wonder if Mr. Trump might be smarter than he sounds. My daughter attends one of the top five universities in the world – an extremely elite place, where they hate Mr. Trump. But they study his Tweets in marketing class – they think they’re brilliant. They don’t seem to be, at least to me, but perhaps I’m mistaken. And it’s hard to argue their effectiveness. Lord help us.
My point is that I wonder how much of all this is intentional on the part of Mr. Trump, and how much is simply the position he finds himself in.
Perhaps he has read Alinsky, and Machiavelli, and Solzhenitsyn, and he understands that inspiring change requires an ‘other,’ so he volunteers for the job, just to get things done.
Perhaps he’s an instinctive genius, and he has an intuitive understanding of human nature, and he doesn’t need to read the great thinkers to figure this out.
Or maybe, he’s just the right guy at the right time. We demanded an ‘other,’ and he happened to show up. So we chose him. And he excels because he’s playing a role he was born to play.
Maybe there’s another option that I haven’t considered. Unlike some others, I don’t pretend to understand what’s going on here. I can’t even figure out if I like what’s going on here, much less what’s causing it.
But I’m starting to suspect that I’m missing something. Me, and a lot of other people.
I’m starting to suspect that the leftists, and the never-Trump Republicans, are being controlled and used by Mr. Trump. Maybe he really is that smart. Or at least, that instinctive. Whenever he makes a mess, seemingly via arrogance or sloppy thinking, Mr. Trump always seems to end up getting what he wanted to begin with. This is becoming so routine that I’ve stopped presuming that his apparent mistakes were actually errors.
I’m starting to suspect that the fool in this story is not Mr. Trump – it’s me.
I may be wrong. I really don’t understand. But I think Mr. Trump understands that conflict gets more done than cooperation. Hate is more powerful than love. I would prefer to get things done with love. And perhaps Mr. Trump would as well, but he just doesn’t care. Or perhaps, he doesn’t care enough to try to fight human nature. Whatever works.
Or perhaps, my confusion is leading me to give too much credit to Mr. Trump, who continues to do a remarkable job when I didn’t think he would. I don’t like him, so I presumed he would fail. So when he succeeds and ends up being a great conservative president, I look for some extraordinary plot when, in fact, perhaps my own biases are blinding me to a very simple solution.
I can’t even tell you what that simple solution might be, because I can’t see it.
My first impression of Mr. Obama – dumb as a box of rocks – turned out, over time, to be true. But my first impression of Mr. Trump – uncouth simpleton – seems to be turning out, over time, to be wrong. I think.
Rule #1 in science and math: if it seems that you’re wrong, perhaps you’re wrong. Perhaps you should consider other possibilities. Perhaps you’re not as smart as you thought you were.
Nah. It’s easier to just blame Trump. For everything. Hate is stronger than love. So I’ll just take the easy way out and pretend to be virtuous by hating him.
He doesn’t seem to mind. And maybe I’ll end up helping him, and therefore me, despite myself. And maybe that will end up being good. Because, ummm … well, you see….
Ah, I really don’t understand.
But maybe that’s ok.
There’s a lot of things I don’t understand.
Like reality TV. Another thing Mr. Trump is really good at. And urban commercial real estate. Another thing Mr. Trump is really good at. And brand promotion. Another thing Mr. Trump is really good at.
Nevermind. I’ve got to go practice medicine. That’s something I’m really good at.
I’ll stick to that.
Published in General
I don’t know what to think of this. My heart says that he should have secretly visited Hong Kong and said the Chinese equivalent of, “Eich bin Hong Konger.”
Part of me also recognizes that America doesn’t have alot of room to advocate for Hong Kong and we should focus on making the Chinese Communists make a fair deal with us.
I am conflicted. However, if the Chinese continue to trample on our Intellectual Property Rights, I want Trump to spend a week in Hong Kong hanging out with Tibetans, Christians, Uighurs and everybody else who is persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party.
It is ever thus with any politician. That is not new.
I think international relations is the least important reason to support Trump, though he is doing well on that account as well. I only care that he is confronting the progressive/communists that have taken over the democrat party, universities and many other parts of our country. “Conservatives” have done nothing about that since Reagan left office.
I think he’s a shiny box of rocks. He was president of the law review, and didn’t publish a single article. Hell, that’s the whole point of being president of the law review.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2011/08/early_obama_letter_confirms_inability_to_write.html
He was the affirmative action president of the law review and of the country.
Skyler,
Now you’ve got it exactly. Originally, all the programs were designed to tutor and bring black kids up enough to get them even with everybody else. Then in 1973, the new quota-based affirmative action ruling did away with all of that. It wasn’t fast enough so they said. Now we just pushed the black kids through whether they could do the work or not. Got to meet the quota.
Yep, it was Obama’s turn to be President. Just like it was his turn to win the Nobel Prize. Stupidity Uber Alles.
Regards,
Jim
Quote from Sir Roger Scruton on conservatism:
I shall argue that the conservative attitude, and the doctrine that sustains it, are systematic and reasonable. Conservatism may rarely announce itself in maxims, formulae or aims. Its essence is inarticulate, and its expression, when compelled, is sceptical. But it is capable of expression, and in times of crisis, forced either by political necessity, or by the clamour for doctrine, conservatism does its best, though not always with any confidence that the words it finds will match the instinct that required them. This lack of confidence stems not from diffidence or dismay, but from an awareness of the complexity of human things, and from an attachment to values which cannot be understood with the abstract clarity of Utopian theory
Well, we’re going to get incandescent light bulbs again, if you want them. I don’t, but I’d like the choice, and the idea that the government would concern itself with the type of lightbulb you can buy is the sort of nonsense I’m happy to see reversed, and it suggests there’s a lot of regs that bit the dust. The very fact that he’s in the office means shower heads won’t have timers or automatic thermostats.
I know our family business, which is highly scrutinized by the EPA, views the Trump administration as a vacation from additional regulation, at worst, and a sign of a friendlier climate in the future, at best.
A website I read to check out how thick the tendons are standing on the neck of the statists this week was upset that the Trump administration was going to destroy all the wetlands, which probably translates to a relaxation of the “glancing goose”rules on wetlands, which is a victory for private land owners.
None of my fears about Trump expanding the reach of the state came to pass, although the vaping ban is utter idiocy.
Wow that’s brilliant. Geez…
Good article. Perhaps he’s just the kid who innocently saw the King had no cloths. Let’s face it, the left and many establishment politicians haven’t gotten the fundamentals right for about a century and he doesn’t choose to pretend they’re sometimes right.
It’s a definition that says that people who support conservatism are smarter, prettier, and gosh darn, people like them. I wouldn’t call it at all accurate and even less so brilliant.
I’m not smarter than anybody else, although I am prettier, so maybe you have a point.
But it seems that your view of conservatism is quite different from mine. Which is fine.
(how do you post a youtube video?) ===> Thanks Percival
Highlight the link after you paste it and click on the “remove link” button or type Shift-Alt-S.
It is, and I used the term as a descriptor of my political views in the past, but I try to avoid using it now because it is not definitive.
Yeah, like the founders, though they mostly left it to the state and local level.
I think that the major distinctions between modern conservatism and the conservatism of, say, Calvin Coolidge, is that modern conservatism accepts: (1) part of the New Deal program, particularly Social Security and Medicare, and (2) a much more interventionist foreign policy.
Most Americans who say they are conservative give little more than lip-service to limited government principles.
When I said, “supporting christianity” I certainly didn’t mean it as a positive point.
Without affirmative action, Obama would have been the principal of an inner city school.
Nah, without affirmative action he would have been best known as the former leader of the Choom gang.
Let’s try to be more optimistic, he might have worked harder and actually became a competent lawyer.
He wouldn’t have gotten into law school were it not for affirmative action. That would have required him to work, and he’s never been inclined to do work. All his life he’s just showed up and results were handed to him.
I am not disagreeing. I’m saying that without affirmative action he may have had to buck up and put his nose to the grindstone.
Yes, alternative history is never possible to accurately predict. I’m thinking that choom would override any incentive to work.
Remember, when Harvard plays the racial quota game, it doesn’t take people off the street. It vacuums up the students who should have gone to less prestigious schools.
In the absence of affirmative action, Obama would probably have gone to a second- or third-rate law school.
I don’t even know what this could mean (not disparaging your point) considering the dull performance and apparent lack of ability of the current crop of Ivy League legal beagles to read the Constitution for what it means in the eyes of those who wrote it. I’m sure there are views here on why we get the interpretations we get or the lack thereof when that serves the purpose.
In other words, most of the lawyering I see could just as well come from a third-rate source.
Au contraire. They show the greatest ability to read into the Constitution whatever they want to see there.
Consider what fine discernment justice Kennedy showed, to be able to see a right to gay marriage in the Constitution, but no right to polygamous marriage. Why, he would have had not the slightest difficulty telling you exactly the style and color of the Emperor’s new clothes.
I am not disagreeing with any of this. But maybe while in a third-rate skill he would self-conscious that he didn’t get into the school he wanted and hit the books. While hitting the books, maybe he would be forced to read the opinions of Clarence Thomas and rethink some things. I know am leaning on the more optimistic alternative scenario of history but it’s for a point. That point is, people do more when you ask more of them and they get better when you pressure them to get better. Affirmative Action may have worked out well for Barack Obama, but I don’t think it worked out well for the rest of us to get a subpar President.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3vDis2XLlk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGLAo0_uu3Y
Well, he was raised by Communists, so . . . that would have been a huge impediment to getting an education.
And yet being raised by Communists would probably help them get into college. May G-d have grace on us.
First he’d have to get off the couch after smoking a doobie.