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Politics Have Turned Me Into Lawrence of Arabia
Politics have started making me think of Lawrence of Arabia lately. I’ve seen political and social fault lines open up in places I hadn’t expected. Groups I’d seen as allies split over issues nobody had expected a few years ago. Commentators I’ve enjoyed reading for years are frustrating me. Some are insisting that you have to pick a side if you’re serious. Others are insisting you can’t pick a side if you’re serious. I don’t really like “my” politicians, and I sure don’t like “theirs.”
I’ve started feeling like Lawrence of Arabia, when he declared, “I have no tribe,” right before he executed the man whose life he’d saved just days earlier. We’ve supported these characters for years—politicians and pundits alike—and it seems that all of a sudden, every side is insisting on us agreeing on little points I just don’t care about. There’s almost nobody out there who I can say is “my tribe.”
Anybody else?
Published in Politics
They’re both right.
I’m trying to remember if you’ve saved my life recently.
Probably best if I haven’t. Bad omen right now.
Maybe the problem is that everybody is too serious. Politics is corrupt beyond belief. I find for me the best response is to laugh at it all.
I am a Democrat and will continue to be one. When they execute their progressive final plan I do not want to be on the other side. Not much quality of life on opposing Democrats
Me!
I tell people I’m a Bastiat Civil Libertarian. The people who know what that means normally don’t ask any more questions and the ones that don’t normally don’t ask anymore questions for fear of exposing their lack of knowledge.
But we have heard nothing BUT the tribalism argument for the better part of four years now, especially from people who don’t like Donald Trump. Now you come along and want to be a “tribal denialist!”
The truth is that all alliances are fleeting, intranationally and internationally. Take the English, for example. Over the course of 500 years they have fought with the Dutch against the Spanish, with the Germans against the French, with the French and Italians against the Germans, and with the French against the Germans and Italians. With Brexit they’re fighting against the Germans, the French and the Scots. Only that last one is a wee problem.
Here at home the post-WWII world created interesting coalitions on both the right and the left. One of the things both sides had in common was a commitment to globalization and the rise of global institutions. As the WWII generation started to die out and the boomers wanted to declare “mission accomplished” in regards to the USSR and international communism they decided, especially on our side to take a different tactical approach to the Chinese. We started looking at a billion people as being a market and a source of cheap labor instead of what they were, expansionist authoritarians just like their Russian brethren. And that has put the cracks into the coalitions. This is the biggest fracture in our coalition, that and our “leadership” being totally uninterested in the culture wars.
I see the same things TH, and I would usually file this phenomenon under the heading of “the narcissism of small differences,” but I had always believed most conservatives were above that kind of thing. But DJT becoming president has brought these differences into stark relief. I think I know why.
DJT ascending to the Presidency has conjured a great deal of extraordinarily strong negative emotion in many conservative pundits/politicians/voters (obviously). For those experiencing those negative emotions, they face a choice:
(1) They could simply confess to their constituents/readers/friends that they have strong, negative emotional dispositions towards DJT. Doing so however is simply a confession to one’s own emotional disposition. It is nothing that merits discussion or debate. Your emotions are yours. End of story. And there is nothing particularly interesting or admirable about one’s negative emotional reactions. So what else is there to do?
(2) Rather than confess simply to experiencing intense negative emotions at DJT (and thereafter take his presidency on its substantive merits/demerits) those experiencing those anti-DJT emotions can mask them as a new and intense commitment to their side of the otherwise small policy differences between themselves their perceived antagonists, which in this case, is everyone who indicates a positive emotional disposition towards DJT.
“You are not as emotionally disturbed at Trump being President as you should be,” sounds silly. Better to mask it as “You are not as committed to free trade as you should be!”
Like divorcing couples arguing about the lawn furniture, it’s not about the lawn furniture.
In short, most of our intra-conservative tribalism seemingly arising from picayune policy differences isn’t about the policies at all. It’s a proxy argument over the “correct”emotional response to DJT–something that is not rationally arguable.
Stay off of motorcycles.
And your lack of emotional disturbance at Trump being President is an indication of your moral inferiority, so reasoning with you isn’t really necessary. /fingers in ears, “Lalalalalaaaa…”
When Trump was nominated, it seemed like conservatism became split from the three or four groups of the day (social conservatism, libertarian conservatism, hawkish conservatism, etc.) into millions of different factions with each individual person forced to decide what his or her philosophy and priorities really were and how these ideas fit or did nor fit into today’s conservatism or the Republican Party now.
This morning while I was driving around, I was listening to a guest host on the Brian Kilmeade Radio Show (Pete Hegseth apparently) and I think Matt Schlapp go on and on about how Trump is some much different than other conservatives and Reaganism. Then I get home to open up the first issue edition of a National Review magazine that I have received in about a year due to a special subscription rate and Daniel Foster on the back page declaring that only “six or twelve” conservatives in America still believe in William F. Buckley’s fusionism.
As I stated here about a week ago:
I’ve just come to the realization that Donald Trump is actually much more similar to Ronald Reagan than most rabid pro-Trump fans and rabid Never-Trump critics really want to accept. The two presidents are not completely the same as the times and issues are different, but…
I have no idea what you’re talking about.
At least we can take refuge in the Oscars… Enjoyable and thought-provoking read, Tim: thanks for it.
Times are a-changing.
Only really big stuff is knowable and only when it’s in the past. We can’t see the future and the world is complicated beyond any individual’s understanding. So we can look at growth rates, employment and the size and reach of government relative to these and international threats. Most things are private but these political collective things matter especially if they get more powerful and intrusive in things like regulations that affect ones life and taxes one must pay. As to political leadership we have to look at whether politicians are increasing government power or cutting it and which power are they increasing or cutting. We must also look at what they say they’re going to do or say they’re doing, and the reality. And of course one must have some set of values, historical perspective and explicit biases with which to judge matters. I like what Republicans have said over my life time, but, except for Ike and Reagan, not what they did. I’ve never liked what Democrats say but except for FDR and LBJ they haven’t been much worse than Republicans in what they do. Right now it’s hard to know because the press has deteriorated so extensively. Now the Democrats sound even worse in matters that I value than they have in my life time, but none of them are as dangerously competent as was LBJ. The Republicans sound better at least in speeches and now are actually improving most matters. Opposing or supporting someone because one has some strategic vision of the future is a silly delusion. Support what’s working in the right direction and oppose what isn’t. Oh and it’s the size of government and its influence that matters not whether they get their power from taxes or borrowing. Although borrowing is actually better than taxing because it can’t be controlled by the same crooks that collect it through taxes, but regulations and intrusiveness is the biggest threat. By borrowing I don’t mean just printing money. That can be worse than taxing
Well played. When I tell folks that I’m still considering whether or not to immanentize the eschaton , they start backing away, slowly.
Then I have to quickly google it to remember what it means. But confusion achieved, so I count it as victory.
Maybe I don’t have a tribe but I have a preference at the moment since one of the declared sides has grown so hysterical and intolerant. No matter what virtues they think reside in their “positions” on issues, those other traits are seriously dangerous. What seems to have changed in Americans is not the split of views (there were passions over long-retired issues in former times). It is that people leave or push others out of hobby groups, meetups, churches etc. when they detect that some members are not of their political persuasion, rather than just avoid the subject and share what common interests remain. It’s as if an alternative point of view is a form of corona virus. And yet we deplorales are their neighbors, co-workers, fellow church members, etc. A friend of 40 years has “erased” Eridemus this past year for simply not echoing that person’s loaded utterances, quips and zingers enthusiastically enough. Polite ignoring of them could no longer be tolerated. (Although it took me awhile to realize my new status).
Here is Thomas Sowell’s book: Intellectuals and Society.
https://www.amazon.com/Intellectuals-and-Society/dp/B0034DGXFG/
1.) What if, for the first time, public intellectuals got help accountable for failure? What would that look like? What if they didn’t leave the building quietly after getting their pink slip?
2.) The people really freaking out are the people whose reputation is inescapably linked to the iraq war. Which pretty much everybody has come to acknowledge that the underlying ideology was flawed. Returning to he more modest positions that existed prior to 9/11. (see 1)
3.) Newt Gingrich had Ryan pegged when he said that nobody wanted a right-wing social engineer either. SS was never going to be privatized, but I bet we could have raised the retirement age. (see 1)
4.) The co-option, and then retcon, of the team party by the “principled” minarchists was never real, it was a populist revolt in favor of the new deal consensus. (see 1 and 3)
5.) As peter zeihan says, we are for the first time since the end of the soviet union dealing seriously with the fact the cold war is over and that american interests matter a lot to me Americans. This is shocking to a foreign policy establishment that hasn’t seriously considered whether or not they had a popular mandate. And is openly hostile to the idea that they should have one. The technocracy has been divorced from the people they serve, and all of a sudden the chess pieces get a say. (see 1 and 2)
6.) The shocking a dramatic radicalization of the left post 2012 into a kind of brown themed nazi-ism is shocking and frightening to anybody at all observant of youth culture. Transparent appeasement has broken the faith. (see 1) See this video on why labor lost the election in the UK
7.) The 2012 report and stated intent to engage in hispanic identity politics and pandering broke its relationship with basically everybody not meh-he-can, and liquidated the propositional nation thing. That conceit is dead, and republicans killed it. (see 1 and 6)
Edit: 8.) Prisoner’s dilemmas are dilemmas. (see 6,7)
Welcome to the new america of 360 degree alienation, zero-trust, fairly explicit government distributed ethnic/identity spoils, and raw power politics with a perfunctory veneer of process positivism for some kind of sophistic facade of legitimacy, like a gay church wedding. Its appeal is entirely aesthetic.
Reagan had a Democrat Congress of the old traditional type. They let him (grudgingly) win the Cold War as long as he let them spend. Trump has a worse situation. A Democrat Party that has gone crazy and seems to want Socialism. The DNC has some attempts at restraint but probably only to protect the funders from the threat of wealth confiscation.
What a troubling analogy. I must admit that it’s been ages since I watched Lawrence of Arabia. My vague recollection is that he was a British officer sent to Arabia to represent British interests and rally the Arabs to fight the Ottoman Turks, but he “went native” and abandoned his allegiance to Britain. So he was something of a traitor.
Perhaps I’m remembering the movie incorrectly.
He probably began the tradition of the British foreign service being “Arabist.” They admired the Arabs’ stoicism. Since the Arabs had the oil, important since Churchill began the Royal Navy’s transition from coal to oil, they were a natural alliance.
Laughter is the best response but it’s hard when you want to cry because you know that politicians control so much of your and your descendants lives.