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The Bulwark
It’s funny how catalysts work.
In chemical terms, catalysts are things that accelerate reactions but that are not themselves consumed in those reactions. When you add oxygen to a fire, the rate of burning is increased — but the oxygen is consumed in the process: oxygen is not a catalyst. On the other hand, the platinum in the catalytic converter in your car is a catalyst: it catalyzes (facilitates) a chemical reaction that reduces toxic carbon monoxide and waste hydrocarbons, converting these substances into, largely, non-toxic carbon dioxide and water. (Platinum isn’t a perfect catalyst, in that it’s gradually changed in the process, but it does a good job nonetheless.)
President Trump was a kind of catalyst. He caused a lot of conservatives to undergo a chemical transformation, and to become something other than, and, I think, less than, the conservatives they used to be, all without undergoing any obvious transformation himself. We need look no further than The Bulwark to see a beautiful example of this peculiar transformation.
The folks who founded The Bulwark were once respectable conservatives, but the catalyzing effect of an encounter with President Trump’s peculiar brand of unconscious knee-jerk conservatism (a style which, while never really to my liking, I nonetheless profoundly miss) changed them.
And so these august luminaries of once-upon-a-time conservatism are now running stories like this one: Guns Should be Safe, Legal, and Rare. Let me try to put this gently, but still in keeping with the tone of the piece (which would run afoul of the Ricochet CoC for its casual use of the F-bomb): To hell with that, you whinging pansies of The Bulwark.
Or how about this gem? Can Biden Become America’s Next Great President?
No. No, he can’t. Because he’s an incompetent who doesn’t understand the first thing about American greatness, has always pandered to the mainstream of his mediocre party, and is now in the thrall of his wife or whoever programs his enhanced-font teleprompter and sets out his medications every day. There is nothing about the man that ever hinted at greatness, and nothing about him now that even suggests basic competence. He’s a doddering place-holder, rewarded for not being someone roundly hated by the media and targeted by them and Big Tech for destruction.
What an amazing catalyst was President Trump, to transform such erstwhile political stalwarts as Mona Charen and Bill Kristol and Jonathan V. Last and Charlie Sykes into such mealy and base metal.
The Bulwark has become a woke leftist rag, albeit a virtual one. They should now be seen as yet another organ of the progressive mainstream media.
Maybe I’m sorry to lose these sad mediocre Quislings. But I don’t think I am.
Published in Politics
“President Trump’s peculiar brand of unconscious knee-jerk conservatism”
I don’t see Trump as either a pure conservative or as ‘unconscious’, he is an intuitive analyst of problems who attempts to address them in a pragmatic manner.
@jameslileks this is genius.
I am so stealing this…….
P Chem…
P Chem?
P Chem?!?
No need to text me, I already am having flashbacks. Physical Chemistry was brutal, and not because of the instructor. Hardest dang C I ever earned. On the first day, when we covered the syllabus, we also derived the ideal gas law from first principles. Bring working knowledge three dimensional calculus (despite it not being a prerequisite) or get wrecked.
What I wrote was based more on organic chemistry and a qualitative view.
Our country has a epidemic of people indulging in the sin of pride. People will say anything and do anything to “likes” from the “right people”. The epidemic of sin allows for the proliferation of evil (like Identity Marxism) and very, very few religious and cultural leaders are speaking out against it. In fact, many pastors and religious leaders gleefully indulge in the sin of pride, leading their flocks astray. There is much work to do.
This is a really great discussion.
What if a place has the goal of publishing pieces from a range of views that don’t just conform to whatever their readers already believe? Crazy idea.
Is this a discussion or just a circle of back pats for who can come up with the wittiest way to slam Bill Kristol?
I get the sense that Newsweek is trying to do that.
Having said that, I get all of my information from Hate Radio and I think I can win most policy arguments.
I think the comments are pretty insightful. I don’t think it’s particularly easy to explain what is wrong with those guys.
I don’t think they have a care in the world about why populism and Socialism are so problematic right now. They just want things to go back to the old way.
Not sure. I do know that I liked him so much better in When Harry Met Sally, though.
No, they actually didn’t. They may have horrified the news media and politicians, especially leftists, but for the vast majority of Americans, the deaths were merely a reminder that in a nation of 330 million people, or a world of nearly 8 billion, people can die for all kinds of reasons. It’s often risky to be alive.
Yes
Possibly my friend didn’t understand this principle — not that I do. As I said, I’m not a chemist:
Some of the chem majors I knew called it “orgasmic” chemistry . . .
The saddest part is once upon a time I could comprehend P Chem and Organic Chemistry. The information is still there, locked in my neurons, but I couldn’t access it with a 45 pointed at my temple.
I enjoyed your comment — and particularly its conclusion. I think you have a typographical error in one of these two sentences (but I’m not sure which, since I don’t know if by “activation energy” you mean the energy provided, or the energy required).
No, it’s a good idea. But a place that claims to represent conservatism, and that has positioned itself as the bulwark against something it claims to perceive as antithetical to conservatism, is misrepresenting itself if it then embraces what is truly antithetical to conservatism — to wit, the progressive agenda.
That’s what’s offensive about The Bulwark: they’re frauds. They’re pretenders to conservatism. I’d like them better if they admitted that they were more like The Atlantic or The New Republic, enthusiastically embracing anti-conservative ideas. But instead they’re trying to fool enough conservatives into believing that they haven’t abandoned the movement in favor of something that has a lot more social status and panache than anything having to do with their nemesis, the oh-so-low-class ex-President Trump.
Hank, I like the catalyst metaphor, but I’m not sure whether it’s the best one.
Another possible metaphor is the acid test. Historically, this one derived from the use of acid to distinguish gold from other metals, I think. Gold is not completely unreactive, but it is nearly so, and I think that it takes a special combination of acids to react with gold.
Jerry, I always enjoy your comments, despite them usually being somehow contrarian. ;)
Catalyst or acid? I think you have to ask yourself whether you believe these poseurs would have eventually exposed themselves as the squishes they are, or if they’d have remained steady conservatives without the kick provided by the low-bred mongrel Trump.
I honestly don’t know. I suspect it varies, one to another. I also think most of them were more interested in being impressive than in being conservative.
No one could alter their opinion on any single issue this dramatically based solely on repugnance for an oversized very New York personality without fraud being involved at some point. The fact that many of the most vociferous voices are native New Yorkers creates an impression that this is an intra-borough blood feud and rivalry rather than meaningful opposition.
The Bulwark, National Review and The Remnant (imagine my minimal embarrassment when I remembered that Goldberg’s website is called TheDispatch) are just not interesting or important enough to survive the departure of Trump for more than two years.
The people who write for their respective website might be shocked into unemployment as the Weekly Standard Staff was when their Billionaire underwriter moves on to some other enthusiasm.
There’s nothing wrong with being witty and making a point at the same time.
James certainly has a way with words to go along with his clear view of the world. If it weren’t un-Christian, I would envy him his talents.
I think “envy” implies wishing you had something that someone else has, by taking it from them. Since I don’t think you would want to take his talents so that you have them and he no longer does, rather you would like to have them ALSO, then “envy” doesn’t apply.
Ah, the power of ‘and’ on full display.
As Lileks said, “you do you”.
I would love to have a granular reaction from the local leading Never Trumper. lol
It seems that Kristol never learned the meaning of “non sequitur.”
Letting Puerto Rico in is a terrible idea. It would be like making Chicago a separate state. The average person there just wants the corruption wiped out.
The rest of it just shows what a maniac he is.
Cultural Appropriation. Literally shaking.
Well, it does involve stripping it in the dark with an excess of alcohol…