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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
Just looked at the mast head and I do miss their movie review podcast.
But their true test, is if Biden does pull out of Afghanistan.
These people have have never loved a President than one who gets them into a war.
Since Onan was killed for this particular sin, shouldn’t it be ‘you did you’?
These people were never actually conservatives. They were always grifters.
One can only hope.
Everyone knows The Bulwark is basically The Lincoln Project with fewer pedophiles.*
*as far as we know.
The real tell is how they keep mouthing the media lies that have long been exposed as lies. (Mona lies in every single sentence she writes.)
Either they’re too dumb to inform themselves, or they’re just hoping to keep spreading lies.
When I describe Trump as a catalyst I meant it in a good way, taking those who had inchoate despairs and objections, even those who were not conservatives, and coalescing them into a single entity: Trump Supporters, MAGA Hatters, those who would Make America Great Again. But yes, I think he catalyzed nebulous psychological illnesses in some of those ostensibly on the right, into showing with crystal clarity their dysfunction as well.
This might be another place for “and.”
Hahahaha! I spent the whole time reading this thread thinking that The Bulwark was The Remnant. The Remnant is the Jonah G. one, right? Which one is The Bulwark?
This thread has made me very glad that I’ve never bothered with either one – they sound like dreck. I get my ups and downs from Ricochet, as should anyone.
Come on man. So now you’re just casually accusing organizations of hosting multiple pedophiles? Is that Q-ey? Seems a little Q-ey. But we know thats not a thing so.
Someone seems defensive.
The one started by Kristol and Sykes — with the stated goal to destroy anyone on the right who dared support President Trump.
Jonah also started the Dispatch, because he apparently thinks that anyone will believe he and his compatriots – esp david french! – are serious reporters.
I’m not sure I agree that Trump’s words were not filtered. Either he is a boob who wears his heart on his sleeve, or else he is a savvy, complex fighter, who takes no stuff, especially malevolent lies and distortions.
Some say he’s a religiously-trained, or self-trained, optimist. And another who spoke from some personal acquaintance with Trump thinks he is genuinely good to people, in the way that hopes for the best in people and wants them to succeed, and wants to help them improve and succeed, even if the odds of changing for the better or of success are against them.
Is Trump thin-skinned, as many detractors say? I don’t think so. He’s blunt, and takes no crap, but I don’t see him as a man who stays up nights obsessed with and sweating about an insult. With the insults he’s received, he would have thrown an unhinged temper tantrum on live TV by now if that were the case, sort of like Joe Biden poking that guy in the chest and shouting, “What, what, what, what, WHAT?” or challenging someone to a fight out behind the shed.
I also think that it’s a shame that he has had people lament, in what I would characterize as a mildly condescending manner, that Trump has a Greek-tragedy-style fatal flaw. I think if anything he was politically naive, but not much more so than most presidential candidates; and that he was a president who disturbed a hornets’ net of lawless, clandestine operators whose quasi-legitimate government organization dates back to the forties and fifties, an organization that has increasingly ruled US affairs ever since. After all, he was targeted by their minions since his candidacy, and he tried to call them off first thing in his presidency but was essentially scoffed at.
Trump’s ultimate legacy, whether it makes the history books or not, will be that he both exposed the depth, breath and malignant odor of the shadowy group composing the US’s shadow government, and that he galvanized (or catalyzed) the greatest number and broadest assortment of political and social factions into one perhaps in US history.
Jonathan Swift: “When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign: That the dunces are all in confederacy against him.”
Kristol, Sykes, Kasich, Sasse, et. al.
One of many great and elegant sentences in this article.
Energy required.
That’s covetousness.
Maybe in biblical times, but I don’t remember ever hearing anyone say they “covet” something. “Envy” seems to have at least two meanings now.
Yes, I suppose so. But the way I differentiate them is that envy is wanting a car as good as your neighbor’s, keeping up with the Joneses, so to speak. But covetousness is not having a wife like your next door neighbor’s, but having her.
(Or his house; or his wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his ass, or anything that is your neighbor’s.)
Put another way, envying another’s Faberge egg causes you to buy one for yourself. Coveting someone’s Faberge egg is a precursor to theft.
Again, that’s a pretty biblical interpretation. If you went up to people on the street and asked them what it would be if they wanted their neighbor’s house, or his wife… Would you bet any money that they would say “covetousness” rather than “envy?”
Maybe the difference could be explained to them. And most people in the US are probably not Christians. “Covet” is rarely used, and when it is, it is usually in a vaguely religious or in a Biblical context.
I think the story of Onan is misused to be against masturbation. I think G-d smote him because he refused to impregnate his wife. (It was implied that she was hot.)
I think it was more like, he refused to impregnate his brother’s (hot) widow. Something like that.
I updated the original post.
It seems like a snarky remark about the Lincoln Project’s documented creep(s) 0 is fewer that 1 or 2, as basic non-woke math will tell you.
If you click into this, it’s pretty interesting.
This is the great mystery of Bill Kristol. His son, Joseph, was a 2nd Lt with the 1st Marines, 3rd Battalion, 5th Regiment based at Camp Pendleton. The 3/5 lost 25 Marines and had close to 200 wounded in Helmand Province where Kristol the Younger directed artillery fire.
Lt. Kristol had to write some of the letters back home. Unlike the French Davidians, he was no JAG and was in the line of fire at all times. I often wonder if Bill would feel differently he had received a letter instead.
Do not miss David Frum’s Twitter feed this morning.