Get the Ricochet app
Ricochet will work fine in a browser on your mobile devices, but for the best experience please download our app.
I continue to hold the opinion that TDS is based on snobbishness, a denial of the despair that a huckster from the grubby end of New York could so clearly outperform the combed, curried, and credentialed elites of the generations now living.
With this in mind, it is frustrating to read William Voegeli's piece in the Claremont Review of Books about Robert Saldin and Steven Teles' Never Trump: The Revolt of the Conservative Elites.
The review describes a detailed account of the intellectual journey leading victims of TDS to debase themselves. Names are named, examples are footnoted. Capitol dwellers will no doubt flip immediately to the index to find mentions of themselves. The review is an impressive description of the topics covered and details documented in the book, but it never offers an opinion on why TDS takes so virulent a hold on minds we would normally admire.
The review is worth a read. I recommend it to Ricochet readers. The book may be worth the time to those with an interest in this topic.
It all comes down to Pride of Caste, in my mind.
Discussion (41)
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
Yep. The snobbishness is against the people that vote for Trump. He is the proxy/champion of the working class American .
STAFF • CHARTER MEMBER
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
TDS is the MAGA version of yelling "racism!" (or misogyny or any of the long-line of other made-up "phobias.") The intent is avoid the substance of any argument by making one's opponent the real problem and to not deal with the issue at hand. Donald Trump has taught you to embrace as much leftist dogma as you'll tolerate, chief among these is your victimhood.
The man with the gold-plated toilet has got you down for the class struggle. He tells you he's saving the country from Marxism as he conditions you to accept it. In the last couple of months he has suggested all sorts of programs to make you more dependent on the government, from "tariff 'dividend' checks, to "warrior dividends" to farmer relief (from hardships caused by the same tariffs) to "Trump Health Freedom Accounts." (And while he's doing that he can slap his name on a few more government buildings, a la Robert Mugabe.)
Yes, as I sit here in my 70-year-old bungalow, with my 13-year old car in the garage and with three of my four kids paying endlessly on their student loans, rest assured that all my disagreements with MAGA are a caste problem. And all from a book written by a progressive professor who writes regularly for such Trumpy stalwart publications as The Atlantic and the New Republic.
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
I agree with the post author that the linked review is worth reading and reflecting upon.
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
That's not true. Racism is a form a bigotry and Christians and Americans are culturally against it. TDS on the other-hand is a condition where the inflicted are obsessed with a particular individual. Saying that a person has TDS just highlights how their thinking is overly affected by the existence of Trump. For example, on a post about class/caste warfare in the GOP, someone with TDS will bring up TDS.
CONTRIBUTOR • CHARTER MEMBER
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
I keep reading wrong stuff about Trump's background. He's not from a grubby part of New York; he's from a very pleasant suburban part of Queens, the western end of Long Island. Almost everyone I ever knew in Manhattan was from somewhere else; they moved there when they got rich or lucky. No, elite NYC residents do not look down on Trump for that reason.
I know that it's conservative dogma that the country is ruled by faceless effete snobs in lavender jumpsuits who sneer at the help. I only consider something dogma if it's true. It ain't, and we would do better to deal with reality, not cartoon reality.
You're seeing five of 41 comments. Sign in, or join for just $5 per month, to read them all and add your own.