Blaming David Frum

I am in rural Pennsylvania on vacation. The sole general retail store in the largest town (one stoplight, 1,500 – 2,000 residents) within 15-20 miles has a wide selection of Trump hats, stickers and banners for sale. Selena Zito would not be surprised, but a similar retail offering in my home county in the DC suburbs would likely result in some pretext for removing a business license after the police were called multiple times.

Assuming that free academic inquiry will be permitted in the not-so-distant future, a major question should be why it was left to the “extreme right” in Europe and the USA to address obvious ongoing defects in governance. The performance of the “expert” class during the COVID-19 outbreak was appallingly bad. The institutional self-interest of government entities is out of control. Lois Lerner was a symptom, not an exception. Clapper and Brennan presided over (personified?) an era of incompetence, dishonesty and raw unlawful partisanship. The bizarre horror show of students and faculty at our most elite schools cheering Hamas on behalf of sexual libertinisms leaves only the issue as to whether the intellectual or the moral deficiency is greater. We cater to the alarmist nonsense of grifters and the ignoratti while substantive men of the scientific method (Bjorn Lomborg, Roger Pilke Jr., Roy Spencer) are labeled fringe “deniers.” The historical distortions and statistical denials underpinning the tendency to label the American project as a uniquely immoral, racist phenomenon permeate all levels of education and gut the impulse to protect our borders against an onslaught.

Why is it up to the typical Sam’s Club customer to mobilize to oppose this rot with the very limited means of the voting booth? Where the hell are the privileged, the elite? Why do they not perform the diagnosis and use their superior access to public platforms to address real issues?

Our Democracy™ was never opposed to the Mueller attempted coup, the suspension of rights and liberties by overtly bogus “expert” opinion during COVID, the ongoing destruction of urban jurisdictions where law enforcement has been suspended, the collapse of our borders or the weaponization of federal law enforcement.

Preventing a “takeover” (i.e., winning an election) by the Far/Extreme/MAGA Right could be done easily. Fairly and honestly acknowledge the existing moral and intellectual rot, purge grifters and ideologues, preserve the borders and offer better, more competent leaders who respect the values, traditions and legal heritage of the people, and the anger of the “extreme” right will dissipate faster than Facebook can block centrist views.

There ought to be an opening in major media for an American Cicero or Cato the Elder, but our elite is dominated by unoriginal, zeitgeist-surfing zombies, like David Frum (another symptom rather than an exception).

About an hour north of my current location is French Azilum, the site of an abortive attempt to build a refuge for French victims of the Terror in France and of slave uprisings in Saint-Domingue. Some had even suggested that Marie Antoinette be smuggled out and brought there before it was too late. I wonder if Her Majesty had been given the choice between a log cabin on the Susquehanna in Bradford County or the guillotine, she would have opted for the latter. Similarly, our elite chattering class would rather risk the supposed apocalyptic rise of The Right than sober up ideologically, find some humility and discover common cause with their working-class fellow Americans, and thus dissolve the righteous resentment driving so many of us.