re: #25 Charles Johnson

So much of the objection to Trump has to do with style rather than substance, so there’s a point which they’ll never cross. Shits like Erikson have no objection to anything Trump is, except that he fails to speak the preferred lexicon of dogwhistles and pap.

But there’s also the shared culture of knowledge that the US right has formulated, in which they’re axiomatically the “smart,” “serious” people because they’re cynical, open only to neoliberal* solutions because they’re “practical,” and—let’s face it—old white dudes who imagine they know everything because they’re part of a monied class in which they’re sheltered from nuanced criticism of their ideas and the suggestion that making money does not make one generally competent at philosophy, science, or macroeconomics.

_{*in the true sense of the word, where progress occurs and problems are solved by market-based methods.}

There is a distinct US elite culture that’s deeply pseudointellectual. There the incredibly rich men who can’t admit their wealth was not earned, and their “genius” amounts to a single well-timed idea that does not translate…but they’re rich enough to pay people to legitimize what they think. I pick on David Brooks because he’s the troubadour of the group…college-lit level metaphors and quote-dropping drizzled over self-interest and fallacy…and a bunch of Never-Trump writers and _*cough* thinkers operate at the same level, but they are well-compensated and well-circulated because they sing the praises of their patrons and the status quo.

I’m disappointed by Max Boot but not surprised. Conservatism has become defined by a continuous flight from self-reflection and skepticism, and each Never Trumper has a point of failure, a thing that will not bear critique and that will drive them towards a thoughtless emotive “conservative” take. Over and over we see these individuals assume that even though they have been wrong…about conservatism’s arc over forty years, about specific predictions, about each new day under Trump…that they are still more mature and intelligent than any given liberal, any given person younger than them, any given person from a different, minority background.

This is the authoritarian kernel that defines the GOP: the base assumption that they are right (correct) and right (moral) and cannot be questioned or contradicted. Everyone else must run through completely arbitrary obstacles to “prove” their rightness/righteousness, but the conservatives are the deciders and their method of discernment can’t be questioned. They cannot fail.

This is the pattern they default to. Everything else…all the beliefs that are supposed fixed, the history and traditions that supposedly define them as a conservative movement…is subject to alteration.

Boot, feeling threatened, has reflexively moved into a default posture: that all leftist ideas are inherently childlike and do not bear consideration.