One of the reasons I like reading Kevin Williamson is that he gives a breath of, uh… not fresh air, but very honest air, anyway. (I’ll save “fresh air” for Wendell Berry, or stuff like this.) He’s as solid an avenue as you’ll find for vicariously venting frustration at the general lack of integrity in politics. And his humor lacks for nothing.
Another reason I like reading him is that I find a lot of chances to see where I part ways with him, and perhaps with “conservatism” — not only as it has become but how it has always been, at least during my lifetime. And that’s been important in finding my feet, and my voice, in the current era.
For example, here is Bill Kristoll, saying it the way I really try to say it:
Trumpism is a horror show, and the Trumpists who strut upon its stage, full of sound and fury, are pretty horrifying. So one’s inclined to praise those normal Republicans who avoid joining in the most ghastly performances of the horror show.
Not that these respectable “normie” types have had the nerve to actually oppose Trump. That would apparently be a bridge of courage and principle too far. Some may privately disdain him. But they are almost uniformly supporting him for a second term as president.
These normie Republicans, their admirers point out, have tried to minimize their participation in some of the worst features of Trumpism, even as they back Trump. They aren’t personally crazy, and often aren’t personally cruel. Those who want to believe in a constructive future for the GOP place great hope on them.
But they don’t deserve much praise, and they aren’t worthy of much hope. Because they refuse to be honest about the craziness and cruelty in the candidate and movement they support, they end up legitimizing and strengthening the craziness and the cruelty.
These fellow travelers provide false comfort that you can retain a modicum of dignity and decency as you go along with Trump and get along with Trumpism. In doing so, they strengthen Trumpism. […]
In the context of Trump’s Big Lie, smaller lies from more apparently reasonable actors matter. They help legitimize Trumpist lies about massive election fraud. They help lay the groundwork for another Big Lie this November.
… [N]ormie Republicans shouldn’t be let off the hook. The normie Republicans are not upholding democratic norms in the face of Trump. Instead, they’re normalizing Trumpist lies and demagoguery. And so they’ve chosen to be part of the problem, not part of the solution.
And here is Williamson yesterday, saying how I really feel (emphasis mine):
One of the dumbest complaints I hear 1,838 times a day goes roughly like this: “You say Trump is a would-be tyrant, a moron, a monster of moral depravity—which means that you’re saying that the people who support him, half the country, are idiots and moral miscreants and fools.”
Yes, that’s right. That’s exactly what I am saying.
I don’t know if the difference here has anything to do with “parting ways.” It may be a subtle difference at times, but I try really, really hard (with notable and frequent failures) to stick with Bill Kristol’s somewhat softer approach. (In this case, at least; I don’t read much from Kristol, so I don’t know how representative this is. I read Williamson enough to know that it is very representative.)
Like I said above, I enjoy this. And I laughed out loud in the middle of a breakroom filled with people when I read it. When you see craziness, it really helps to just call it craziness.
But I’m also torn.
Williamson provides both the temptation to give in to the harsher condemnation…
My case is that these people should be ashamed of themselves, that a self-respecting society wouldn’t allow such a specimen as Lindsey Graham to vote, much less to serve in the Senate. I understand that hurts some feelings out there in the dank, wooly wilds of the “real America.”
So what?
And also a decent reason to refrain from it…
There is a great paradox at the heart of American life: Americans are, in many capacities, amazing people. … Visit an American community in crisis, and you’ll see remarkable neighborliness, cooperation, and good citizenship. Philosophy, religion, medicine, military affairs, science, music—Americans excel in an astonishing number of fields. The American scientist, the American artist, the American businessman—impressive figures, all.
The American voter? A howling moonbat. I’d lend Ozzy Osbourne my truck on a Saturday night before I trusted one of those lunatics with any measure of real power beyond what is absolutely necessary.
Williamson’s point is to argue that we have a citizenship problem more than we have a leadership problem. (Echoing his colleague Nick Catoggio’s infinitely repeated point: “We don’t have a Trump problem; we have a Trump voter problem.”) And I don’t for a second deny my desire to simply nod and agree. But he also does a pretty good job convincing me of the opposite of his point. Namely, that we do in fact have, more than anything else, a leadership problem. Williamson does, after all, end his piece with an example not from Wendell Berry or even Virgil but from Cato — you know, the prominent Roman statesman and leader.
On the whole, and as usual, I can’t deny much of what Williamson says. But there is — I think, I wonder — a case to be made, and in fact is being made by Williamson (pace Williamson), that humans, not just Americans, have always been “politically stupid cretins and moonbats.” (And this can be as much a grand comedy as a grand tragedy. Just think of philosophizing cavemen and revolutionaries in slippers.)
If so, should this make us despise our neighbors and ourselves more? Or should we be particularly pissed at the “public servants” who aspired to leadership who have proved even more cretinous and selfish and opportunistic and vile than any of us or our neighbors — even the ones who stupidly support those “public servants?”
In other words, is our citizenship problem really much different than it has ever been?
Damned if I know.
But speaking of parting ways. It’s funny that Williamson mentions Obama’s “You didn’t build that” speech, since that is exactly what I had in mind last week with the kinds of absurdity that drove me toward the door. Right after Obama said it, I remember spending a baffling three hours on the way to Boston listening to a van full of self-professing Christians condemn the “Marxist, communist, community organizer (who probably wasn’t even born here — wink, wink, giggle, nod)” for reminding the country that most of us do in fact drive on roads and bridges that we didn’t build ourselves. That phrase got a lot of mileage in the Republican Party, and with every single Christian I knew. I have never understood why it got even an inch, especially with the proud spiritual descendants of a people who were given “a land on which you had not labored, and towns that you had not built, and you live in them; you eat the fruit of vineyards and oliveyards that you did not plant.” To Williamson’s point, these are often very good people, and often very thoughtful people, but you’re up against some cosmic principalities and powers if you expect them to extend that thoughtfulness to politics.
And also to Williamson’s own point, Williamson himself, I think, wants to have his cake here and eat it too. He tells us that we should all be grateful for the Republic that we were lucky enough to born into because we didn’t build it — and he’s right, we should, because we didn’t. But for some reason if a Democrat dares to remind the cretonous wombats driving south over the Piscataqua River Bridge “By the way, you didn’t build this” — well, that’s clearly just “collectivist” nonsense and we don’t need to stand for it.
Whether it’s bridges or “the republic,” it is good to be reminded of the things we enjoy which we did not build. The fact that we so irrationally and stubbornly reject this when the Other Team says it is part of The Problem. And the amount of dopamine that gets released doing exactly that is largely why I left. Or in this case, why I kindly part ways.