The Hinternet Editorial Board v. Justin Smith-Ruiu thing is quite interesting; it gets to the heart of what, in Normal Times, would be an important internal disagreement among conservatives. Now it feels more like a disagreement with nothing to be internal to except the remnant kerfuffle that makes up whatever conservatism still is. I mentioned to the person who shared it that my dad and I hashed out a more-or-less identical conversation while we were stacking firewood last night. I also mentioned that “In this tragicomedy, I play the part of the editorial board and my dad plays the part of JSR.” That is, I (the self-described 95% pacifist) am the one defending “American hegemony” and my dad, along with every other conservative Christian I know, is sounding more and more isolationist with each passing YouTube feed day.
For what it’s worth — and I really don’t know what it’s worth — the argument I find myself at least tacitly on the side of is not new, but it has changed hands. So part of what makes this all so tricky to navigate is not necessarily the argument itself but who I’m having it with and why.
In my experience, I have these political conversations almost entirely with Christians who have been longtime “conservative” Republicans, most of whom I have known for almost 40 years. They know perfectly well (as we all do) to say that their Christianity comes first. And, in their defense, I think that that fundamentally holds in their day-to-day interactions, and that it would continue to hold on pain of death. But for some reason when they are talking politics or walking into the voting booth, no line from Jesus is particularly effective. Whether on the Democrats, the border, or foreign policy, the political habitat to which they belong clearly has the first word. But I’m not writing this at the moment to talk about Jesus and politics per se but more generally about the truth. What makes conversion in recent years so exasperating is the lack of memory that everyone seems to be suffering from. Memory, that is, of their own not-so-distantly past selves.
To wit, there is one person whom I can invoke to some sobering effect from time to time. (Again, I’m sorry, but it’s not Jesus.) The argument made by the editorial board above was given, less apologetically for American hubris but almost verbatim, by Charles Krauthammer in his 2009 “Decline Is a Choice” speech. (Right on down to the “you buy the health care, we’ll buy the bullets” bit.) And in the kind of average-Joe conversation I’m talking about, that speech will get you somewhere.
Mention Jesus’ name and we’ll dance all night with “yeah buts” and drag ourselves down endless rabbit holes explaining “the biblical context that contextualizes the difference from our context and what he really meant and what was I saying?”
Mention Krauthammer, however, and we’ll reminisce.
(I’m not simply criticizing here. Krauthammer is second only to Christopher Hitchens in recently deceased journalists I very selfishly wish we could still hear from.)
I suspect one of the reasons that Krauthammer seems, at least momentarily, to break through in these conversations is that he reminds “conservatives” of the (political) selves they seem to have very quickly forgotten: the tear-down-this-wall Reaganites who were proud of their country and its presence in the world. I’m sure that it is also something of an irksome wake-up to be shown that their present (i.e. latest) policy/American-historical positions align not with Krauthammer but with then-president Obama, a man they despised, and continue to despise, to no end. (Trump may have lit the fuse, but it was the absurdly irrational hatred of Obama that prepared me for my rocket launch out of the Republican Party.)
It’s worth noting here that I have no problem with criticisms of America or criticisms of its military actions in the world. (Au contraire!) What I am frustrated by is a group of people claiming to have the capital-T Truth of the world guiding their hearts and minds but who have recently rediscovered Eisenhower’s “military industrial complex” speech not through Stanley Hauerwas or George Hunsinger but through RFK Jr. and Tim Pool. Call me crazy — and I do feel crazy — but the truth, if it can even be present here at all, feels a little less than safe in a group of people whose politics is by all appearances more enlightened by Jordan Peterson and Russel Brand than by Jesus and St. Paul.
And all this is to say nothing about the immigrant-slandering hatred that seems to be such ready, low-hanging fruit for the New Isolationists and self-appointed (oh yes, the ironic shoe fits) Border Czars.
In any case, while I am aware that my vote for Harris could be framed as a “Flight 93,” do-or-die approach to the upcoming election, I am disinclined to appeal to too much doom-predicting, simply because I have no secret knowledge about what will happen if either candidate is elected. (The utter doom of Republican integrity, though… that’s straight-up prophecy, continuously fulfilled.)
I phrase my choice more like this: I would rather have my political (i.e. policy) opponents in charge than have my own group maintain political power by dishonest and harsh means. In a way, it’s simply a political party version of what Simone Weil said about her country: I suffer more from the humiliations and lies inflicted by those on my own side — be they Christians or conservatives — than from those inflicted by anyone else. I prefer giving power to someone who I believe loves her country and, however imperfectly and misguidedly (or sometimes stupidly), wants the best for it and for the world over embarrassingly clinging to it ourselves through a lifelong con artist who suddenly “shares our values and concerns” and whose presence requires the maintenance of, and acquiescence to, historic levels of propaganda and bullshit.
And, in this case at least, I would rather state it in these terms than to take the heavenly high road of a protest vote.
(For the record, I do not believe in a “wasted vote” and absolutely support the very legitimate third party or protest vote. I am, however, skeptical of the idea that George Will & Co. can wash their moral hands of the binary choice as easily as a lone farmer or logger in Maine might. But that’s an incomplete thought and another subject.)
As for the argument itself, I belive that national borders, while not unimportant, are ultimately artificial, temporary, blurry lines in a world shared by all. Far from being an excuse for bullshit revanchism or irredentism, this means that, just as no man is an island, no nation lives in isolation. And as such, I believe that America’s presence on the world stage, while horrifyingly imperfect, is still ultimately that of, to use Krauthammer’s phrase, the most benign hegemon the world has ever known. (If you follow the previous link, I hope you’ll see that I am extremely sensitive to the fact that “benign” by itself is hardly a good word here. That qualifying “most” is doing a lot of work.)
That said, I deeply admire Stanley Hauerwas and George Hunsinger, both of whose work has affected me greatly. (Hauerwas is a remarkably consistent Christian pacifist. I don’t recall if Hunsinger describes himself as a pacifist, but his criticizing of American foreign policy is also consistent and very much predates the current trendiness to do so. And it predates it because it is a Christian criticism, not an antagonistic fad.) I have no desire to make excuses for the American nation. I hate guns, I hate bombs, and I hate violence of any kind — especially our own violence. Something you’ll find if you follow that Simone Weil link above is a quote from Vaclav Havel alongside it, which offers what I think is an indispensable ingredient to national self-confidence and which I find not only missing but disturbingly criticized in Krauthammer’s speech. Namely, the public shame and sorrow for the suffering we have caused, the regular admittance of which is not antithetical to self-confidence but is in fact its characteristic sine qua non.
Another word for it is honesty. If people want to embrace an isolationist policy, that’s fine. As Krauthammer points out, there is plenty of it in U.S. history to fall back to. But I’m not convinced that that’s actually what’s happening. As Jonah Goldberg recently pointed out, “At a certain level of abstraction, there’s a lot to defend in the [non-interventionist position]. The problem … is that the facts supplied by the most passionate and ardent proponents of that position are lies, and falsehoods, and distortions, or just based on ignorance. And if you had a really good case to make along those lines, you would’t need to make stuff up. And yet, when you look at the things that people say about Ukraine, when you look at the things they say about NATO, before you get into the whether or not they come from a legitimate position, you have to start [by] asking the question ‘Are they true?’”
I have lost all confidence in most conservatives’ ability to ask let alone answer that question.
One of the simplest ways to describe the conservative mentality is (as I think David Brooks put it) that it believes in “making our mistakes slowly.” It believes that bad memory and big moves can cause a lot of damage, especially when combined. And I have sensed deep and terrifying levels of this combination in The Group Formerly Known as Reaganite Conservatives for some time. Any group this belligerently incapable of recognizing the truth needs as little power as possible in this relatively benign hegemon of a country.
While we attempt to stiff-arm the bullshitters and the propagandists — and the millions who freely buy and sell from them — maybe we can find a way to less violently and unapologetically … to more graciously and sorrowfully preside over our messed up beautiful world.
Or, to extend another Krauthammer phrase, one which has also been quite effective in the last 8 years of conversation: It’s a tough choice, and of course I could be wrong, but I am trying not to make others — other people and other countries — pay a potentially heavy price just so an increasingly nefarious looking bunch of propagandists, supported by an army of amnesiacs, can enjoy the catharsis of kicking over a table.