Just to add something to the previous post. I occasionally tune in to John Podhoretz and the folks on the Commentary Magazine Podcast. I can’t really recommend the practice unless you a) are pretty centrist, and b) read or listen pretty broadly, and c) maintain a pretty strong moral and political compass, and then, and only then, d) you do it for science. To put that differently, if you find it even a little bit difficult to put down your side or to genuinely understand the other side, I will not recommend them. From my perspective — I can’t speak to Commentary magazine itself, but in terms of political content from the podcast — they are basically what Fox News would probably be if Trump never happened, or at any rate if “conservatives” had simply stayed on their pre-Trump, anti-Left trajectory regardless. That is not a compliment. And while I have zero compliments to give them, I will say that they can genuinely surprise me, in both good and bad ways.
Yesterday’s podcast was bad. Very bad. I’m still thoroughly baffled as to where the hell these guys are coming from. I can’t say for sure if any of them are card carrying libertarians, but I’d be surprised if they don’t all have a decent amount of libertarian blood in their veins. Regardless, to listen to these so-called constitutional conservatives lambaste Renee Good was absolutely grotesque.
This is something Nick Catoggio touched on earlier in that same newsletter yesterday. “The hard truth,” he wrote, “is that, apart from its negligible libertarian faction, the right has always had a blind spot about police brutality.” I’m definitely not as confident about the libertarian faction being excluded here, but his point sticks:
GOP Rep. Wesley Hunt wasn’t announcing some creepy new Trump-era strain of thought on Thursday when he sneered that “The bottom line is this: When a federal officer gives you instructions, you abide by them and then you get to keep your life.” That’s been the de facto position of many rank-and-file Republicans for decades, one that resurfaces whenever a cop kills someone dubiously. They’ll tell you that it derives from their sympathy for police in having to make impossible split-second life-and-death decisions, but “obey or die” comes straight from the darkest part of the dark authoritarian id.
If you’ve ever wanted to know how the president became so fantastically popular in what was supposedly a small-government movement, start there.
In other words, for many, this issue was settled long before it started. More importantly, it is representative (and reminds us — whoever the ‘us’ I have in mind even is anymore) of a political orientation that very much preceded Trump, a house made ready and a seat kept nice and warm for a long time for someone just like him.
Catoggio:
Once Good partially blocked that street, the officers who needlessly confronted her and then even more needlessly fired a few rounds as she fled were destined to receive every benefit of the doubt and then some from the Republican base. She knew the traffic rules. They told her to get out of the car. She chose to be an outlaw. Obey or die.
To their credit, the folks at Comment have resisted the Trump movement. But not infrequently I listen to them and think, The daylight between you and them is negligible. And yesterday, the space between them and “obey or die” was a black hole.
When the boots are stomping on your face — John, Abe, Christine, Eliana — just remember, you didn’t care when they stomped on (or shot) theirs.