Trump: it’s all mutable

The New Neo Posted on by

Do you like Donald Trump’s policy papers?

That’s nice, but they don’t mean much:

Trump’s abrupt dismissal of his own tax plan, which he regularly cited on the campaign trail, came a day after he signaled a willingness to raise the federal minimum wage, which would be a major reversal from his stance in the primaries.

Remember the idea that Obama could take the gloves off during his second term and do what he really wanted to do, especially after the 2014 midyear elections, because he no longer had to answer to the electorate?

Remember how a lot of people have criticized politicians for pandering to the base in the primary and then tacking to the middle for the general?

Well, Trump is doing some combination of the two. He no longer has to please the GOP base, who can do little or nothing to stop him now. So now he’s appealing to Democrats and even the Sanders wing.

Unlike Trump, most candidates have a track record in political office to which to compare their campaign rhetoric. So we can at least try to judge or estimate what their real positions are, the ones they are most likely to carry out or try to carry out if elected. With Trump, since he has no such political track record, we have to rely on the evidence of his life, which is that he will do whatever he judges to be best for Trump, and that everything he says is up for grabs except as it relates to that one guiding principle.

I never gave a hoot what his website policy papers said, and I can’t understand why anyone would. It’s just window-dressing. Some say well, let’s roll the dice. But sometimes it feels more like playing Russian roulette with more than one loaded chamber.

[NOTE: I don’t watch Joe Scarborough, but I’ve read over and over that he’s been a big Trump booster. Well, today Scarborough criticized Trump for one of the few policy points about which Trump has been consistent:

“And I gotta say I was surprised and disappointed … that yesterday, he stuck by the Muslim ban. That’s a loser. It’s a loser with the majority of Americans. And you’ve got Republicans like me. I just, I’m not going to vote for a guy” like that, Scarborough said…

Surprised? Why? Disappointed? Why? Not going to vote for him? Then why did you support him all this time?]

The history of the US primary system

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “Nick” wrote:

…[R]emember, the reason that the parties got rid of the back rooms was Nixon. The Republicans chose him for the ticket five times. Unlikable and corrupt. The system had to be scrapped after that.

After I read that, I thought about the primary system and how it came to be. Although I realized I didn’t remember exactly, it seemed to me that it was not in reaction to Nixon.

And that turns out to have been the case. I think a refresher course in what actually happened is in order:

In 1910, Oregon became the first state to establish a presidential preference primary, which requires delegates to the National Convention to support the winner of the primary at the convention. By 1912, twelve states either selected delegates in primaries, used a preferential primary, or both. By 1920 there were 20 states with primaries, but some went back, and from 1936 to 1968, 12 states used them.

At that point, most primaries were non-binding. They were indications to the leadership of what the people preferred, but in many states the leaders could ignore that.

Seeking to boost voter turnout, New Hampshire simplified its ballot access laws in 1949…The first-in-the-nation New Hampshire primary has since become a widely-observed test of candidates’ viability.

The impetus for national adoption of the binding primary election was the chaotic 1968 Democratic National Convention. Vice President Hubert Humphrey secured the nomination despite not winning a single primary under his own name. After this, a Democratic National Committee-commissioned panel led by Senator George McGovern ”“ the McGovern”“Fraser Commission ”“ recommended that states adopt new rules to assure wider participation. A large number of states, faced with the need to conform to more detailed rules for the selection of national delegates, chose a presidential primary as an easier way to come into compliance with the new national Democratic Party rules. The result was that many more future delegates would be selected by a state presidential primary. The Republicans also adopted many more state presidential primaries.

See more here:

[1901-1906] is the time period in which many states started experimenting with or implementing the new primary system…By 1912, almost all states had some mix of laws that would allow for a preferential primary and/or a direct election of delegates to the convention…

The article goes on to explain that it was the McCarthy/Humphrey convention, and criticism by McCarthy, that propelled the process that led to the modern primary system, and it occurred in the Democratic primary.

The Republicans followed, but more slowly and more piecemeal, and the process doesn’t seem to have been a reaction to Nixon:

After a heated 1964 GOP National Convention, the republicans realized that they needed to take a more critical look at their own process…The GOP would then go on to form three committees to review their own procedures, but with interestingly different goals than the Democrats.

Read the whole thing—at least the part about the history of both parties with the primary system. To me, the primary system seems to have been a long time coming, and part and parcel of the slow evolution (devolution?) from a republic to a democracy.

One difference between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump

The New Neo Posted on by

Republican Senator Ben Sasse has written an open letter to America. I agree with a great deal of it, but I wanted to take issue with something.

Here’s an excerpt:

In the history of polling, we’ve basically never had a candidate viewed negatively by half of the electorate. This year, we have two. In fact, we now have the two most unpopular candidates ever ”“ Hillary by a little, and Trump by miles (including now 3 out of 4 women ”“ who vote more and influence more votes than men). There are dumpster fires in my town more popular than these two “leaders.”

With Clinton and Trump, the fix is in. Heads, they win; tails, you lose. Why are we confined to these two terrible options? This is America. If both choices stink, we reject them and go bigger. That’s what we do.

Remember: our Founders didn’t want entrenched political parties. So why should we accept this terrible choice?

Sasse goes on to suggest a non-Trump non-Hillary candidate (not himself, by the way), but he doesn’t say who that person would be.

I like the idea, but not naming such a person is one of the problems. If one such person existed—if there was that much consensus between/among the factions in America today—that person would probably be running for president already, and succeeding. But the war between the parties, and the abominable choices we face, represent factions of Americans (not just parties) that are in ideological war with each other. The people’s elected representatives in Congress are reflections of a very real impasse, and it’s not just between two groups, it’s among many. Compromise? Compromise has been shunned and rejected by the voters, too, as representatives who are too moderate are driven from office.

I’m not saying it’s good or bad, I’m just pointing out that I don’t see a moderate electorate right now.

The other thing I want to point out is that Trump and Clinton have differing amounts of support from their respective party movers and shakers. Imagine, if you will, those smoke-filled rooms of yesteryear, composed of party leaders choosing their standard bearers with little or no input from voter primaries. Does anyone for a single moment believe that Donald Trump would have been the GOP choice under such conditions? I thought not. But Hillary Clinton would almost certainly have been the choice of the Democrats.

In other words, Clinton expresses her party’s wishes, and Trump (who may not even really be “of” his party) does not.

What’s more—although I’m having trouble finding exact figures on this—Hillary Clinton also represents the choice of the majority of Democratic voters who have bothered to vote in the primaries, and Donald Trump does not represent the same for GOP voters. Even if the support for Hillary among Democrats is lukewarm, she is more liked by more of her party’s voters than Trump is by his (although his actual supporters are often very excited about him and quite fervent in their support).

In sum, whoever Hillary is and whatever she is proposing to do is more in line with the wishes and principles of her own party than Donald Trump is in line with his. He is the protest candidate, the hostile-takeover candidate, and he is leading in spite of the party leadership—or, rather, in reaction to their perceived failings—rather than because the party leaders would choose him as their nominee.

That is their dilemma. If they fall in with him and get on board, they are committing a form of suicide. And if they oppose him they’re doing the same thing (at least in the short term). This is most definitely not the dilemma the Democratic leaders face. And that’s a big, big difference.

[ADDENDUM: I see that a similar point of view to mine has been expressed by streiff at RedState.]

Henry James ♥ George Eliot

The New Neo Posted on by

George Eliot was the pen name of Mary Ann Evans, the 19th Century English novelist who lived for years with the married critic George Henry Lewes and wrote seven novels, including the highly-praised Middlemarch.

I’ve never read it. In fact, I’m not sure whether I’ve ever read any of her books, although I have such a strong memory of Silas Marner that I might indeed have read it.

Or maybe it was just the classic comic, because that was my introduction to many of the classics, and my memory of Silas Marner is mostly pictorial:

silasmarner

There’s no way to say this nicely, but George Eliot was an exceedingly homely woman. However, it didn’t seem to have set her back much, if at all; she seems to have had a rich full emotional, sexual, and intellectual life. Over the years, I’ve sometimes wondered how she managed that feat, and yesterday I happened across this quote from Henry James about meeting Eliot/Evans. It offered a strong clue:

She had a low forehead, a dull grey eye, a vast pendulous nose, a huge mouth full of uneven teeth and a chin and jawbone ‘qui n’en finissent pas’… Now in this vast ugliness resides a most powerful beauty which, in a very few minutes, steals forth and charms the mind, so that you end, as I ended, in falling in love with her. Yes, behold me in love with this great horse-faced bluestocking.

Eliot/Evans was by all accounts very happy in her scandalous yet stable liaison with Lewes (a complicated legal situation precluded him from divorcing his wife). After his death, she married a man 20 years her junior when she was 60, although she died just a few months later.

So here’s my question: have you read Middlemarch, and is there any point in trying to wade through it? It’s got 880 pages in the paperback edition. Whew!

So, can Trump win the whole thing?

The New Neo Posted on by

I think it’s safe to say that we will be likely to revisit this topic many, many times again, and that the answer may vary over time as events shape up in this crazy, crazy, crazy (mad mad mad mad) campaign season.

But my short answer is: of course he can. Never say never.

I think it highly unlikely, though, for the very simple reason that too many people cannot stand him. Some find his policies abominable, some his character, and some both. Fact is, though, that a lot of people hate Hillary, too (and I mean that literally: a lot of people hate both of them). The real question is who is more hated and whose presidency would be more feared, as well as whose supporters (and they each have a considerable number of those, too) are most devoted and especially most numerous. This is a campaign when the phrase “the lesser of two evils” seems literally true, but it’s more difficult than in most cases to decide who really would be the lesser.

People who say that Hillary Clinton doesn’t have devoted supporters are living in a bubble that doesn’t interface with the territory I inhabit. In other words, I know people who’ve been wearing Hillary buttons since last spring. And there’s no one who hasn’t lived in a cave for thirty years who would be so dumb as to say there aren’t Trump supporters and that many are extremely devoted.

The MSM has hardly begun to carry Hillary’s water the way it undoubtedly will. The Democrats have not unleashed more than a small percentage of their ammunition against him. Nor has Trump started the major attacks on Hillary of which he’s fully capable. I predict we are in for a campaign season so dirty that we’ll end up like Lady Macbeth doubting if all the water in the ocean can wash us clean. And the interesting thing is that this time, to dig up dirt, one doesn’t have to look far or even to lie, although these mendacious candidates almost undoubtedly will each lie often and eagerly.

As for me and who I’ll vote for, I have no idea. It won’t be Hillary, but can I bring myself to vote for Trump? I’ve answered previously that I’ll probably wait till it’s extremely close to the election to decide, and that I think my final decision might even happen in the voting booth. I still feel that way.

John Kasich, we hardly knew ye

The New Neo Posted on by

And what we did know, we didn’t like.

Reports are that John Kasich is about to drop out of the race. Only about six months too late.

From the very start of this fabulous primary season, Kasich seemed extraneous. Why is he here? was the question that bounced continuously around the blogosphere, along with Why isn’t he leaving? Well, now we need ask no more; he’s going, his work (whatever it may have been) fulfilled.

Now we can graduate to why was he there, and why didn’t he leave earlier? He was consistently obnoxious and egotistical in the debates, off-putting and repetitive. And yet just enough people kept voting for him to gum up the works, and that became more and more true as time went on and the field narrowed.

I have no idea what would have happened if he’d dropped out earlier. Would it have benefited Cruz, as many suppose? I never saw polling that convinced me of that, and I think it’s likely that at least a third or so of his voters would have gone to Trump and helped put him over the top. An earlier dropout might have benefited Rubio, but that’s all moot now.

The theories about Kasich’s campaign longevity abound. Pure ego. Or, he was there as a stalking horse for the GOPe, and once they saw putting him in there was impossible, he could depart. Or, he still might be Trump’s VP. Or, all of the above. Or, none of the above. If you care to, you can advance some Kasich theories of your own.

For what it’s worth, nearly every time I typed his name I wrongly added an “h” after the “s” and had to correct myself. It was some sort of bad habit I couldn’t break, just another reason that John Kasich annoyed me. But at least this one wasn’t his fault.

Did they manage to “burn it down”?

The New Neo Posted on by

For quite a few years now I’ve been hearing the slogan “burn it down” from a lot of people on the right side of the blogosphere. So one thing I didn’t have to learn from Trump’s candidacy is that there are a lot of angry people out there, and that in particular, they are angry at the GOP.

I’ve argued and discussed why and how and whether I think all their anger is justified or not and how much I share of it and what I think the solution might be. A lot of the “burn it down” folks (although not all) became Donald Trump supporters this year, in part because he fit their definition of a handy incendiary device.

So here we sit tonight, among the still-smoldering ashes. The nominee of the Grand Old Party will almost certainly be Donald Trump. What John Kasich is going to do I no longer either know or care, although he’s nominally still in the race.

The party failed to stop this when they could, or at least the candidates failed to stop it by not dropping out in a more timely fashion. That’s what I thought at the time, and I still think it’s likely to have been true, although now we’ll never know. But I also ask: would that have stopped it at all? Or had the anger been too great for too many years, so great that nothing would have stopped this once Donald Trump tossed his hat in the ring? Certainly nothing Trump himself did during this long primary season made a dent in it. As he said, he could have shot someone on Fifth Avenue and it wouldn’t have mattered, and I believe him. This morning Trump lodged a charge against Ted Cruz’s father that should have stopped almost every GOP voter in Indiana from voting for Trump, but they didn’t even break stride about it.

So maybe it was baked in the cake that the electorate was going to do this, or something of the sort. Trump just provided the perfect opportunity. And I don’t think the GOP establishment has the strength or the will to regroup this year. They certainly didn’t seem to be willing to do it in order to support Ted Cruz; only a random few (Lindsay Graham, of all people) were the least bit interested. They must either think they can work quite well with Donald Trump, thank you very much, or they are afraid of his revenge on them if they cross him. Maybe both.

This year, small government conservatives discovered they are much more of a minority than they ever thought they were. They learned that their old dream of nominating and electing someone who could clearly articulate the conservative cause is more of a pipe dream fantasy. They discovered that a lot of people who call themselves “conservative” on those surveys have their own idiosyncratic definitions of the word. And they may wish they were back in the Big Tent of yesterday, the one that got blown down and ripped apart and can no longer give them the shelter and nourish the illusion that they are very strong in number and influence.

This could change. I’m not suggesting that anyone give up. Commenter “Eric’s” suggestion of activism—particularly on college campuses, where the rot is well advanced—is important. There’s grass roots politics, too. It’s important to keep as many GOP seats in Congress as possible, as well, although how to do that with a Trump candidacy will be quite the challenge. But politics is a long haul, and we can’t see the future and should not imagine that we can.

Back in October of 2012 I made a prediction I’ve had a chance to revisit many times since. I wish I hadn’t been correct, but so far I was (that doesn’t mean that I can see the future, either). To refresh your memory:

One thing I believe is that, if Romney loses this election, the right will start tearing itself apart in anger…I already see some evidence of it in articles and comments from the right that accuse Romney of not wanting to win, of not going on the attack enough (as though that would elude the negative media spin), of not doing whatever it might be that the brilliant armchair strategists would be doing if they were running for president, an election they of course would win by dint of their brilliant strategy. If Romney loses, the RINO theme will rise again undiminished, and the hatred of the “Republican establishment.”

My opinion of what’s going on is quite different: if the American people re-elect Obama despite his failures, lies, betrayals, immaturity, gaffes, arrogance, destructive foreign policy, demonstrated leftism, small-mindedness, lack of leadership, executive power-grabs, fiscal irresponsibility, and a host of other negatives I may have forgotten to list but which have been operating for the last four years, then it will prove that the American people have fundamentally changed in the direction they want this country to take, and it will require some major upheaval to reverse that trend.

I don’t think a man like Donald Trump could have won the nomination just a few short years ago. But this evening has been building and building and building for many years. One hint is in that first paragraph: people were mad at Romney for being too “nice” and not going on the attack enough. Well, that problem has been remedied, hasn’t it?

Tonight the “burn it down” folks got what they wanted. And I believe that tonight the Democrats and Hillary Clinton got exactly what they wanted. So a lot of people are celebrating tonight. I’m not one of them.

At the Met Gala

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: I consider it personally therapeutic to indulge in frivolous posts about fashion. Today’s a good day for it, don’t you think? So come along with me to the Met Gala. You’ll be so glad you did.]

The idea at this function is to shock and stun, but I would have thought it also would be to wear something at least a mite flattering, too. But perhaps not.

So let’s begin the viewing.

It’s not only In Flanders Fields that the poppies grow. They’ve sprung up out of nowhere on this dress, where they clash with and dominate every other part of it. Of course, minus the poppies, it would just be a sweet retro prom-ish thing with what used to be known as spaghetti straps (haven’t seen them in ages):

elizabethcordryMetGala

Now for a change of pace. From soft and flowery to hard, angular, and metallic. Somewhere in there is a human body, but this would be excellent camo if you needed to hide in the metal scrap pile at the dump. At least she looks like she’s enjoying herself:

juliemackloweMetGala

This was definitely one of the prettier ones, but there’s something schizophrenic about it, with the heavy metallic bodice and gauzy romantic bottom. I suppose the contrast is the point, but she looks so stiff and uncomfortable, standing at sharp attention and with hair severely slicked-back and bright red lips, that the whole is much less than the sum of its disparate parts:

katebotsworthMetGala

I am a waif. I am a child who’s not a child. I am very thin, and proud of it. These boots are not made for walking. I’ve got zippers and I’ve got pockets and they do what zippers and pockets do:

michellewilliamsMetGala

Here at last is someone I actually know something about. It’s Misty Copeland, the American ballet dancer I wrote about in this post. Her unusually chesty (for a ballerina) body is done no favors at all by this schlumpy dress in an unflattering color. Why, Misty? Why? You’re a beautiful woman:

mistycopelandMetGala

Then again, there’s always the barely-bare back and the butt brooch:

Model Emily RatajkowskiMetGala

The same bareback look, but with some old-fashioned Hollywood 50s-type (or maybe it’s 30s-type) glam:

rachelsmithMetGala

Lost her way, wandered in from Vegas. As for the person behind her—well, we’ve all had our share of unfortunate photos:

ritaoraMetGala

This person’s shoulder wandered in from Vegas, her belt from one of the kiosks at the mall that sell sparkly Asian-made hair ornaments and pins, and her collar from—from—well, I’m not sure where it wandered in from, but something vaguely native American. I would say the dress is a recycled bridesmaid’s dress except that it’s white. And what is that at the dress’s bottom, on the right side of the photo. Is it a fallen tail? Some shaggy slippers? Not…not…a tribble?:

saoirseronanMetGala

In a moment we’ll get to the only other person I know of in the bunch, actress Sarah Jessica Parker. Oh Sarah, Sarah, Sarah, Jessica, Jessica, Jessica, Parker, Parker, Parker, what were you thinking? Was it Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz?:

scarecrow

Steven Tyler? Pirate Johnny Depp? Or some strange amalgam of them all?:

sarajessicaparker Met Gala

Ah, but a little bit of Googling solves the mystery. It’s “Hamilton,” the Broadway musical about Alexander Hamilton. And that black thingee hanging in back of her is not a sword, as I had speculated, but one of two ribbons that hangs down the back. The back of the jacket, by the way, is non-existent, as you can see if you scroll down at the link I just gave and watch the short Instagram video.

It was inevitable: Trump suggests we need to look into whether Ted Cruz’s father had something to do with Lee Harvey Oswald

The New Neo Posted on by

I have a theory here. The idea is that Trump has been pushing the envelope, testing his supporters to see how far he can go. Whether he believes the lies he tells, or whether he just thinks they will and considers it useful for his purposes if they do, he is gauging the depth of their own susceptibility to any preposterous thing he says and how little anyone else can do to stop it, as well as what excuses his supporters who don’t believe what he says this time will make in order to excuse his behavior.

For years I have duly noted how many Americans still believe in Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories after they have been thoroughly and irrefutably debunked. Even making a statement like the one I just made almost guarantees that people will comment on their own belief in said theories, and a nearly-endless series of arguments will ensue. Been there, done that, and if you want to take a look go to some of these threads. What’s more, I’ve been perturbed by the popularity of shows like this, the anti-vaccine movement (of which Trump is a member, by the way), and any number of pieces of evidence of the re-ascendance of the demon-haunted worldview.

Some people are concerned at the popularity of reality TV, but I save much more of my angst for the popularity of lies, particularly defamatory lies.

Which brings us to Donald Trump. I thought I was done writing about Trump today until tonight’s returns came in, but he keeps coming up with things that pull me back in. The latest is this:

Trump repeated unsubstantiated claims that [Ted Cruz’s father] Rafael Cruz had ties to Lee Harvey Oswald, President John F. Kennedy’s assassin, while attacking Cruz’s campaign Tuesday morning.

“His father was with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to Oswald’s being ”” you know, shot. I mean, the whole thing is ridiculous,” Trump said during a Fox News phone interview. “What is this, right prior to his being shot, and nobody even brings it up. They don’t even talk about that. That was reported, and nobody talks about it.”

“I mean, what was he doing? What was he doing with Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before the death, before the shooting?” Trump continued. “It’s horrible.”…

Trump’s latest off-the-wall accusation parrots a recent National Inquirer [sic: it’s “Enquirer”] claim that it had “photo evidence” showing the elder Cruz alongside Oswald.

The “evidence” apparently relates to this incident (that’s from a comment at The Federalist; I haven’t researched it and therefore can’t vouch for it, but take a look). There is no reason to believe that Cruz’s father was anywhere near Oswald, but of course you already knew that.

One of my favorite responses from a Trump supporter at LI is this one:

Besides the picture of the two together, Rafael fled to Canada in 1964 shortly after the Kennedy assassination. Why? If that wasn’t him in picture with Lee Harvey Oswald?

That’s the sort of “argument” Trump is counting on from many of his loyal fans.

It is unconscionable that a man like Donald Trump is poised to win the GOP nomination. But that’s where we stand.

As for the charge itself, note what Trump is actually saying. Is he suggesting Rafael Cruz was a confederate of Oswald’s, trying to help him assassinate Kennedy? Maybe, but he doesn’t say that, and interestingly enough he talks about the killing of Oswald rather than the killing of Kennedy. It’s particularly odd since the photo of Oswald in question was not taken right before Oswald’s murder. I think that Trump is purposely keeping his exact accusation a bit vague in order to try to imply whatever conspiracy theory the listener prefers to think is true: that Rafael helped kill Kennedy or (and I think this is the one Trump is pushing a bit harder) that Rafael helped kill Oswald (perhaps working for the CIA or LBJ in the government-run assassination coverup of their own complicity in Kennedy’s murder, according to assassination conspiracists?).

Trump is giving them whatever they want. Whether he believes it or not (fool) or is cynically using it (knave) or both (fool and knave) isn’t really the issue, although I find it an interesting question. The issue is that Trump is a man who will stoop just as low as he can in order to destroy people. Who will attack and smear family members of opponents in the most vile ways. Who will pander to the worst, the very worst, in human nature. He’ll act as a “leader” all right—leading people straight into the festering cesspool of the Big Lie.

The frying pan versus the fire

The New Neo Posted on by

Today is Indiana primary day.

I think Trump will win, and this would mean that Trump would almost certainly become the GOP nominee. The word “sobering” doesn’t even begin to describe how that prospect appears. Actually, it fills me with dread,

I can imagine that Cruz will win Indiana instead of Trump. But I think it highly unlikely, although that’s a tough thing to have to admit and even tougher to accept. I can imagine that Trump’s candidacy at the Republican convention would be successfully challenged, even if Trump gets to the requisite 1273 votes. But I don’t think that process would end in victory for the non-Trump candidate, because of the resultant defection of the Trump contingent.

I can imagine Trump as the GOP nominee and the eventual formation of a third party in reaction to that event, but I see that party as too small to count for a whole lot. I can imagine a run this year by an independent candidate who is actually a leading Republican running outside the party, but I don’t see how that person would win because of the aforementioned splitting of the vote.

I believe a Trump candidacy will end in a Trump defeat and a Hillary Clinton presidency. I believe that very strongly, and I’ve explained in previous posts why I see it that way. But I can certainly imagine that I’m wrong, and that the Alinksyite Trump will manage to beat the Alinskyite Clinton. I just think it’s highly unlikely.

Lastly and with the greatest of difficulty I can even imagine a President Trump who surprises me by having some sort of personality-ectomy and becoming a man of character and principle, as well as sound judgment and consistent conservativism. I would say that “stranger things have happened,” but actually I don’t think that stranger things than that have happened.

So the prospect of a Trump vs. Clinton election is one I have trouble wrapping my mind around even now. I still can’t decide which would be the frying pan, and which the fire. Or maybe it’s fire and ice.

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Allan Bloom: on undermining the American vision

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve written in praise of Allan Bloom’s book The Closing of the American Mind several times before, but here I go again.

It was published in 1987, which is now very close to 30 years ago. And yet its relevance has only grown in the intervening years. Here’s an example that resonates today:

Contrary to much contemporary wisdom, the United States has one of the longest uninterrupted political traditions of any nation in the world. What is more, that tradition is unambiguous; its meaning is articulated in simple, rational speech that is immediately comprehensible and powerfully persuasive to all normal human beings. America tells one story: the unbroken, ineluctable progress of freedom and equality. From its first settlers and its political foundings on, there has been no dispute that freedom and equality are the essence of justice for us. No one serious or notable has stood outside this consensus…All significant political disputes have been about the meaning of freedom and equality, not about their rightness. Nowhere else is there a tradition or a culture whose message is so distinct and unequivocal—certainly not in France, Italy, Germany, or even England…Belonging to one of these peoples may be expained as a sentiment, an attachment to one’s own, akin to the attachment to father and mother, but Frenchness, Englishness, Germaness remain, nonetheless, ineffable. Everybody can, however, articulate what Americanness is…

But the unity, grandeur and attendant folklore of the founding heritage was attacked from so many directions in the last half-century that it gradually disappeared from daily life and from textbooks. It all began to seem like Washington and the cherry tree—not the sort of thing to teach children seriously. What is influential in the higher intellectual circles always ends up in the schools. The leading ideas of the Declaration began to be understood as eighteenth-century myths or ideologies. Historicism, in Carl Becker’s version (The Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of Political Ideas, 1922) both cast doubt on the truth of the natural rights teaching and optimistically promised that it would provide a substitute. Similarly Dewey’s pragmatism—the method of science as the method of democracy, individual growth without limits, especially natural limits—saw the past as radically imperfect and regarded our history as irrelevant or as a hindrance to rational analysis of our present. Then there was Marxist debunking of the Charles Beard variety, trying to demonstrate that there was no public spirit, only private concern for property, in the Founding Fathers, thus weakening our convictions of the truth or superiority of American principles and our heroes (An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution, 1913). Then the Southern historians and writers avenged the victory of the antislavery Union by providing low motives for the North (incorporating European critiques of commerce and technology) and idealizing the South’s way of life. Finally, in curious harmony with the Southerners, the radicals in the civil rights movement succeeded in promoting a popular conviction that the Founding was, and the American principles are, racist…

Students now arrive at the university ignorant and cynical about our political heritage, lacking the wherewithal to be either inspired by it or seriously critical of it.

Every sentence of Bloom’s usually contains more food for thought than most entire books do. The Closing of the American Mind is so dense with thought that the reader has to pause frequently to mull it over and digest it, as one would a particularly rich meal. And not only do I agree with most of it, but it’s expressed in prose so clear and yet so lively, so succinct and yet deeply erudite, so detailed and yet broadly linking widely disparate thoughts and knowledge, that my admiration for the author (who continued in his lifetime to identify as a liberal, by the way) is enormous. Bloom was a man who was not only unique in his thoughts, but courageously unafraid to speak and write them regardless of where it might lead him and who might disapprove.

If you read the above passage of Bloom’s and think about our political position at the moment, I think you will realize that Obama was no anomaly, no outsider come to undermine America, but the culmination (so far, anyway) of at least a century of hard work. The ground was prepared long ago, and what Bloom wrote in 1987 could be considered a sort of prophetic vision of things to come, but not one of the extra-sensory variety.

[NOTE: Everyone who reads this blog at all regularly knows what I think of Donald Trump. But I do know that one of his main appeals—and probably the only thing about him that I think is both appealing and sincere—is the fact that he ascribes to the traditional vision of America described by Bloom, the one that so many people (including me) are angry at having seen undermined for so long.

By the way, when Bloom speaks of “equality” he’s not referring to the leftist idea of equality of outcome, but to the more traditional American idea of equality of opportunity.]