Cheney’s endorsement of Kamala reminded me of the role that “Never Trumpers” play in our political system. They form a “normative boundary” on the right side of the political system which enables the Left to tar anybody outside of that boundary as “extremist” or “far-right.” Think of Dick Cheney, Mitt Romney, and the rest as the Great Wall of the Establishment Right, beyond which rage the marauding hordes of Trumpist populism and MAGA who will never get invited inside for fellowships or Bethesda wine tastings.
That role of “right-wing” normative boundary setter is filled on the media side by sites such as The Dispatch and National Review which market themselves to the political ecosystem as the “respectable” Right. So it was with interest that I saw Kevin Williamson’s piece The Exotic Cat-Eaters of Springfield, Ohio at The Dispatch. Given the title, that it’s Williamson who is a founding member of the Never-Trumper brigade, and that it’s being published by The Dispatch you can reasonably guess where this is going.
Williamson is part of the larger National Review ecosystem that has lashed itself to the mast of “Never Trump,” and like Penelope of ancient myth is faithfully waiting for the spirit of Reagan and Buckley to return. There’s nothing wrong with that, I was a big fan of both in the day, but there’s nothing heroic or even virtuous about keeping a candle lit for ideological purity and trying to LARP Buckley’s purge of the John Birchers when the other side wants you dead.
Then again, better dead than rude.
Williamson sees his role in the political ecosystem as the heroic free-thinking man from the heartland of America, in this case Texas. There’s a lot to commend his earlier writings and he’s paid a professional price for his stances: he was ousted from The Atlantic for his public views on abortion. Now he is on what can only be described as a jihad, a maniacal obsession to rescue the soul of America from what he sees as the grifting sewer that is Trump and MAGA. In that, he’s found a home at The Dispatch.
If Teddy Roosevelt lionized the man in the arena, Williamson thinks he belongs there with him, charging up his literary San Juan Hill with a 6.7-liter diesel truck as his steed and armed with deadly metaphors and bon mots.
His Springfield piece reads as an American version of Heart of Darkness where instead of taking a boat up the Congo river our hero ventures up the country highway through Appalachia and onward toward Springfield in his “big 6.7L diesel.”
As he drives toward Springfield, he observes the contrasting scenes of the landscape. The wonderful natural beauty interspersed with “the inescapable herpetic rash of Dollar General stores and the strip-joint billboards sprinkled like pox.” You get the feeling that this would be a better place if not for the people in it. This is his sympathetic side and he’s just warming up, because when arrives in Springfield he finds the Haitian newcomers are just another demonized group of hard-working immigrants pursuing the American dream, a modern-day equivalent of the Irish and those groups that came before them.
The locals complaining about them? Bunch of “marginally employed white people on the dole” xenophobes. See? He’s the truth-teller who got it all figured out within a day or two of arrival. Everybody is playing the part assigned. Rather than using induction and seeing where the evidence takes him, he applies ideology as a reductionist lens to explain Springfield to the larger world. Well maybe “large” isn’t the right word, it is the readership of The Dispatch after all.
Then he writes:
“You can send little J.D. to Yale to make him polished, you can send him to Silicon Valley to make him rich, and you can send him to the Senate to make him powerful, but you cannot stop him from being what it is he apparently wants to be: Cleetus the Gap-Toothed Twitter Troll.”
So that’s really the whole purpose of his trip to Springfield. The locals, the Haitians, the American Dream… they were just bit players to support his predetermined narrative of bashing J.D. Vance. You wonder why he burned all that diesel to drive there when he could just have researched his hit piece with a Zoom call. You don’t need to do any research or investigation, just talk to the right people to get the quotes you’re looking for to write the piece you wanted in the first place. That’s Journalism 101.
Nothing about the effects on the local community of suddenly increasing the population by a third through dropping thousands of people from a 3rd World country that came here on a dodgy Biden TPS program. Nothing about how daily life has changed for the people who lived there or their complaints to the elected officials who betrayed them. Nothing about the effects of mass 3rd World immigration on America as seen through the eyes of one American town. America doesn’t belong to the people who live here as much as it does to Williamson’s vision of it.
That’s how you get more Trump.
For Williamson, Vance isn’t just wrong about Haitians and cats or the virtues of Springfield. He’s wrong because for him, Vance betrayed his upbringing — because for Williamson, Vance came from a place where “…. the biggest business was organized crime and where politics vacillated between demagoguery and banditry, beautiful in some parts, hideous in others, and
poisonously backward — you know: Haiti, but with white people.”
There it is and Williamson has quite willingly lent his years of credibility as a conservative writer and his down-home, truth-telling persona to same project Dick Cheney has; that is to define the right-wing side of the civilizational boundary and cast MAGA, Vance, Trump, and all of those “marginally employed white people on the dole” xenophobes in Springfield outside of it. There’s no place in Cheney’s and Williamson’s America for any of them, except to be the target of The Two Minute Hate.
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Williamson has not crossed my threshold in years ! I did go briefly to NRO today and quickly smelled something bad and left. I was a subscriber for 35 years until their Jan 2016 issue. Rich Lowry got cancelled almost as quickly as he fired Derbyshire for Derb’s honest discussion of race a few years ago. The article is still worth reading again.
The problem of discussing politics as “left or right” is a simplified way of looking at things.
Instead of the axis of left/right, let’s make it into a graph with 2 axes, with left vs right crossed by “everything’s fine vs this is screwed up”, which why you find the Bushies allied with Obama’s acolytes, and Trump working with RFK jr and Tulsi Gabbard.
This is why the “everything’s fine” group puts the media firmly in Harris/Walz camp.
There are probably several other perpendicular dimensions in play as well.
A few other items.
There is of course the classic work of journey and exploration into Red America by David Burge, Heart of Redness
Also Jonah Goldberg is editor over at The Dispatch
Steyn derbyshire brimelow all truth tellers buckleys flagship would support
I once had a dialog with jonah because a neighbor who was an argentine historian among other things found his first book interesting
I quickly realized he was out of his depth
I really despise Kevin Williamson. Not only is he bootlicking scum shilling for the globalists selling Americans down the river, but he eagerly licks both boots.
Also if you scroll down to the bottom of the linked article, you’ll see the name Scott Lincicome. Now it’s been a while but I recall someone by that name eagerly anticipating the passage of the so-called trans-pacific partnership, which would have allowed corporations to import endless foreigners to work in America, without the hassle of following US immigration law. That is, exactly what is happening in Springfield and other places today.
The Scott Lincicome I recall- and I admit it might not be the same person- was a lawyer specializing in international trade law. That is, when the TPP came into force it would have kept him lucratively employed for the rest of his life.
Crazy, huh? Some guy advocated for policies that would have made him very wealthy but would been a disaster for most people in the US.
I’m not surprised he ended up writing for the dispatch.
Some time in the past, so long I cannot remember the web site, I daily visited the NRO for Mary K Hamm and Jonah musings. Jonah seems to have gotten lost somewhere, likely back in 2016, and I have not been back since. MKH lost her husband in Iraq, and left for a while with, I think, a newborn to care for.
Have not been to the site since.
That said, Williamson should migrate to the Upper East Side, where “No one I know voted Republican.” He seemingly would fit right in.
The response of W, Cheney, et al seems to reflect a concern that actual thought is going on out in the hustings. It seems that politicians regularly promise to follow the desires of their voters, prior to the election, but once in office forget why they were elected. The observation that DJT honored a lot of his political promises must have upset the apple cart and reflected poorly. Add in the loss of revenue from lobbyists and ???, and one can see why the ‘old hands’ are upset with The Donald. He is attempting to take a sledge hammer to their rice bowl. Appropriately.
Personally, I would like to see some score keeping as far as politicians being held to their promises, and a method of blocking the ‘I voted for that, but …’ common response to queries about promised actions. How? I dunno.
For decades it seems one party or the other just randomly acts contrary to their electorate. Trent Lott and the Orange Speaker commonly would counter things seemingly favored by large majorities of conservative voters, who elected them as the only viable choice between a D that would open the coffers to any and all, and a ‘respectable Republican’. DJT does not fit that mold, and that is trouble.
Add in the threats to clean the stables of bureaucrats who pay lip service to the Executive Branch, but go back to their personal vision as soon as an election happens, and you have a potential large crowd against his administration.
Williamson seems to have had a good glug of the flavored sweet beverage of chooice.
I used to listen to Williamson’s podcast with Charles C.W. Cooke when they were both at National Review. Over time, it seemed that their expected roles reversed. Cooke, the Cambridge-educated highborn, well-spoken, effete Englishman moved to Florida, became a citizen and fell in love with America and Americans. Williamson, born in Lubbock, spent a lot of time and effort getting out, seemed to grow to despise his fellow men, even though he was absolutely one of them.
Both were unceasingly critical of President Trump, to the point of never using the title when they referred to him, which is why I stopped listening eventually. But in recent years, I’ve read Williamson’s columns that break from obscurity into the conservative consciousness, always for the wrong reasons, like when he exhorted poor people to leave their homes behind for better economic opportunities, because it’s so easy to do, you see. The overall impression I get of him is that he is desperately trying to convince everyone that he is a 21st century H.L.Mencken, with his gimlet eye and acid pen.
Except that Mencken is mostly forgotten by the rubes Williamson disdains, and those who are still familiar with him have mostly grown out of their admiration for cantankerous iconoclasts. Hating everyone just isn’t amusing anymore. Reading Williamson is like re-reading Catcher in the Rye when you have a mortgage and two kids. It’s not the same as when you were sixteen.
My response to Holden Caulfield when I was thirty is the same as my response to Willamson now: grow up.
The madness of Williamson reminds me of a book that is waiting to be written.
A work of fiction written in the vein of “Heart of Darkness” where a young, idealistic man from Red America comes to DC and watches first hand as a town full of “the best and brightest” succumbs to the psychosis of Trump Derangement Syndrome.
What is the Heart of Darkness about but what happens when one is removed from his social context and becomes the sole arbiter of his fate? Explains DC
At the end of the book, his parents receive one last, cryptic text from him, sent from some Georgetown salon, “The horror! The horror!”
I guess holden caulfields angst doesnt seem so crazy with his experience with the cic witnessing the death camps
What has williamson suffered a bad bout of printers ink in his indian papers
During the Cold War there were at least four Western factions.
– Soviet apologists
– Soviet system bad, confronting Soviets bad, Soviet negotiators more trustworthy than untrustworthy
– Soviet system bad, confronting Soviets bad, Soviet negotiators more untrustworthy than trustworthy
– Soviet system bad, victory over Soviets necessary and practical
The current cold civil war echoes this lineup. Republican NeverTrumpers parallel the first three groups. All see Trump as a destabilizing force, and even the least insane (those who still distrust Democrats more than they trust them) flunk Trump vs. Democrats risk analysis.
Trump didn’t start out as a witting cold civil war combatant. He mainly wanted to rekindle that Great American Pastime – business – that faces too many obstacles from domestic and foreign policy. But he found himself against a corrupt political that felt entitled to power and was willing to all sorts of skullduggery to preserve it.
the Soviet Union was a real threat to our very existence, with it’s ideology, the system was largely replaced without Bloodshed, unlike say Wilhemine Germany, but the successor policies were at best poorly implemented at worst criminal negligence, there is something to Taibbi’s comment about Sachs and Summer’s shock therapies, I tend to dissent on whether Russia needed a Marshall Plan
it was the will to deploy the Nuclear deterrent that turned the likes of Bertrand Russell to use on example into a dove from a pre 1949 dove, its also what turned our brushfires into stalemates all through out the Cold War, from Korea to Central America,
The Democrats and the Left have expended considerable effort in “otherizing” Trump and MAGA in order to place them beyond the pale and outside of respectable politics. What we are seeing now is merely the “turning up to 11” of that effort
A big part of that effort is the use of symbols, such as calling Trump a fascist/N*zi. The whole CNN/Mark Ronbinson investigation was done merely to keep the N*zi-meme going. The use of the fascist/N*zi symbol because it represents not only an utterly repugnant ideology, but also losers and whose defeat is one of the proudest moments in American history.
Using that symbol is not only to bring cohesion to an otherwise fractious Left but also to try and make Trump and MAGA toxic to not only a class of swing voters but to set the stage for a national crisis post-election.
Williamson, Goldberg, and his ilk are perpetuating the problem. They see themselves as upholding principle in the wake of what they see as a deviation that will pay dividends once the madness of Trumpist populism recedes and the Reaganism can be restored. Each to their own though I would tell them that the Progressives have had a similar problem with the Democrats and dealt with it much more productively.
However what is not acceptable is that principles “Never Trumpers” are in fact being used in part to propel revolutionary forces to victory. This is happening because Williamson and others provide the beard to the Left that they are the respectable ones.
The Never Trumpers (as opposed to Kristol/Lincoln Project grifters) think they through their principles will lead to a restoration of the Republic However the Left has been quite clear for the past 4 years that if they get enough votes they are going to gut the Constitutional order.
I can understand why The Dispatchers and other don’t like Trump, but they could at least, to use a historical phrase, make a favorable reference to Trump “in the House of Commons”
Kevin Williamson is nothing more than an obese organ grinder’s monkey who will dance about writing screeds justifying the regime’s hatred of people the regime wishes to erase.
The only thing special about him is how especially nasty he strives to be when attacking actual American citizens in favor of the beloved foreigners the regime imports to replace us.
Mike has already covered most of what I would have written in his post. But as someone of Scotch-Irish ancestry- though not from Appalachia- and also as someone who worked low-paying factory jobs- though a long time ago- I have more to add.
First, there’s a vast difference between the people who arranged their own arrival to the US and subsequently took care of themselves to those of today who have been collected and flown into the country to be rewarded with an astonishing variety of handouts. Apparently, they get not only free housing, free food, free cell phones, free health care but also free cars- and it seems also de facto immunity to US law.
Neat, huh? No wonder they can do better than actual American workers who get none of that. In Springfield, I’ve read that American workers making $22 an hour were fired to be replaced by Haitians making $14- but then, again the Haitians received an endless cornucopia of free stuff Americans couldn’t get.
Awesome. Business owners- likely establishment GOP, I’d guess- got a cheap workforce that didn’t need to worry about child care, food, housing, transportation, etc, because it was all covered by the government. American citizens ended up on the street because they couldn’t pay their bills- bills imported foreigners simply did not have.
Back when I was looking for a manufacturing job I noted that the low-end jobs I was offered paid significantly less than the retail job I already had. I eventually took a part-time job at rock-bottom minimum wage just to pick up experience- and then after a couple months I quit because I wanted to take my girlfriend on a road trip.
The point here is that when I see Springfield factory owners whining that their American workers are unreliable, I think what’s actually happening is that their potential workforce has noticed that Walmart pays better and isn’t likely to be shipped overseas, so they don’t bother to care much if they don’t do well at a factory job they expect to end soon anyway.
This comment is quite long enough so I’ll stop here.
Williamson, Jonah and French are pharisee wannabes. Their hubris knows no bounds. And like the pharisees of old, they are vipers. They seem to have read the parable and said, “hold my beer.”
Hate warps and melts a brain. The NeverTrumpers’ two minutes of hate for a fictitious Orange whale they concocted in their fevered minds has broken them. They’ve become pathetic, blithering idiots.
I don’t recognize the Trump they keep warning us about. They never provide any evidence or logic to support their rants. It’s just all hate, all the time. Worse, their endorsements for Hillary, Slow Joe, and Kamala have to rank among the most illogical in political history.
Stupid, angry and hateful is no way to go through life.