So over the weekend I tweeted out a link to David Bahnsen’s recent article about “the Kavanaugh-hearing as opening salvo” for a lot more of the same, which I thought an appropriate and solemn reminder for us all. And if you go to read it, I would remind you that Bahnsen was not arguing for surrender or acquiescence. Among many other things, he was saying that we should fight with everything we’ve got, but that dirty weapons should not be something that we’ve “got.” You can read his article here.
Naturally, after I tweeted this, various troll cubs came out to play in my twitter feed, among them certain strident white guys, trying to help out the cause of Western white guy culture and generally getting underfoot.
“Politics is now a racial headcount, and we will either defend whites or die.”
“wouldn’t that mean the left is engaged in a war on white men?”
“rather than two parties who disdain faith, blood, and soil”
Now when I say “strident white guys,” I am of course referring to the kind of white guys who want to urgently wave the whiteness flag, not realizing that that particular flag means surrender and, to continue with the whiteness theme, who have opened fire way before they can see the whites of anybody’s eyes, and whose policy prescriptions taste to me like the whites of a couple of eggs, without any salt, which is also white. Enough with the whiteness. I am tired of all the white, for reasons that will be explained below.
So here is my point. While they were berating men like Bahnsen for not seeing that this is a blood and soil thing, that this is a “defend whites or die” time, their champion, our president, was horsing around in the Oval Office with Kanye.
Animosity cannot see straight. And people who cannot see straight should not ever be manning the machine gun nest. And those of them that can see straight are far too narrow—they are the kind of people who could look through a keyhole and still use both eyes. Civility is a virtue in times of peace, and in times of conflict and war—which we have now plainly gotten to—the man who understood the value of civility back then is the man who knows how to keep his head in the midst of battle now. And the person who simply sneers at civility as a civic value is likely to be the guy who makes a mess when it comes to a real conflict.
At the same time, let it be added, the person who trumpets the value of civility in the Senate when the civility always and only goes one way is a person who is being gamed, a person who is being had. The Republicans need to have abandoned superficial civility a long time ago, but—and this supports Bahnsen’s point—the abandonment of civility is not the same thing as the abandonment of ethics. Manners and morality should be related, but they are distinct.
It doesn’t take a political genius to figure out that President Trump is making one of the more significant demographic plays in the history of American politics. He is lining things up to make an up-the-middle appeal for the black vote. He wants to pry blacks away from the Democratic Party en masse, and furthermore, he is looking fair to be able to do it. That is not unthinkable anymore. Black unemployment is what? Second lowest on record? And Trump is not the stereotypical enemy of blacks. When it comes to this kind of thing, he is has not been the kind of conservative Republican that blacks have been taught to distrust because he is not really any kind of conservative Republican. He is sui generis, and it shows. And on top of that, when he baits the Left by having someone like Kanye over to play, and they respond angrily by talking about “negroes” who “don’t read,” they are playing right into Trump’s hands. And even if his success in this play of his is only partial, say getting only 20% of blacks to leave the Democrat plantation, this would still mean the death of the Democratic Party.
So Trump is in the middle of all that, and so up pop some predictable white guys in MAGA hats, saying in effect that they think miscegenation is a travesty, and that Kanye and Kim ought not to be a thing, and why are you #NeverTrumpers constantly getting in the way of the president’s agenda? Well, I might ask in return, why don’t you supporters of the president’s agenda try real hard to get a clue?
And incidentally, as I watch all of this, I am not applauding, or encouraging, or cheerleading. I am just a sober analyst. I am just observing this, all agog. As some may have surmised, I am not a big fan of celebrity endorsements, and Kanye’s bromance with the president is not really a good reason for blacks to abandon the Democrats. Of course, this is mitigated somewhat by the fact that blacks have no good reasons for supporting the Democrats either, and may veer off to greener pastures by the weirdest of reasons. My only point is that this is what is apparently being attempted.
And so, at the very moment when Trump is trolling the entire world by means of his friendship with Kanye, certain Whites United to Save Society (WUSS) come out from behind the curtains to announce that this is the critical moment. We must “defend whites or die.” They do this while stoutly defending Trump, and attacking conservatives (like Bahnsen) who are still hesitant about various aspects of Trump’s approach—and they do so with epithets like “cucks like you” and “you conservatards.”
I see. And so here we see the second level of their strategic incompetence revealed. They want to defend western civilization (as do I), but given their craft competence when it comes to rallying the troops on such things, they couldn’t defend a whites-only hamburger stand in 1950’s Birmingham. Not that they should defend it, but that’s another matter. I am merely referring to their craft competence.
Look. Let us be frank, you and I. At the moment of his nomination, Brett Kavanaugh was not exactly a fire-eating, barricade-climbing, bottle-throwing member of the hard right. He is conservative, sure, and far more conservative than Anthony Kennedy, which was enough to satisfy me. But an argument could be advanced that under the right circumstances he might well turn out to be an establishment squish. That is conceivable, right?
So David Bahnsen is a conservatard for not seeing that we need to fight to the death on behalf of Trump’s appointment of another conservatard to the Supreme Court? Bahnsen is a cuckservative because he doesn’t see the tremendous gains that Trump has made by filling up the judiciary with other cuckservatives?
And that is what is so weird about life on the right these days. Trump is supposedly alienating movement conservatives by filling up the federal judiciary with members of the Federalist Society? I don’t think so. With a few exceptions, a few #NeverTrumpers who have lost their minds, most conservatives see that their position has been radically strengthened over the last two years.
So we are not talking about actual political philosophy anymore, but rather personal loyalties and animosities. A populist movement that loves to hate on conservatives has been giving vast amounts of future influence to those conservatives. As a matter of policy, you would have to be blind to not see that Trump has done an enormous amount to advance the conservative agenda on the ground, and all without being one. Go figure. He has done so while a number of his rabid supporters have gone around the bend, so that they might be a matching set for the swamp-conservatives who have also gone around the bend.
Everybody needs to look at what is happening. And that is not the same thing as looking at the media freak-outs over Kanye, or Robert E. Lee, or the president’s latest 2 am tweet.
While we are here, and just in passing, allow me to say that I believe that the much ballyhooed blue wave is not really going to be a thing. If I had to bet, I would say that the Republicans are going to keep the House while losing some seats there, and that they are going to make big gains in the Senate, thus diminishing the power of entities like Flake and Murkowski, and making it unnecessary for good men like Ben Sasse to keep saying very fine and highly irrelevant things. He will be able to stop it then.
So when Trump finally steps off the stage, the conservative movement, somewhat blustered and tattered, having been dropped into new territory by that freak tornado, is going to be in a very good place, and it will be a place that they would never have been able to get to by themselves.
Close your eyes and imagine a President Pence, for example. If your imagination is not up to it, I have supplied a useful graphic.