The Carpentariat

Will Trumpism survive Trump?

I would have posed these as the most interesting and important political questions of our time, but Michael Gerson beat me to it:

"It is difficult to deny Trump’s strength in the base of the Republican Party, evidenced by the degree of political intimidation many elected Republicans feel. But the most interesting and important questions remain: Is Trumpism a compelling ideological basis for the Republican Party in the future? Is it really the wave of the political future?"

One might ask, Would National Socialism have survived beyond 1936 or '37, had Joesph Goebbels or Hermann Göring taken the reins from a dead Hitler? To me, the question seems rhetorical. The party required the unique debauchery of its principal founder; no substitute would have sufficed. And that provides an insight into the future of Trumpism as a "compelling ideological basis for the Republican Party in the future." Without Trump, Trumpism will recede into the rancid squalidness of, say, Bircherism, a kind of conservative embarrassment that hated damn near everyone.

Gerson answers in a somewhat similar but less forceful way: "It should give the advocates of Trumpism — defined by some mix of protectionism, nativism and bitter resentment of elites — pause that the strongest advocates of the creed are some of the most frightening figures in American politics." Singled out by the conservative columnist are West Virginia Senate candidate Don Blankenship, Iowa Rep. Steve King, Arizona Senate candidate and former sheriff Joe Arpaio, and Virginia Senate candidate Corey Stewart. They are indeed "frightening," but is any a credible replacement for Donald Trump? Again, rhetorical, I think.

Gerson also notes that "Long-term demographic trends are running against the GOP, with the non-Hispanic white population declining from 76 percent to 63 percent over the past two decades and the country on track to be majority minority by 2045." This is, perhaps, the most commonly cited reason for the ultimate death of Trumpism. "A strategy of feeding white backlash against a multicultural future worked for Trump — barely — in 2016. Will it work for Republicans in 2018 and 2020?" asks Gerson. "Perhaps, if Democrats move precipitously to the left. But in the longer run, will Trumpism appeal to millennials (who now consistently give Trump around a 25 percent approval rating)? Will it work with suburban women?" No.

Finally, Gerson returns to his evangelical roots by asking "what are the moral implications of a political strategy that employs racial and ethnic antagonism as a motivating factor?" Well, I'd say they kinda suck, wouldn't you? But we needn't ponder the moral implications of the GOP's racism. As a practical matter, their outcome is doomed.

And that is the most sublime aspect of a pluralistic, democratic society. Extremism may reign from time to time, but in time, the center re-holds. This fall, almost certainly, the center will re-shift legislatively, and in 2020 — assuming "Democrats [don't] move precipitously to the left" — the center will reconquer the executive. For the unmanly clown in the German helmet, above, (an AP photo posted by Gerson), is anything but Middle America.

 

Comment section: housekeeping note

There's an old saw, of possibly dubious value, among your internet statistical types that for every 300-500 readers there is one commenter. The same ratio probably holds true for citizens vs. activists, which means God only knows what most readers/citizens think, but the vocal ones are far from shy. Of late — if you're a reader, but you don't peek at the comment section — you might think the readership to this site has exploded, based on the number of comments. If you're a commenter, you know better: There is but a core of commenters — I can't really say how many, it fluctuates — but they've taken to back-and-forths of less than genteel swipes. I have avoided these brawls as best I can, in fact I have avoided even reading the comments as best I can, since I don't really care what one reader thinks of another reader's IQ.

Alas, I can avoid it no longer. I was once glad to see readers of a conservative (or pseudoconservative) bent join in the conversation; I enjoy an exchange of ideas and opinions and believed that others would too. But the liberal-conservative dichotomy has become little more than a game of verbal dodge ball. I am not accusing one side or the other — either exclusively or in their preponderance — of rhetorical war crimes. I'm an agnostic as to assigning blame. Neither do I care about blame. That's not the point here. The point is that the comment section has become intolerably ugly. And something has to change, I need to take some sort of step here.

Let's start with Step Two. Andrew Sullivan did it right: He never had a comment section. What he did was publish comments of interest and relevance that came into his inbox. He could be selective and ignore comments of pure vitriol. I should have done the same. This, as logic would have it, was a happy medium between Step One and Step Three — the latter being no comment section and no reader comments anywhere, period, which I'd rather not ever impose.

Step One is what I'll settle for, for now. I'm asking commenters to pull back, on a kind of honor system. I really don't have the time to monitor all comments, but for the time being I shall. Should a commenter write something I find less than "honorable" — that is, off topic, hateful, ad-homimem-esque — I'll delete it. The only exception I'll make is if a commenter chooses to point one of these tactics toward me. I'm fair game, as any political host should be. I'm still disinclined to ban anyone, since a few moronic comments don't necessarily mean the commenter is an incurable moron. He or she might have something of value to say, sometime. If I find I'm spending an ungodly amount of time weighing decisions to delete or not to delete, or in just deleting, I shall move to Step Two.

Some will be unhappy with my decision and they will want to get one final shot in at somebody. This they may do in the post below, "POTUS, in a nutshell." Have at it. Knock yourself out. Tell that special cretinous someone just how much you hate their ignorant guts. Just don't do it here.

So there you have it, the new comment regime. I'd like to know your thoughts. If you're a non-commenter, please violate your reticence rule and let me know your thoughts. Would a civil comment section perhaps persuade you to comment in the future?

I should not have had to do this. We're all adults. Let's act like adults — like thinkers, not bomb-throwers. Thank you. —PM

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I'm going to leave this post at the top for a day or two, just so everyone gets the message. New posts below.

 

POTUS, in a nutshell

From Charles Blow, there is something about this passage — its sheer concentration, I guess — which cracks one right on the head:

"[Trump] openly lies, fabricates and exaggerates while two-fifths of the population cheers him for it…. He spurns our allies and embraces our adversaries and people shrug…. He … [is] waging open warfare on the Federal Bureau of Investigation in an effort to tarnish it before [it nails him]…. He is a racist who disparages black and brown people, whether they be immigrants, Muslims, people from Haiti and Africa, Barack Obama, the mayor of San Juan or Maxine Waters…. He is attacking the press in the most aggressive of terms so that what they reveal about him will be viewed with skepticism…. He is attempting to weaken our institutions, our protocols and conventions, our faith in the truth, our sense of honor and our respect for the rule of law."

("And somehow, many Americans, even those disgusted by what they see, have resigned themselves to this new reality.")

 

CSI: Bedlam

In the world of broadcast propaganda and presidential popularity there exists an arithmetic discrepancy that has mystified me for some time.

According to the market research firm of Statista.com, Fox News' prime-time audience numbers 2.4 million viewers (MSNBC comes in at 2 million; CNN, 1 million). Reports the NY Times, Fox "recently celebrated its 197th consecutive month … as the most-watched cable news network in prime time and over the 24-hour broadcast day." Switching to politics, in the annus horribilis of 2016, 63 million Americans voted for Donald Trump.

In other words, the size of Fox News' viewership is not only eclipsed by the number of Trump-friendly Americans, it is decidedly inumbrated, like London during the Blitz. Among the president's genuflecting lobotomates, a mere 3.8 percent tune in to Rupert Murdoch's "propaganda machine," as the recovering Fox News commentator, retired Army Lt. Col. Ralph Peters, described the network three months ago in a blistering Washington Post op-ed.

And yet a prevailing if not the dominant "narrative" in terms of explaining Trump's sustained support is Fox, Fox, Fox News. There's also Wahhabi talk radio and its militant clerics of Limbaugh, Levin & Loonies, but logic would dictate that much of that listening audience overlaps with Fox's gaping fanatics.

So what feeds those other tens of millions of Trumpeteers? What other instruments of toxic disinformation clutter their minds with the White House's fakest news … what leads them to believe the chronically duplicitous Sarah Huckabee Sanders … just what, for heaven's sake, poisons their political veins with all the lies and deceits of this truly grotesque administration?

It sure as hell isn't the NY Times, or the Post, or The New Yorker or "PBS Newshour." Is it, perhaps, and in large part, Twitter, which this hideous little POTUS further pollutes with contemptible dreck such as his latest this morning? "The Liberal Left, also known as the Democrats … want Open Borders. Crime would be rampant and uncontrollable!"

Of course even that, most likely, was another overlap from Fox News. Trump watches Doocy or Hannity or Judge Jeanine, Trump steams, Trump tweets. As Media Matters' Matthew Gertz wrote for Politico earlier this year: "There is no strategy to Trump’s Twitter feed; he is not trying to distract the media. He is being distracted. He darts with quark-like speed from topic to topic in his tweets because that’s how cable news" — in Trump's case, by now, almost exclusively Fox News — "works."

Thus I remain mystified, other than speculating that our national disease of profound voter ignorance — that is to say, Trump's support — is essentially idiopathic, homegrown, miasmic. On the evening news, maybe, Harry and Louise catch a minute or two of Trump railing about swarthy, drug-addled rapists storming the border — and by God they like the cut of his jib. That's about all I can come up with — a banal, inverse proportion thing. The more ignorant one is, the more one adores Trump.