The shock of the 2016 election that first propelled Donald Trump to the White House produced a few good-faith attempts in the prestige press to understand the president’s supporters, especially among the white working class. Those days, fleeting as they were, are far behind us now. Laura K. Field’s Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right is less a book than the cornerstone of an information operation. It is intended to do two things: discredit any attempt to find anything rational or worthy in Trump’s political program, and ostracize as racist psychopaths anyone who dares try.
The leftist mentality fascinates me and I’ve been trying to figure it out. A most interesting case is that of the estimable Chris Hedges. I’ll begin by repeating some good things I said about him in 2012, and then refer you to his recent Substackarticles. You tell me what’s going on in his head.
Hedges on Pornography
There are some half-way decent leftists. Having listened to a good chunk of a three-hour C-SPAN 2 interview of Chris Hedges on 7 January 2012, I would say he is a good example of one. On some issues he agrees with conservatives, pornography being one of them. Both leftists and libertarians have to lot to answer for on this score. That the freedom of speech clause of the First Amendment could be so tortured as to justify pornography shows their lack of common sense and basic moral sense. This is made worse by the absurd interpretation they put upon the Establishment Clause of the same amendment which they take as sanctioning the complete expulsion of religion from the public square when it is religion that delivers in popular form the morality the absence of which allows the spread of soul-destroying pornography. If it weren’t for religion would ‘the people’ be able to think in moral categories at all? Would they have any moral sense? You can’t make a person moral by giving him courses in ethics at age 20. He must already be (unreflectively) moral for those courses to do him any good, just as he must already be (unreflectively) logical for courses in logic to do him any good.
Hedges has the good sense, uncommon on the Left, to understand that the spread of pornography is a major factor in our decline as a nation. The Victims of Pornography is a an excerpt from his book, Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle. (What a great title!)
And if leftists care about women, how can they defend pornography? Apparently they care only up to the point where it would cost them some agreement with conservatives whom they hate more than they love women. Similarly, leftists are all for women, so long as they are not conservative women, as witness the unspeakably vicious attacks on Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann. Ed Schultz the other night was mocking Michelle Bachmann and gloating over her withdrawal from the presidential race. If he had an ounce of decency he would have praised her for being in the arena and participating courageously in the grueling process while respectfully disagreeing with her positions. But respect and decency are what you cannot expect from his ilk. [The link I supplied documenting the Schultz’s viciousness has gone bad.]
For a taste of Hedges today, take a gander at his Substack article Imperial Boomerang, which I reproduce in full:
The murders of unarmed civilians on the streets of Minneapolis, including the killing today of the intensive-care nurse Alex Jeffrey Pretti, would not come as a shock to Iraqis in Fallujah or Afghans in Helmand province. They were terrorized by heavily armed American execution squads for decades. It would not come as a shock to any of the students I teach in prison. Militarized police in poor urban neighborhoods kick down doors without warrants and kill with the same impunity and lack of accountability. What the rest of us are facing now, is what Aimé Césaire called imperial boomerang. Empires, when they decay, employ the savage forms of control on those they subjugate abroad, or those demonized by the wider society in the name of law and order, on the homeland. The tyranny Athens imposed on others, Thucydides noted, it finally, with the collapse of Athenian democracy, imposed on itself. But before we became the victims of state terror, we were accomplices. Before we expressed moral outrage at the indiscriminate taking of innocent lives, we tolerated, and often celebrated, the same Gestapo tactics, as long as they were directed at those who lived in the nations we occupied or poor people of color. We sowed the wind, now we will reap the whirlwind. The machinery of terror, perfected on those we abandoned and betrayed, including the Palestinians in Gaza, is ready for us.
I have time for only one response. Renee Good and Alex Pretti were killed but not murdered. They brought about their own deaths by their illegal and imprudent behavior. Their killing was both morally and legally justified as self-defense. The ICE agent who shot Renee Good reasonably believed that she was about to commit vehicular homicide.
A friend of mine is the principal partner in an accounting firm. He told me that when Trump won in 2024, one of the female CPAs in the firm, a Democrat but very good at her job, was so distraught that she had to take leave time. We both found this passing strange*: had Trump lost, my conservative friend and I would not have been pleased, but we would have taken it in stride. The CPA’s behavior is not atypical. We all know lefties who reacted similarly. Why is this? Here’s my theory.
Although leftism is not a religion, pace Dennis Prager and others who do not share my concern for precision in the use of words, it substitutes for religion in the wholly secular psychic economy of leftists. Because leftist politics is the most important thing in their lives, their “ultimate concern” to borrow a phrase from Paul Tillich, in the way that religion is the most important thing in the lives of the truly religious, leftists freak out when their candidates lose. The feel that they are losing everything, or at least the most important thing. If the very meaning of your life is wrapped up in ‘progressive’ politics, and an uncouth America-first braggart of a billionaire, a crude unclubbable gate-crasher, a crass self-promoter, a man with no class, wins all seven swing states and the popular vote to boot, your world comes crashing down. The degree of freak-out and world-collapse will of course vary from individual to individual. An extreme case is that of Rosie O’Donnell who self-deported to the Emerald Isle where she spends her days obsessing over the Orange Man. Poor Rosie thought the grass would be greener there; it turns out, however, that the legal weed she enjoyed in LaLaLand (Los Angeles) was not to be had in Ireland. “In 2008, O’Donnell said that she was not an alcoholic, and had temporarily given up alcohol to lose weight. She wrote on her blog: “‘Cause I was drinking too much, ’cause I didn’t want to any more, ’cause it is hard to lose weight when drinking, ’cause I can never have only one.”[177] She started drinking again following President Trump’s first election victory in 2016, revealing, “I was very, very depressed. I was overeating. I was overdrinking … I was so depressed.”[178]
My theory also helps explain why leftists are so vehement and unhinged (as witness Robert de Niro’s shameless histrionics) in their blind hatred of Trump. If politics is (or rather functions as) your religion, then, since religion presents to us saintly and divine beings such as Jesus Christ meek and mild*** for emulation, lefties thoughtlessly suppose that political figures should satisfy a similar need: they should be polite, conventionally nice people that our sons and daughter should be able to admire and look up to. Leftists, most of then anyway, want a POTUS who plays a quasi-religious role, something like a Sunday school teacher. (And not just leftists; Never-Trumpers do as well.) Now the last such Sunday-school POTUS was James Earl Carter, and you recall what a disaster he was. A good man, a nice man, but a lousy POTUS. Wasn’t he involved hands-on with Habitat for Humanity? Can you imagine Trump being so involved? He’s a builder, but not that kind of builder.
In sum, two main interconnected points:
A. For the secular left — and most leftists are secularists — politics plays in their lives the all-important roles that religion plays in the lives of the truly religious. This explains why they get so excited about politics and why they are so crushed when their ‘progressivism’ suffers setbacks.
B. And because progressive politics is (or rather functions as) their religion, lefties look to politics to satisfy their need for people to look up to and emulate. Since Trump doesn’t fill the bill, they hate him mindlessly and won’t give him credit for the numerous great things he has done for the USA and indeed the whole world, where Midnight Hammer is an example of the latter. He’s not a ‘nice man’ by cat lady standards. He doesn’t look into the camera and smile like the fraudulent and phony Joey B or clown around like Kamala. He scowls. I call it the Scowl of Minerva.
__________________
* It’s an ersatz or substitute religion, where ‘ersatz’ and ‘substitute’ function as alienans adjectives. See here for more on such adjectives.
** The phrase “passing strange” originates from William Shakespeare’s Othello, where Desdemona describes Othello’s dramatic war stories as “strange, passing strange,” meaning extremely strange or very unusual. In Early Modern English, “passing” functioned as an intensifier, equivalent to “exceedingly.” [AI-generated]
*** Agnus dei qui tollit peccata mundi. The lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Lambs are meek and mild.
Christopher Rufo may have come up with the best analysis of the Fuentes phenomenon. He is, says Rufo,
. . . an essentially fraudulent phenomenon. He is a manipulator who pretends to believe in every evil in order to drive clicks, cause chaos, and achieve celebrity, even as a villain.
He has incited division on the Right. Some conservatives think that the kid should be ignored lest his views be legitimized. Others think his views should be debated and refuted. This conservative contretemps can be side-stepped once it is realized that what I called “his views” are not authentically his and put forth in good faith. So his false and contradictory statements, interspersed with some reasonable ones to add to the confusion, ought not be taken at face value. The guy is operating in
. . . what postmodern theorist Jean Baudrillard called “hyperreality”: a system in which the simulation of reality comes to replace reality itself. Under conditions of hyperreality, symbols of past phenomena lose their original meaning. Emptied out, they then circulate through digital media, where they drive the discourse and, while purely derivative, still spark real emotional involvement. In this way, the hyperreal becomes “more real than real,” masking the true nature of reality. [. . .]
The tone of his discourse is not authentic, serious, or reflective. It is ironic, cynical, and provocative. When Fuentes lauds Hitler and, in another interview, praises Stalin—irreconcilable ideological enemies—he is not expressing a comprehensible ideology that can be scrutinized in debate. He is engaging in a performance, which only becomes coherent when read as a demand for attention.
I would call it performative bullshit of the sort engaged in by Gavin Newsom with his “hand jive,” Kamala Harris, with her hyena-like risibility, “Tampon Tim” Walz, Swalwell, Cory Booker with his baseball bat, and other Democrat clowns. Nancy “The Shredder” Pelosi recently got into the act by tearing apart a fake crown in line with the mindless Faux-King meme. Trump has them completely under his control so much so that all they can do is flail about reactively with silly memes, endlessly repeated dealings of the race and Hitler cards, all the while saying nothing of substance and proposing nothing positive.
So the best response to Fuentes the political performance artist may well be no response at all. This too shall pass.
I’ll add one nuance to Rufo’s take: Fuentes is probably not fully self-transparent in his fraudulence. He knows not fully what he does. He is a confused kid who craves and receives attention, attention that has gone to his head; a kid mesmerized by the high tech that permits him to propagate his performances and baseless asseverations, but is also — let’s be fair — truly troubled by what troubles a lot of the Zoomers. They’ve been cheated by the abdication of authority on the part of parents, teachers, and clergy.
Which brings me to my last point: the Zoomers do have legitimate grievances, some of which have been mentioned in the previous comment thread.
This catalog should allay any doubts you may still have about the depth of human stupidity, depravity, and sheer viciousness. A friend, alluding to the world-wide celebration of Kirk’s life, tells me he has never been more hopeful. I believe he is fooling himself. We are spiraling downward. Hot civil war is now a clear and present danger.
You are living in a dream world if you think mutually respectful free speech and unrestrained dialog can save us. Wonderful things, no doubt, but they come too late, presupposing as they do common ground — which is precisely what we no longer have. The problem of common ground has several sides. I will mention just one now.
Suppose you agree with me that there is objective truth and that it is possible for us to know some of it. (That is something few will concede in these days of Claudine Gay and ‘my truth,’ but just suppose.) That concession’s a start, but if you and I are ‘siloed into our positions’ and we each believe we possess the truth about a particular question, then truth-seeking dialog is a sham. For if you already know the truth, or rather think you do, you will not be working with me to find the truth: one does not seek what one possesses. And vice versa: if I am convinced that I have the truth, then my conversation with you cannot be truth-seeking dialog. What we will each be engaged in is an attempt to change the other person’s mind. For genuine truth-seeking dialog to occur, there must be a Socratic confession of ignorance on both sides, or at least an admission that one might be mistaken in one’s beliefs. Kirk was no latter-day Socrates: he was not out to show people that they didn’t know what they thought they knew about things that he knew he knew little or nothing about so that they might reason together in search of the truth. Kirk lacked the doxastic modesty of Socrates. His doxastic stance was more like the firm conviction of Christ. Doxastic modesty is what is lacking today on so many issues that divide us. Neither side admits that it might be wrong. And this, I think, is a major source of all the rage, hatred, and violence, both verbal and physical.
So, while Charlie Kirk was morally superior to his enemies — and in particular greatly superior to those who rejoice in his assassination — he too was convinced that he was right as are his followers who are convinced that he is now with Jesus in heaven. Kirk was also intellectually superior to most of his enemies: he could give reasons for his positions and they were better than the ones they could give for theirs. He had unshakeable convictions and he could defend them rationally. Pressed on why he accepted the Resurrection of Christ, he replied that so many martyrs would not have gone to their deaths in that belief were it not true. The argument has some merit but it is hardly conclusive. That would not be a problem if his interlocutors were not adamantly opposed to Christianity and all of its presuppositions. But they are. Hence their hatred of him and his ideas and their fear that his powerful influence would lead to their suppression. This fear is one, though not the only, factor that fueled their desire to see him assassinated.
When there was still a large chunk of common ground, mutual respect came easy and conversation among political opponents was fruitful for the ironing out of details against the backdrop of commonly held values and presuppositions. Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill differed politically but not as enemies; after hours they were on friendly terms. Those days are over. There is no longer any common ground to stand on. Political opponents are now political enemies, enemies who see each other as existential threats. When we see each other as existential threats is when the guns and knives come out, and when assassination becomes politically if not morally ‘justifiable.’
Is political assassination ever morally justifiable? I think most of us will agree that the 20 July 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler, Operation Valkyrie, was morally justified, despite its being illegal by the laws of the Third Reich. Morality trumps legality. So if Trump really were another Hitler, as our political enemies madly assert, then his assassination would be morally justifiable, and by extension so would the assassination of others such as Kirk who strongly supported Trump and his MAGA agenda. Now surely seasoned politicians such as Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris who assert with a straight face that Trump is Hitler or a fascist do not believe what they assert, in fact, they know that what they assert is false: they are smearing him in an attempt to gain power for themselves and their party. Unfortunately, many naive, ignorant young people believe what their elders say, and some of these are willing to act on their beliefs. So I say that such contemptible liars as Clinton and Harris have Kirk’s blood on their hands, figuratively speaking, due to their egregiously irresponsible rhetoric.
You decide. If you want my opinion, Dementocrat 'paranoia' is but a manifestation of TDS. Never forget: our political enemies are ever at work bringing Trump's 'inner Hitler' to light.
Addendum (8/22): Trump's One-Week D. C. Clean-Up. Does it show that the Dems are destroying their cities by choice? It may be like this: in their race-delusionality, they think that any crackdown on crime would be racist, and their greatest fear is to be called racists.
You can count on the inferior to hate the superior. It's human nature, and an eternal war.
Dio Cassius 38.39.2 (speech of Caesar; tr. Earnest Cary):
Against this prosperity many are plotting, since everything that lifts people above their fellows arouses both emulation and jealousy; and consequently an eternal warfare is waged by all inferiors against those who excel them in any way.
Let's apply the thought I found at Michael Gilleland's erudite site to current events.
Against the prosperity, peace, and manifold accomplishments of the Trump administration that lift people up, both here and abroad, many are plotting, belittling, denigrating, and refusing to acknowledge. The successes of the current administration arouse both emulation and jealousy, or rather envy. The Democrat attempts at emulation are pathetic and childish consisting of such merely performative stunts as throwing F-bombs (Hunter Biden), working out with weights (Swalwell) and waving around a baseball bat while howling in rage (Cory Booker, a.k.a. 'Spartacus'). It is merely performative when a pussy postures as a tough guy.
And let's not forget the self-deportation of such powerhouse intellects as Rosie O'Donnell and Ellen DeGeneres. Rosie, expecting the grass to be greener on the Emerald Isle, discovered that it is illegal there whereas her supply was assured in LaLaLand (Los Angeles) whence she came. And driven mad by the big bad Orange Man's rent-free residence in her narrow and shallow pate, she can't sleep at night, Zanax, like marijuana, being hard to find in Ireland. Her spatial translation has not abated her ire which continues to be regularly displayed on TikTok as Jesse Watters is wont to report.
As for Democrat envy of Trump, it is perhaps the main source of their mindless hatred of the man, a hatred so intense and unhinged as to warrant a quasi-psychiatric appellation, 'Trump Derangement Syndrome' (TDS). The Dems are in such disarray that they are reduced to trotting out their discredited bromides and tired bullshit, and as for the various cards they play, race, white supremacy, Hitler, and the rest, they haven't noticed that they are played out. People who ought to know better such as Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ) claim with a straight face that the Dems failed to get their message across. Kelly, a former astronaut, is an intelligent man, but such people sometimes say stupid things. The Dems have no message and they have no messenger. A message both salutary and sellable cannot consist of an embrace of 80-20 issues such as allowing biological males to compete in women's sporting events, and a 90-10 issue such as allowing the nation's border to remain wide open. And who might be their messenger in 2028? Kamala the clown? Did you hear the airhead's latest inanities? Are you paying attention?
What we have here is a war for the soul of America. That was one of the few intelligent things Traitor Joe said. The current Dems are a pack of inferiors who hate us because of our superiority morally and intellectually.
"An eternal warfare is waged by all inferiors against those who excel them in any way."
Addendum 2 (8/3/2025). "It is merely performative when a pussy postures as a tough guy." Replete with trademark MavPhil alliteration. Corroboration:
A highly theatrical Sen. Cory Booker screamed a series of false justifications for his obstructionism on the Senate floor. “For us to move forward as a body is to be complicit in what Donald Trump is doing. I say, ‘no.’”
The New Jersey Democrat asserted the administration was rounding up people “with a right to be in this country,” unaware the Kilmar Abrego-Garcia “Maryland Man” story has been exposed as a hoax. Far from being a sympathetic citizen, Abrego-Garcia is an illegal alien facing human trafficking charges.
Mr. Booker also pretends that CBS didn’t fire Stephen Colbert because of his rock-bottom television ratings. “I see businesses taking late night talk show hosts off the air because they dare to insult a president,” Mr. Booker said. “That is complicity with an authoritarian leader who is trashing our constitution. It’s time for Democrats to have a backbone, it’s time for us to fight, it’s time to draw a line.”
'Retribution' has two main senses in English, and they are importantly different. The word can refer to revenge or to a form of justice, retributive justice. Do I have to explain that justice is not revenge? Conflating the two, journalistic shills for deep-state malefactors try to dismiss as revenge what is a quest for justice to right the wrongs perpetrated against Donald Trump by said malefactors.
Tulsi Gabbard's exposure of the Russia Collusion Hoax has leftists in our government sweating. Jonathan Turley names names: John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey, and Andrew McCabe.
But of course one cannot expect our political enemies to play fair in what they take to be a war. So this comes as no surprise:
Former Attorney General Eric Holder told MSNBC on Sunday morning that the Justice Department is being politicized to attack enemies of the Trump administration and "put at risk the lives and well-being" of people who oppose the president.
Talk about projection! What Holder & Co. are accusing our side of doing is precisely what they have been doing all along.
There is also the underhanded ploy of accusing us of putting lives at risk when our side rightly responds to their illegal actions. We are supposed to accept the injury meekly, lest our legitimate objections to their outrages inspire some lunatic to go on a rampage. Yet another application of the Left's double-standard 'principle.'
Dick Durbin (D-IL): “I’m going to take you back in history for a moment. When that Second Amendment was written, we were talking about the likelihood a person could purchase a muzzle-loading musket.” The implied conclusion, of course, is that the Second Amendment does not protect the right of a citizen to own a semi-automatic rifle such as an AR-15.
If Durbin's argument were any good, then, by parity of reasoning, the free speech clause of the First Amendment would not protect speech transmitted by telegraphy, telephony, radio, any RF device, television, e-mail, text message, you get the picture. But of course no one in his right mind who upholds the right of free speech could conceivably restrict its exercise to such media as were available at the time of the Founders.
So Durbin's argument is worthless. You tell me what his motive is in giving such a specious argument. Let's be charitable and assume that he is not just plain stupid.
Trey Gowdy issued one on his show last night. The man needs to stiffen his spine and realize that our political opponents are enemies with whom we share insufficient common ground for productive debate. They don't need debating but defeating. He did guest a Dem pol who talked some sense and seemed decent, but the guy was an outlier who apparently hasn't yet grasped that his party is and has been for some time a hard-Left outfit.
Here at MavPhil my tone is 'edgier' than on Substack and on Facebook it is edgier still. A good writer can write in different tones and voices depending on his audience.
See my Leftists and Civility over at the Stack for a measured partial statement of my views on this topic.
The single thing I can imagine Russell finding most shocking would be Frege’s endorsement of patriotism as an unreasoning prejudice. The absence of political insight characteristic of his times, Frege says, is due to “a complete lack of patriotism.” He acknowledges that patriotism involves prejudice rather than impartial thought, but he thinks that is a good thing: “Only Feeling participates, not Reason, and it speaks freely, without having spoken to Reason beforehand for counsel. And yet, at times, it appears that such a participation of Feeling is needed to be able to make sound, rational judgments in political matters.” These are surely surprising views for “an absolutely rational man” to express. The man who wanted to set mathematics on surer logical foundations, was content for politics to be based on emotional spasms.
This is a rich and fascinating topic, both intrinsically and especially for me, given my recent deep dive into the world of Carl Schmitt and his antecedents. I will be returning to him. But there is so bloody much else that clamors for my attention. I'm a scatter-shot man to my detriment. Quentin Smith detected that tendency in me way back when. How I miss that crazy guy.
Live long, old friends die, and new friends will never be old.
But Robert A. Heinlein is right: "Specialization is for insects." The trick is to be a jack of all trades but a master of one while running the risk of being a master of none.
What I like about the winner of the New York City mayoral Democrat primary is that he is not a 'stealth ideologue' a phrase I have been using for years to characterize the likes of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris. Mamdani, unlike the mendacious foursome just mentioned, comes clean about what he and the Dems intend:
Mamdani is now the mainstream of the once great Democratic Party.
The only difference is that Mamdani isn’t afraid to say what other Democratic politicians try to hide.
Think about what Mamdani has proposed or supported:
A yearlong freeze on rent
A $30 minimum wage
Free bus service
City-owned grocery stores
Defunding the police
Calling Israel’s war in Gaza a genocide.
“Mainstream Democrats” support every one of these positions in one way or another.
With the advent of Mamdani it will be more difficult now to remain a Useful Idiot as so many of the supporters of the Dems are. You know these people. We have them in our families and in our neighborhoods and workplaces. A lot of them are the "college-educated white women" of a certain age. They rescue cats and dogs and support what they sincerely believe are good causes. But they are lazy and inattentive and too wrapped up in their private lives to pay proper attention to current events. Their loving and nurturing feminine nature impairs their political judgment and makes them easy marks for the fraudulent come-ons of professional pols like Phony Joe Biden who has 40 years of experience of looking into the camera, smiling, and making an emotional appeal. The women think, "He's a nice man!" They cannot see past the polished style to the lack of substance. Conversely they cannot see past Trump's off-putting style to his genuine and salutary substance. In the case of pretty boy Gavin Newsom, they are so taken by his style that the question of substance doesn't even arise. I had to agree with Sean Hannity one night when he remarked that Joy Behar of The View has a "crush" on him. Joy Behar, that well-fed paragon of wisdom and insight!
But old men, too, are part of the Useful Idiot contingent. Lazy, inattentive, superannuated and superficial, pissing their lives away hitting little white balls into holes and — worst of all — living in the past. Mamdani, as a sort of Fidel redivivus, may help these Rip van Winkles wake up.
One more thing. It is good that the battle lines are clearly laid out. Let the battle begin, the battle for the soul of America. Mamdani is a Great Clarifier as is our boy Trump. John Catsimatidis, billionaire, said on Stuart Varney's show this morning that Trump has God on his side. How would he know? Does the billionaire have a hot line to the divine? What is within the range of our knowledge, however, is that Trump's the man to save the Republic, and make the whole world a safer place, as he already has.
On very rare occasions, something surfaces at The Bulwark worth reading.
Radosh, who is well worth reading, gives his take on Horowitz's flipping of his ideological script, and takes him to task for his late extremism. But how is this judgment by Radosh not itself extreme:
What David is being celebrated for is the opposite of the introspective and empathetic writer, a thoughtful and moderate conservative, evident in his personal books. And his supporters give him credit for helping to create the most repulsive and nasty of the Trump entourage, Stephen Miller, who of course, added his own tribute to David. Another right-wing extremist protégé, Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, wrote to single out David’s responsibility for Miller’s career in these words . . . .
We were friends for a time, but friendship is fragile among those for whom ideas matter. Unlike the ordinary nonintellectual person, the intellectual lives for and sometimes from ideas. They are his oxygen and sometimes his bread and butter. He takes them very seriously indeed and with them differences in ideas. So the tendency is for one intellectual to view another whose ideas differ as not merely holding incorrect views but as being morally defective in so doing. Why? Because ideas matter to the intellectual. They matter in the way doctrines and dogmas mattered to old-time religionists. If one’s eternal happiness is at stake, it matters infinitely whether one “gets it right” doctrinally. If there is no salvation outside the church, you had better belong to the right church. It matters so much that one may feel entirely justified in forcing the heterodox to recant “for their own good.”
Addendum (5/9)
Here is Stephen Miller in action. Trenchant, but wholly on target, and the reprobates who are the recipients of the trenchancy richly deserve it. Miller is neither repulsive nor nasty by any sane measure. Perhaps someone should ask Radosh which side he is on these days.
Would that the extremity of the political polarization of the present could be avoided, including the polarization over polarization itself, its nature, causes, effects, and who is responsible for it. I say they are responsible for it. Our positions are moderate; theirs are extreme.
For example, James Carville, the "ragin' Cajun," is poles apart from the sane and reasonable Victor Davis Hanson. Bang on the links and see for yourself. But 'see' is not the right word inasmuch as leftists are blind and can't see 'jack.' How explain such blindness, such intransigence, such praeter-natural feculence of brain, perversity of will, foulness of heart?
I find it endlessly fascinating. Polarization, I mean. Why this depth of disagreement? But it's all grist for the mill, blog-fodder for the Bill.
For another example, compare Newt Gingrich's sanity to its lack in one who is "terrified" at Trump's judicial picks.
Living under a far-right authoritarian regime that is gutting every American institution that keeps people safe, alive, and connected to a thriving civilization, we have to keep asking ourselves how we got here—and how we can get out. And the most important factor in Donald Trump’s win was that Kamala Harris lost.
Trump has run for president three times and Harris is the only person to have lost the popular vote to him. In 2024, he had no special magic; if anything, he was marred as a felon and a failed coup leader. A major part of the problem was Harris, who embodies the change-nothing politics of Hillary Clinton without the latter’s political savvy; and the cautiousness of Joe Biden without his populist instincts.
Last sentence of abstract: "These results are consistent with Carl's (2014) hypothesis that higher intelligence among classically liberal Republicans compensates for lower intelligence among socially conservative Republicans."
Good study.
I'll read this later. But for now, one quick comment. I am both a classically liberal Republican and a social conservative Republican. I fail to see how classical liberalism excludes social conservatism. I do understand, however, that there are those who think the two incompatible. But of course it all rides on how these terms are defined.
