Vibocracy
Еще один текст от Салливана, for the record. Он там рассказывает, почему Харрис полное говно, потом рассказывает, что аргументы против Трампа после его первого срока выглядят совсем не так убедительно, как до. Но за Трампа все равно голосовать нельзя, даром что с аргументами плохо, а за Харрис трудно, потому что говно же. Пока, пишет, еще не может за нее голосовать in good conscience, но что же делать консервативному never-trumper'у, который уже проголосовал за Хиллари и за Байдена, лишь бы не Трамп? Трудности у человека, в общем, большие, но я верю, что он справится, как и остальные такие же. Во всяком случае, Харрис одним своим наличием в природе уже дает ему надежду каким-то образом - может, удастся избежать второй срок Трампа.
The Never Trumper is an interesting political character. The term usually refers to Republicans/conservatives/moderates who refused to acquiesce to the Trump takeover of the GOP in 2016 - with its remarkable pivot to protectionism, non-interventionism, stricter immigration control, and cult-like leader-worship.
I happily joined them - and was, in fact, one of the first. For me, Trump’s direct contempt for liberal democracy and the authoritarian vibes of his candidacy - along with his truly despicable character - rendered him beyond the pale. I even endorsed Hillary, for Pete’s sake. In 2020, Biden was equally a no-brainer as the only feasible way to prevent a Trump second term.
But Hillary and Biden were one thing: two centrist Democrats with quite moderate, pragmatic pasts. Kamala Harris is another thing entirely: a politician who has fervently embraced identity politics as central to her understanding of the world, and is the most left-wing candidate to be nominated for president by a major political party in American history. What’s a conservative Never Trumper to do?
The record is somewhat difficult to ignore: Harris favored decriminalizing illegal border crossings, free healthcare for all illegal immigrants, funded bail for BLM rioters, abolition of private health insurance, a ban on fracking, and replacing ICE - “starting from scratch.” She is committed to the woke concept of “equity”, which means ensuring that all identity groups in America “end up in the same place” by government intervention. She favors what we now know are irreversible medical experiments on gay, autistic and trans children. She supports reparations for slavery. She wants to inculcate the core ideas of critical race, gender and queer theory in public schools from kindergarten onward.
The Never Trumper is thereby confronted with an inevitable tension. Not voting for Trump is an easy call, of course. But actually voting for the most left-wing candidate in US history - and one in the vanguard of the new left’s woke cultural revolution - forces us into a new, and awkward place: abandoning almost all our previous principles for the sake of preventing one man’s return to office.
For some, of course, there is no tension. Michael Steele, who has become an MSNBC leftist, memed with glee. Adam Kinzinger put the case for Harris most succinctly: “She’s not Donald Trump.” And if you believe that Trump is an existential threat to democracy and the rule of law itself, this obviously makes sense. All policy questions should be subordinate to deeper Constitutional concerns. I get it.
But the case, I’d argue, is not as strong in retrospect as it was in advance of 2016, and Trump’s failure to seize any serious kind of extra-constitutional power while in office - despite obvious opportunities to do so, especially during Covid and the BLM riots - suggests he has always been less interested in power than glory, which makes him less dangerous. January 6, of course, shifted the equation yet again - especially given his endorsement of political violence. And the greater organization of the far right in 2024 also suggests caution. It’s getting ugly out there.
But with Harris, we don’t just have a leftist. We have someone intent on ending any kind of color-blind meritocracy in America and replacing it with equity-based, systemic discrimination against “oppressor” groups in favor of the “oppressed”. That is as radical an assault on liberal democracy and a free society as the authoritarianism on the right. That its diktats are enforced by teachers’ unions, activist journalists, DEI consultants, and federal bureaucrats doesn’t lessen its unaccountable clout. And so far, what passes for Harris’ campaign is largely identity-based. Instantly and instinctively, her supporters divided into ethnic and demographic groups, segregating men and women, white and black, as wokeness demands. White Dudes For Harris! White Women For Harris! AANHPI for Harris! LGBTQIA2S+ for Harris!
And check out Michelle Goldberg’s column today on the new identity-rooted euphoria: “This is not only a political movement. This is a social movement. This is an inflection point. And this is, to me, a spiritual movement,” says one enraptured Dem. For some others, “the prospect of seeing a woman of color defeat Trump promised cosmic justice for the monumental insult of the 2016 election.” The core appeal is race and sex, as one woman explained:
"And so I can look at you, you can look at me, and we’re two women, and we get it. I’m telling you something. I go on my walks in the morning, I see women of color, and we just look at each other. And we just smile like, yeah, sis, we got this. We got this."
Some formerly moderate Never Trumpers have responded to this identity lovefest by simply changing their policy views to the far left. Jennifer Rubin now holds positions almost diametrically opposed to the ones she held a few years ago - and advocates for them with equal passion. Others, I suspect, favor foreign policy interventionism above all else. For David Frum, Harris is “the only hope for Ukraine, for NATO, for open international trade, for American democracy, for a society founded on the equal worth and dignity of all its people.” Ukraine First!
Others argue that Harris is not really a leftist - just check out her record as a tough, no-nonsense prosecutor and attorney general in California. She’s just an opportunist and went super-left in 2019 and 2020 because she thought that’s where the votes were. So all she needs to do now is to junk almost all her previous positions and pivot aggressively to the center.
Harris has indeed begun to do this without any explanation - she’s suddenly in favor of fracking and more border security for unknown reasons - and a few more Sister Souljah moments and we’re told she’ll be home and dry. Jonah Goldberg - the most consistently conservative Never Trumper - put it candidly:
"That’s what I mean when I say I hope she’s a fraud. I want her to be a fraudulent ideologue and reveal that she’s an authentic politician. I want her to listen to voters who think the left is too statist, too obsessed with identity politics, too un-American, and say, “I hear you” and move toward them."
Or as a friend of mine put it recently: “Can’t we all just admit we went crazy in 2020, didn’t really mean it, and start over?” Ah, if only they would!
And I can see why this pivot to the center could work, given the amnesia of the American voter and the 24/7 MSM propaganda campaign. But I also see how such an obviously cynical play could backfire, and how Harris’ real weaknesses - her inauthenticity and insecurity - could be more thoroughly exposed if her flip-flops snowball. There are a lot of clips of her leftist statements. It won’t be easy to ignore them.
So where does that leave me? I have to say I just don’t know. I’m torn between profound disagreement with Harris on principles/policy and the sheer relief that there is some chance we can avoid a second Trump term. Maybe the issues really don’t matter anymore - and we’re in a vibocracy where the feelings of novelty and youth and generational change can sweep everything before them. Maybe it doesn’t matter that Harris has been controlled as Palin was from the moment she got the nomination: no press conferences, no interviews, only set speeches and vague platitudes. Maybe getting rid of Trump is worth a new wave of woke Kulturkampf. And maybe Harris’ truly dreadful record as a campaigner outside California - and worse rep when it comes to managing and keeping competent staff - can also be waved away.
I don’t know, to be honest. I simply don’t know if I can vote for her in good conscience. The veep decision will tell us more; and the debate will be crucial. Don’t rush me! But the good news is that we have a viable choice again; we have time to stress-test this new candidacy; and it feels to me as if American democracy is alive and engaging again. If Harris’ unlikely ascension has achieved only that, it will have been worth it.
Пиздец все-таки, что Трамп сделал со всеми этими людьми.
https://chasovschik.dreamwidth.org/2380131.html
The Never Trumper is an interesting political character. The term usually refers to Republicans/conservatives/moderates who refused to acquiesce to the Trump takeover of the GOP in 2016 - with its remarkable pivot to protectionism, non-interventionism, stricter immigration control, and cult-like leader-worship.
I happily joined them - and was, in fact, one of the first. For me, Trump’s direct contempt for liberal democracy and the authoritarian vibes of his candidacy - along with his truly despicable character - rendered him beyond the pale. I even endorsed Hillary, for Pete’s sake. In 2020, Biden was equally a no-brainer as the only feasible way to prevent a Trump second term.
But Hillary and Biden were one thing: two centrist Democrats with quite moderate, pragmatic pasts. Kamala Harris is another thing entirely: a politician who has fervently embraced identity politics as central to her understanding of the world, and is the most left-wing candidate to be nominated for president by a major political party in American history. What’s a conservative Never Trumper to do?
The record is somewhat difficult to ignore: Harris favored decriminalizing illegal border crossings, free healthcare for all illegal immigrants, funded bail for BLM rioters, abolition of private health insurance, a ban on fracking, and replacing ICE - “starting from scratch.” She is committed to the woke concept of “equity”, which means ensuring that all identity groups in America “end up in the same place” by government intervention. She favors what we now know are irreversible medical experiments on gay, autistic and trans children. She supports reparations for slavery. She wants to inculcate the core ideas of critical race, gender and queer theory in public schools from kindergarten onward.
The Never Trumper is thereby confronted with an inevitable tension. Not voting for Trump is an easy call, of course. But actually voting for the most left-wing candidate in US history - and one in the vanguard of the new left’s woke cultural revolution - forces us into a new, and awkward place: abandoning almost all our previous principles for the sake of preventing one man’s return to office.
For some, of course, there is no tension. Michael Steele, who has become an MSNBC leftist, memed with glee. Adam Kinzinger put the case for Harris most succinctly: “She’s not Donald Trump.” And if you believe that Trump is an existential threat to democracy and the rule of law itself, this obviously makes sense. All policy questions should be subordinate to deeper Constitutional concerns. I get it.
But the case, I’d argue, is not as strong in retrospect as it was in advance of 2016, and Trump’s failure to seize any serious kind of extra-constitutional power while in office - despite obvious opportunities to do so, especially during Covid and the BLM riots - suggests he has always been less interested in power than glory, which makes him less dangerous. January 6, of course, shifted the equation yet again - especially given his endorsement of political violence. And the greater organization of the far right in 2024 also suggests caution. It’s getting ugly out there.
But with Harris, we don’t just have a leftist. We have someone intent on ending any kind of color-blind meritocracy in America and replacing it with equity-based, systemic discrimination against “oppressor” groups in favor of the “oppressed”. That is as radical an assault on liberal democracy and a free society as the authoritarianism on the right. That its diktats are enforced by teachers’ unions, activist journalists, DEI consultants, and federal bureaucrats doesn’t lessen its unaccountable clout. And so far, what passes for Harris’ campaign is largely identity-based. Instantly and instinctively, her supporters divided into ethnic and demographic groups, segregating men and women, white and black, as wokeness demands. White Dudes For Harris! White Women For Harris! AANHPI for Harris! LGBTQIA2S+ for Harris!
And check out Michelle Goldberg’s column today on the new identity-rooted euphoria: “This is not only a political movement. This is a social movement. This is an inflection point. And this is, to me, a spiritual movement,” says one enraptured Dem. For some others, “the prospect of seeing a woman of color defeat Trump promised cosmic justice for the monumental insult of the 2016 election.” The core appeal is race and sex, as one woman explained:
"And so I can look at you, you can look at me, and we’re two women, and we get it. I’m telling you something. I go on my walks in the morning, I see women of color, and we just look at each other. And we just smile like, yeah, sis, we got this. We got this."
Some formerly moderate Never Trumpers have responded to this identity lovefest by simply changing their policy views to the far left. Jennifer Rubin now holds positions almost diametrically opposed to the ones she held a few years ago - and advocates for them with equal passion. Others, I suspect, favor foreign policy interventionism above all else. For David Frum, Harris is “the only hope for Ukraine, for NATO, for open international trade, for American democracy, for a society founded on the equal worth and dignity of all its people.” Ukraine First!
Others argue that Harris is not really a leftist - just check out her record as a tough, no-nonsense prosecutor and attorney general in California. She’s just an opportunist and went super-left in 2019 and 2020 because she thought that’s where the votes were. So all she needs to do now is to junk almost all her previous positions and pivot aggressively to the center.
Harris has indeed begun to do this without any explanation - she’s suddenly in favor of fracking and more border security for unknown reasons - and a few more Sister Souljah moments and we’re told she’ll be home and dry. Jonah Goldberg - the most consistently conservative Never Trumper - put it candidly:
"That’s what I mean when I say I hope she’s a fraud. I want her to be a fraudulent ideologue and reveal that she’s an authentic politician. I want her to listen to voters who think the left is too statist, too obsessed with identity politics, too un-American, and say, “I hear you” and move toward them."
Or as a friend of mine put it recently: “Can’t we all just admit we went crazy in 2020, didn’t really mean it, and start over?” Ah, if only they would!
And I can see why this pivot to the center could work, given the amnesia of the American voter and the 24/7 MSM propaganda campaign. But I also see how such an obviously cynical play could backfire, and how Harris’ real weaknesses - her inauthenticity and insecurity - could be more thoroughly exposed if her flip-flops snowball. There are a lot of clips of her leftist statements. It won’t be easy to ignore them.
So where does that leave me? I have to say I just don’t know. I’m torn between profound disagreement with Harris on principles/policy and the sheer relief that there is some chance we can avoid a second Trump term. Maybe the issues really don’t matter anymore - and we’re in a vibocracy where the feelings of novelty and youth and generational change can sweep everything before them. Maybe it doesn’t matter that Harris has been controlled as Palin was from the moment she got the nomination: no press conferences, no interviews, only set speeches and vague platitudes. Maybe getting rid of Trump is worth a new wave of woke Kulturkampf. And maybe Harris’ truly dreadful record as a campaigner outside California - and worse rep when it comes to managing and keeping competent staff - can also be waved away.
I don’t know, to be honest. I simply don’t know if I can vote for her in good conscience. The veep decision will tell us more; and the debate will be crucial. Don’t rush me! But the good news is that we have a viable choice again; we have time to stress-test this new candidacy; and it feels to me as if American democracy is alive and engaging again. If Harris’ unlikely ascension has achieved only that, it will have been worth it.
Пиздец все-таки, что Трамп сделал со всеми этими людьми.
https://chasovschik.dreamwidth.org/2380131.html