[Bear this in mind when you read
today's column by David Brooks of the Times, who is totally onside with the Never Trump movement, but who dares to suggest to his readers that Never Trump elites
might actually be the baddies.
Excerpts from Brooks:
Quote:
In this story we anti-Trumpers are the good guys, the forces of progress and enlightenment. The Trumpers are reactionary bigots and authoritarians. Many Republicans support Trump no matter what, according to this story, because at the end of the day he's still the bigot in chief, the embodiment of their resentments, and that's what matters to them most.
I partly agree with this story; but it's also a monument to elite self-satisfaction.
So let me try another story on you. I ask you to try on a vantage point in which we anti-Trumpers are not the eternal good guys. In fact, we're the bad guys.
Brooks cites examples of how members of the professional class have changed economic, social, and cultural structures to favor themselves, at the expense of tens of millions of other Americans. More:
Quote:
Does this mean that I think the people in my class are vicious and evil? No, most of us are earnest, kind and public spirited. But we take for granted and benefit from systems that have become oppressive. Elite institutions have become so politically progressive in part because the people in them want to feel good about themselves as they take part in systems that exclude and reject.
It's easy to understand why people in less-educated classes would conclude that they are under economic, political, cultural and moral assault and why they've rallied around Trump as their best warrior against the educated class. Trump understood that it's not the entrepreneurs who seem most threatening to workers; it's the professional class. Trump understood that there was great demand for a leader who would stick his thumb in our eyes on a daily basis and reject the whole epistemic regime that we rode in on.
If distrustful populism is your basic worldview, the Trump indictments seem as just another skirmish on the class war between the professionals and the workers, another assault by a bunch of coastal lawyers who want to take down the man who most aggressively stands up to them.
To remind you: I believe that Trump's impeachment over his January 6 behavior was justified. I am skeptical of these new charges against him. They might be valid, but that will have to be demonstrated. Though I am a member of David Brooks's class, I have zero trust in establishment institutions. None.
Remember, they told us that Trump was a Manchurian candidate in Russia's pocket. It was a lie, and the media talked itself into believing this lie,
according to the Columbia Journalism Review's postmortem. The ruling class told us that children were not being subjected to chemical and surgical sex changes but that was a lie, as we know thanks in large part to Christopher Rufo publicizing leaks. The ruling class told us lies about Covid. The ruling class knew Hunter Biden's laptop was real, but the FBI appears to have lied about it to social media giants in an effort to help the Biden campaign; fifty or so former top intelligence officials signed a letter testifying that the laptop was Russian disinformation. It was all a lie.
Now that it is emerging that the crackhead Hunter Biden's business derring-do actually did have to do with his father as vice-president, and looks for all the world like influence peddling, we are told by the ruling class that
actually, yeah, okay, the Vice President was on the phone then,
but he didn't talk business.We could go on and on with the lies these people tell to advance their class interests, and their hypocrisies (e.g. white male Jason Aldean is History's Greatest Monster for his anti-crime "Try That In A Small Town," we must celebrate the gritty authenticity of incomparably more violent, grisly songs by black rappers). (Oh, and what about that Nashville trans shooter manifesto anybody heard anything about that lately?).
Though I think Trump is a bum, it is hard to get too worked up over the idea that he might beat this corrupt system.] -Rod Dreher