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Seth Cotlar, mostly now at the other places Profile picture
@SethCotlar
Aug 24, 2019 • 10 tweets • 3 min read • Read on X
Amy Wax is one of the most accomplished “intellectuals” in the pro-Trump world. The things she believes are so staggeringly stupid that it’s hard to believe she’s not engaged in performance art.
The entire interview is worth reading. It’s stunning to me that someone so incoherent could get tenure at Penn law school.
I can't resist sharing a personal anecdote re. racists and littering. In 1995-ish I was hanging out in a bar in Chicago with some friends and we somehow ended up in a conversation with a very rich, entitled white dude in his 20s who'd traveled the world.
He kept talking about how "dirty" and "uncivilized" countries in Asia and Africa were. We asked him "what do you mean by that? What's your evidence?" And then he went on a rant about littering. "There's just trash everywhere. It's not like America at all. It's disgusting."
We then asked him if he'd ever set foot inside a fraternity house at one of America's elite colleges on a Sunday morning, or walked through a park the day after July 4. He defensively said "But it's different in India." "Why?" we asked. "IT'S THE SAUCES!!!," he said.
At which point he stood up and marched away from us, never to return. Needless to say the phrase "IT'S THE SAUCES!!!" is a phrase that had a long afterlife amongst the folks I was with at that bar.
Reading that Amy Wax interview immediately reminded me of the "IT'S THE SAUCES!!!" guy. Time passes...and yet so many things just stay the same, or get worse.
This Amy Wax person is on our national radar because she participated in the National Conservatism conference that is the closest thing there has been to an intellectual justification of Trumpism. Here's a great podcast conversation about that conference. player.fm/series/know-yo…
Laugh as we might at how foolish these folks seem, the ideas circulating in the world of Trumpist intellectuals are worth paying attention to. They resonate powerfully with MAGA voters and they are quite radical.
The only elected politician who spoke at that National Conservatism conference with Amy Wax was Josh Hawley. If he is the future of the GOP (as many predict) and if the GOP has a future in American politics, then this is cause for concern.

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More from @SethCotlar

Seth Cotlar, mostly now at the other places Profile picture
Oct 5, 2023
In 1978 the chair of the Oregon Republican Party was a conspiracy-obsessed, Holocaust denying white Christian supremacist with longstanding ties to neo-Nazis and right wing domestic terrorists.
I'll admit, he was a bit of an outlier. But he campaigned hard for Goldwater in '64, was a Reagan delegate in '76, '80, and '84, and was a huge fan of Dan Quayle and Pat Buchanan in the 90s. Image
More importantly, he spent the years 1960-2000 driving hundreds of thousands of miles across the state of Oregon--forging connections with local activists in churches and American Legion lodges, taking far right speakers on tours through every major town in the state, etc.
Read 10 tweets
Seth Cotlar, mostly now at the other places Profile picture
Oct 1, 2023
I think I may have found the most perfect illustration of that common variety of American centrist journalism that attributes agency and responsibility only to the left and never the right. It's from the Atlanta Constitution, 12 August 1970. For context.... Image
The columnist notes that there is a far right, grassroots movement that was working to take over the historically moderate Oregon Republican Party. I've been researching that illiberal and anti-democratic insurgency for a couple years now.
The leader of that movement was Walter Huss, a conspiracy-obsessed white Christian nationalist and virulent antisemite who worked his tail off for decades to drive the OR GOP to the right. But according to that columnist, Huss bears no responsibility.
Read 8 tweets
Seth Cotlar, mostly now at the other places Profile picture
Sep 22, 2023
I've become a bit of a collector of these obits of wealthy "conservatives" like Robert Olney. Unmentioned is the fact that by 1966 Olney thought the Jews had turned the US into a Communist country that could only be saved by a violent coup led by Christian Patriots like himself. Image
In the mid-1960s Olney was corresponding with Pedro del Valle about the Continental Congress they were setting up with white nationalists & antisemites like John Crommelin, Richard Cotten, & William Potter Gale. The idea was that the US Gov't was illegitimate & it was 1776 again.
Here's a letter retired Lt. General Pedro del Valle wrote to an Alabama chiropractor in 1967 explaining how the UN rendered the US Constitution null and void, and how Dr. Olney was organizing a new government to return the country to its origins as a "White Christian Republic." which the States created them, the Constitution, therefor they are no Longer our lawful government ( de jure) but an unlawfil one (de facto) usurping powers they no longer have. and, since the union was formed by means of the constitution, it no longer crists, and we are left with 50 disunited, sovereign states. The lask of Ar. Olney is to prepare a now union of the stales by means of a Continental Congress when the lime comes. I enclose some copies of our lierature to five you an idea about The Defenders. Thanking you for your interest, and truting you will join with us in returning this c...
Read 4 tweets
Seth Cotlar, mostly now at the other places Profile picture
Sep 20, 2023
Few things more convincing than “rules and standards matter” bloviating about how wearing shorts in the Senate will be the downfall of Western Civilization from the party of President “grab em by the p*ssy.” Image
Real clear eyed sense of proportion from the party who nominated the guy who opened his campaign by calling Mexican immigrants rapists.
Hey Dan. This you?
Read 4 tweets
Seth Cotlar, mostly now at the other places Profile picture
Sep 15, 2023
Highly recommend this discussion of Bill Buckley's very bad book, God and Man at Yale. I have one friendly amendment to add that makes Buckley look even worse!
The hosts talk about how Buckley was reading the batshit conspiratorial rantings of Lucille Cardin Crain as they appeared in a short-lived periodical called Educational Reviewer. You'll never guess who was the main funder for it. William F. Buckley, **Sr.**
As Buckley, Jr. is feverishly reading and annotating copies of Lucille Cardin Crain's Educational Reviewer in the Yale library ca. 1950, what he's doing is ingesting wingnut propaganda that has been bankrolled by his father. I'd be interested to know if Jr. was aware of this.
Read 6 tweets
Seth Cotlar, mostly now at the other places Profile picture
Sep 14, 2023
When did the "MAGA doom loop" cycle inside the GOP begin? There's no single "right answer" but in this thread I will propose in June 1962, inside the Multnomah County (OR) GOP. I'm only slightly kidding...bear with me as I try to explain.
In June 1962 a grassroots far right insurgency tried to take over the Multnomah Co GOP. These two fairly pablum stories from The Oregonian at the time are just a barrage of names, all of which I'll bet you've never heard of. But let me introduce you to some of them.
Image
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The organizer of the insurgency was Syl Ehr, a sign painter by trade and a fascist Silver Shirt from the 1930s who was active in the America First movement and would become a leader of the right wing domestic terrorist/anti-tax Posse Comitatus movement in the 1970s. Image
Read 11 tweets

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