This type of rhetoric precisely captures what’s animating a large segment of the Republican Party and the conservative movement: Either “We” win or “They” will destroy America (as a country defined by white Christian rule). Who cares about “democracy”? #GOPextremism
As evidence for how little any of this has to do with Trump, here’s Rod Dreher, a “serious intellectual” who says he abhors the president, professing that opposing the “left” still trumps (ahem...) everything
This Dreher piece is truly something. To him, Trumpism and the “far left” (by which he means the Democratic Party, even Joe Biden) are equally radical - no “moderates” left to choose from. To make clear what a difficult choice he and his fellow conservatives face, he says this:
“As a priest, you might have had big problems with Gen. Franco, but if you didn’t side with him, you stood to be shot by the left-wing Republicans, and have your church burned down. Mind you, nobody’s going to get shot or have their churches burned down here...” I mean, what?
I mean, leave aside this, uhm, questionable portrayal of the Spanish Civil War. But what type of argument is this? “I have to go with the rightwing authoritarian because otherwise I’ll get killed - only of course I won’t... but still!” Huh?
What I find most striking about the position of “socially conservative Christians” like Dreher is how brazenly anti-democratic it is. For him, it all comes down to the judges Trump puts on the bench - who, Dreher hopes, will act as “the only line of defense” against... democracy!
As Dreher puts it, as “the country is going to start voting a lot more liberal as the Boomers die,” he needs those Trump judges to fight against the liberalization of the country. Democracy though? Not something worth protecting, it seems.
Dreher says he has a bad conscience for voting for the moral abomination that is Trump. I just wish he would also reflect more critically on a position that amounts to “If democracy goes against me, I’m gonna go against democracy and with Trump.” He doesn’t. That’s telling.
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The Modern Conservative Tradition and the Origins of Trumpism
Today’s Trumpist radicals are not (small-c) conservatives – but they stand in the continuity of Modern Conservatism’s defining political project.
New piece (link in bio):
What should we call the pro-Trump forces that are dominating the American Right today? Conservatives? Reactionaries? Something else? The terminology really matters because it reflects and shapes how we think about the nature of Trumpism and how to situate it in U.S. history.
We need to distinguish between colloquial or abstract philosophical notions of what it means to be (small-c) “conservative” - and the political project that referred to itself (and was widely referred to) as the Conservative Movement in post-1950s America.
Meet the Ideologue of the “Post-Constitutional” Right
Russell Vought, one of the architects behind Project 2025, believes there is nothing left to conserve. He desires revolution – and to burn down the system.
Some thoughts from my new piece (link in bio):
🧵1/
I wrote about Russel Vought’s ideology of “radical constitutionalism” that captures the defining sensibility on the Trumpist Right: The Left has command of America, all that is noble has been destroyed, nothing short of a radical “counter-revolution” can now save the nation. 2/
Vought’s case is emblematic of the Right’s trajectory more broadly: From, at least rhetorically, claiming “small government” principles and “constitutional conservatism” to an ever more aggressive desire to mobilize the coercive powers of the state against the “enemy within.” 3/
Meet the Ideologue of the “Post-Constitutional” Right
Russell Vought, one of the architects behind Project 2025, believes there is nothing left to conserve. He desires revolution – and to burn down the system.
New piece (link in bio):
I wrote about Russel Vought’s ideology of “radical constitutionalism” that captures the defining sensibility on the Trumpist Right: The Left has command of America, all that is noble has been destroyed, nothing short of a radical “counter-revolution” can now save the nation.
Vought’s case is emblematic of the Right’s trajectory more broadly: From – at least rhetorically – claiming “small government” principles and “constitutional conservatism” to an ever more aggressive desire to mobilize the coercive powers of the state against the “enemy within.”
Why the Stakes in this Election Are So Enormously High
Democracy itself is on the ballot. If Trump wins, the extreme Right will be in a much better position than ever before to abolish it.
Some thoughts from my new piece - while we all nervously wait (link in bio):
🧵1/
Consider this my closing argument: As of right now, only one of the two major parties in the United States, the Democratic Party, for all its many flaws, is a (small-d) democratic party. The other one is firmly in the hands of a radicalizing ethno-nationalist movement. 2/
The fault lines in the struggle over whether or not the democratic experiment should be continued map exactly onto the fault lines of the struggle between the two parties. Democracy is now a partisan issue. Therefore, in every election, democracy itself is on the ballot. 3/
Combine the myth of American exceptionalism, (willful) historical ignorance, and a lack of political imagination and the result is a situation in which a lot of people refuse to take the Trumpist threat seriously.
There is a pervasive idea that in a country like the United States, with a supposedly centuries-long tradition of stable, consolidated democracy, authoritarianism simply has no realistic chance to succeed, that “We” have never experienced authoritarianism.
But the political system that was stable for most of U.S. history was a white man’s democracy, or racial caste democracy. There is absolutely nothing old or consolidated about *multiracial, pluralistic democracy* in America. It only started less than 60 years ago.
Many Americans struggle to accept that democracy is young, fragile, and could actually collapse – a lack of imagination that dangerously blunts the response to the Trumpist Right.
Some thoughts from my new piece (link in bio):
🧵1/
I wrote about the mix of a deep-seated mythology of American exceptionalism, progress gospel, lack of political understanding, and (willful) historical ignorance that has created a situation in which a lot of people simple refuse to take the Trumpist threat seriously. 2/
There is a lot of evidence that this election may be decided by a sizable group of people who strongly dislike Trump and his plans, but simply cannot imagine he would actually dare / manage to implement any of his promises and therefore aren’t mobilizing to vote. 3/