1. Harry Jaffa & Allan Bloom were once the best of friends, collaborators on a book on Shakespeare they dedicated to their shared mentor: "Our Teacher, Leo Strauss." After a bitter fallout, Jaffa would pen a poisonous review suggesting gay men like Bloom deserved to die of AIDS 
2. The break-up of the Jaffa/Bloom friendship had more than personal ramifications. It became the focal point of a wider split between the Straussian movement and, ultimately, the Republican Party.
3. Like hip-hop, Straussians are defined by a coastal split. Jaffa's school (West Coast Straussians) have long been aligned with hard right movement conservatism. Bloom's school (East Coast Straussians) gravitate towards the more establishment foreign policy wing of GOP.
4. During the George W. Bush administration much was written (some of it by me) about the East Coast Straussian inflection of foreign policy hawkery. Less notice has been the role West Coast Straussians have played inside Trump administration as ultra-nationalists.
5. The West Coast Straussians say the East Coast Straussians are nihilists. The East Coast Straussians reply the West Coast Straussians are fanatics. My compromise is to recognize both are right.
6. I sat down for a great podcast with @willwilkinson about Leo Strauss, the esoteric and the exoteric, the homosocial and the homoerotic, nihilists & fanatics, & the roots of GOP extremism. jeetheer.substack.com/p/podcast-the-…
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