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Tom Nichols Profile picture
@RadioFreeTom
Nov 30, 2017 • 7 tweets • 2 min read • Read on X
There is a debate brewing among #NeverTrump conservatives (the few of us there are) and others: do we seek to persuade pro-Trump (or pro-Moore) voters, and understand them, or scold and mock them? /1
I am firmly in the “scold and mock” camp. The “We must understand and reason with them” approach rests on an assumption that theirs views are merely misinformed, or a reasonable expression of political frustration. To which I say: bullshit. /2

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More from @RadioFreeTom

Tom Nichols Profile picture
Apr 27
I'm (a little) surprised at people who want to take issue with me and who insist that Americans, as a nation, really suffered through Afghanistan and Iraq, when the criticism I'm making is that we offloaded all that onto volunteers and then ignored them (and the wars). /1
I mean, normally, that might seem like a left-wing criticism, no? But I don't think it's either left/right, but just *true* in an empirical sense. A tiny fraction of the country serves in the military. We have not been a country "at war" in any meaningful sense since Vietnam. /2
People also seem to have forgotten the scale of the butcher's bill in Vietnam. Not only was no one drafted, but *20 years* of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan produced fewer than half as many casualties as Vietnam generated in *1968 alone*./3
Read 6 tweets
Tom Nichols Profile picture
Apr 17
Once again, a comment that I think is anodyne and self-evident has produced a bunch of ridiculously ahistorical objections from people who somehow think we were *more decadent* 30 years ago, an objection that makes no sense on almost any level.
/1
We are a far more affluent, leisure-oriented - and generally trashy - mass culture than we once were. (Note: *mass* culture.) "But gosh, edgy stuff happened back then!"
Exactly: What was once edge is now mainstream.
Are we more tolerant now? Yes. Of *anything.* /2
In politics, we now live in a time where almost *nothing* is disqualifying. (You folks defending Clinton - he's a stepping stone to that unhappy state we're in now. He's the guy who cemented the idea that character doesn't matter if you're getting what you want.) /3
Read 7 tweets
Tom Nichols Profile picture
Feb 19
This is exactly right. Money doesn't buy respect. It's why Trump spent his life looking at Manhattan with that nose-pressed-to-the-glass feeling; no matter how much money he made, he was a vulgar boor who wasn't welcome there. Short 🧵before I go on vacation this week.
/1
I didn't just come to this conclusion about Trump (or Carlson or anyone else) off the cuff; it's part of what I wrote about in my last book. So much of American politics among elites on the right is driven by a frustrated ambition, a sense of being denied respect. /2
Look at the early Trump circle: I called Trump "Patron Saint of the Third String." Guys like Bannon were people who clearly felt snubbed, even after attending good schools and making money. Others, like, Gorka, had little chance a career without latching on to Trump. /3
Read 9 tweets
Tom Nichols Profile picture
Dec 20, 2023
Reading Tim Alberta's wrenching piece about the idolatry of American evangelicals. Read it, and realize that C.S. Lewis (as always) saw it coming and warned us. /1

theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…
As Lewis warned in Screwtape:

"Once you have made the World an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing. "
/2
"Provided that meetings, pamphlets, policies, movements, causes, and crusades, matter more to him than prayers and sacraments and charity, he is ours-and the more 'religious' (on those terms) the more securely ours.

I could show you a pretty cageful down here."

/3
Read 4 tweets
Tom Nichols Profile picture
Dec 15, 2023
Here, @jimgeraghty makes a some unwarranted assumptions. You'd think after the "no coup in 2020" pieces, we wouldn't be doing this again, but to his credit, he offers a reasoned (if wrong) argument. /1

A Reality Check on the Trump-as-Dictator Prophecies nationalreview.com/the-morning-jo…
Jim writes:
"if our existing checks and balances under the Constitution aren’t strong enough to stop abuses of power by Trump . . . why would you think that they’re strong enough to stop abuses of power by Joe Biden or anyone else?"

This is a really odd non-sequitur.
/2
First, saying "if these measures won't stop the worst guy in the world, then why aren't you worried about how they won't stop anyone else?" Like "laws about murder didn't stop Ted Bundy, so anyone could be a serial killer!"
Uh, okay, I guess, but that's not the point. /3
Read 7 tweets
Tom Nichols Profile picture
Dec 14, 2023
I didn't go into it in my piece today on Ukraine, but I also hope we can finally junk the Powell Doctrine. It's a misleading wish list of ideal conditions that has entranced strategists and military planners for years./1
Actually, it's the Weinberger-Powell doctrine, and it's not a doctrine. It's a list of reasons never to use force unless you can win instantly against a weak enemy and achieve a totally clear objective in a popular war. /2

atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atla…
On the face of it, who could disagree with war as a last resort, for a vital interest, with support from the American people?
Great!
All you need is a weak, stupid, cooperative adversary that everyone hates, and total military superiority.
Wars don't usually happen that way. /3
Read 8 tweets

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