Posts
The New York Times
op-ed page gets one right. Let’s just
say a stopped clock….
The story cannot be told without first referring to Angelo Codevilla. Codevilla, writing before Trump’s election
victory, suggests that there is no more republic; there are only stakeholders
and subjects. From this, nothing good
can come:
We have stepped over the threshold
of a revolution. It is difficult to imagine how we might step back, and futile
to speculate where it will end. Our ruling class’s malfeasance, combined with
insult, brought it about. Donald Trump did not cause it and is by no means its
ultimate manifestation. Regardless of who wins in 2016, this revolution’s
sentiments will grow in volume and intensity, and are sure to empower
politicians likely to make Americans nostalgic for Donald Trump’s moderation.
In an op-ed completely mis-titled “The
Coming War on Business,” David Brooks identifies the reasons for the
fracturing of the American body politic.
I suspect it is mis-titled, because the Times doesn’t really want this op-ed to be found.
Brooks is describing work done by Sam Francis at The Washington Times in the late 1980s
and early 1990s. He cites three key
insights hammered home by Francis and used as the foundation of Pat Buchanan’s
run in 1992:
The first was that globalization
was screwing Middle America.
A sentiment captured perfectly by Trump during his campaign.
His second insight was that the
Republican and conservative establishment did not understand what was
happening.
Twenty-four years later, nothing had changed. But it is his third insight that is also to
be found in Codevilla:
His third insight was that politics
was no longer about left versus right. Instead, a series of smaller conflicts —
religious versus secular, nationalist versus globalist, white versus nonwhite —
were all merging into a larger polarity, ruling class versus Middle America.
As Codevilla noted: there are only stakeholders and
subjects. Citing Francis:
“Middle American groups are more
and more coming to perceive their exploitation at the hands of the dominant
elites.”
The mood disappeared for a time – perhaps booming stock
markets of the 1990s and booming housing markets of the early 2000s. Codevilla sees the financial crisis of 2008
as the fuel that lit (or, in reality, re-lit) the fire:
The ruling class’s united front in
response to the 2008 financial crisis had ignited the Tea Party’s call for
adherence to the Constitution…
And this is why I saw Trump’s success as a continuation of
Ron Paul’s campaign – albeit without the policy integrity, personal class, or
intellectual foundation.
Francis wrote in 1996 of Buchanan’s reference to the culture
wars of the time; I recall Codevilla suggesting that when we were told that a
man had the right to use a women’s restroom that this was a bridge too far.
There was a racist streak to Francis, apparently. Of course, Trump is painted with the same
brush. I read once something like: not
every Trump supporter is a racist, but every racist is a Trump supporter. The first part isn’t held to be true by
non-Trump supporters; the last part ignores, apparently, non-white racists. But anyway, you get the idea.
Conclusion
Brooks, like Codevilla, also sees that Trump isn’t the end,
but the continuation of a movement that will not die with Trump’s time in
office:
Trump is nominally pro-business.
The next populism will probably take his ethnic nationalism and add an
anti-corporate, anti-tech layer. Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple stand for
everything Francis hated — economically, culturally, demographically and
nationalistically.
As the tech behemoths intrude more
deeply into daily life and our very minds, they will become a defining issue in
American politics. It wouldn’t surprise me if a new demagogue emerged, one that
is even more pure Francis.
