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JHan
JHan's Journal
JHan's Journal
November 21, 2017
*snip*
*snip*
surprising insight given the source: "The White Minstrel Show"
from The National Review of all places ...
by KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON ( who, for all his other flaws, managed to write an insightful opEd critiquing conservatism)
My disagreements with him are where he dismisses external factors which worsen outcomes and falls back to the trope of "Pulling yourself up by own bootstraps" etc. Other than that, he is spot on in his dissection of anti-elitist populism.
White people acting white have embraced the ethic of the white underclass, which is distinct from the white working class, which has the distinguishing feature of regular gainful employment. The manners of the white underclass are Trumps vulgar, aggressive, boastful, selfish, promiscuous, consumerist. The white working class has a very different ethic. Its members are, in the main, churchgoing, financially prudent, and married, and their manners are formal to the point of icy politeness. Youll recognize the style if youve ever been around it: Its Yes, sir and No, maam, but it is the formality of soldiers and police officers correct and polite, but not in the least bit deferential. It is a formality adopted not to acknowledge the superiority of social betters but to assert the equality of the speaker equal to any person or situation, perfectly republican manners. It is the general social respect rooted in genuine self-respect.
Its opposite is the sneering, leveling, drag-em-all-down-into-the-mud anti-elitism of contemporary right-wing populism. Self-respect says: Im an American citizen, and I can walk into any room, talk to any president, prince, or potentate, because I can rise to any occasion. Populist anti-elitism says the opposite: I can be rude enough and denigrating enough to drag anybody down to my level. Trumps rhetoric ridiculous and demeaning schoolyard nicknames, boasting about money, etc. has always been about reducing. Trump doesnt have the intellectual capacity to duke it out with even the modest wits at the New York Times, hence its the failing New York Times. Never mind that the New York Times isnt actually failing and that any number of Trump-related businesses have failed so thoroughly that theyve gone into bankruptcy; the truth doesnt matter to the argument any more than it matters whether the fifth-grade bully actually has an actionable claim on some poor kids lunch money. It would never even occur to the low-minded to identify with anybody other than the bully. Thats what all that ridiculous stuff about winning was all about in the campaign. It is might-makes-right, i.e., the politics of chimpanzee troupes, prison yards, kindergartens, and other primitive environments. That is where the underclass ethic thrives and how smart people came to be a term of abuse."
Its opposite is the sneering, leveling, drag-em-all-down-into-the-mud anti-elitism of contemporary right-wing populism. Self-respect says: Im an American citizen, and I can walk into any room, talk to any president, prince, or potentate, because I can rise to any occasion. Populist anti-elitism says the opposite: I can be rude enough and denigrating enough to drag anybody down to my level. Trumps rhetoric ridiculous and demeaning schoolyard nicknames, boasting about money, etc. has always been about reducing. Trump doesnt have the intellectual capacity to duke it out with even the modest wits at the New York Times, hence its the failing New York Times. Never mind that the New York Times isnt actually failing and that any number of Trump-related businesses have failed so thoroughly that theyve gone into bankruptcy; the truth doesnt matter to the argument any more than it matters whether the fifth-grade bully actually has an actionable claim on some poor kids lunch money. It would never even occur to the low-minded to identify with anybody other than the bully. Thats what all that ridiculous stuff about winning was all about in the campaign. It is might-makes-right, i.e., the politics of chimpanzee troupes, prison yards, kindergartens, and other primitive environments. That is where the underclass ethic thrives and how smart people came to be a term of abuse."
*snip*
The populist Rights abandonment of principle has been accompanied by a repudiation of good taste, achievement, education, refinement, and manners all of which are abominated as signs of effete elitism. During the Clinton years, Virtue Inc. was the top-performing share in the Republican political stock exchange. Fortunes were made, books were sold by the ton, and homilies were delivered. The same people today are celebrating Donald Trump not in spite of his being a dishonest, crude serial adulterer but because of it. His dishonesty, the quondam cardinals of Virtue Inc. assure us, is simply the mark of a savvy businessman, his vulgarity the badge of his genuineness and lack of political correctness, and his pitiless abuse of his several wives and children the mark of a genuine alpha male.
No less a virtue entrepreneur than Bill Bennett dismissed those who pointed out Trumps endless lies and habitual betrayals as suffering from moral superiority, from people on high horses, and said that Trump simply is a guy who says some things awkwardly, indecorously, infelicitously. Thus did the author of The Book of Virtues embrace the author of Grab Em By the P***y.
We need a Moynihan Report for conservative broadcasters. The problem, in Bennetts telling (and that of many other conservatives), isnt that Trump is a morally defective reprobate but that he is aesthetically displeasing to overly refined elitists. That is a pretty common line of argument and an intellectual cop-out but set that aside for the moment. Lets pretend that Bennett et al. are correct and this is simply a matter of manners. Are we now to celebrate vulgarity as a virtue? Are we to embrace crassness? Are we supposed to pretend that a casino-cum-strip-joint is a civilizational contribution up there with Notre-Dame, that the Trump Taj Mahal trumps the Taj Mahal? Are we supposed to snigger at people who ask that question? Are we supposed to abandon our traditional defense of standards to mimic Trumps bucket-of-KFC-and-gold-plated-toilet routine? "
No less a virtue entrepreneur than Bill Bennett dismissed those who pointed out Trumps endless lies and habitual betrayals as suffering from moral superiority, from people on high horses, and said that Trump simply is a guy who says some things awkwardly, indecorously, infelicitously. Thus did the author of The Book of Virtues embrace the author of Grab Em By the P***y.
We need a Moynihan Report for conservative broadcasters. The problem, in Bennetts telling (and that of many other conservatives), isnt that Trump is a morally defective reprobate but that he is aesthetically displeasing to overly refined elitists. That is a pretty common line of argument and an intellectual cop-out but set that aside for the moment. Lets pretend that Bennett et al. are correct and this is simply a matter of manners. Are we now to celebrate vulgarity as a virtue? Are we to embrace crassness? Are we supposed to pretend that a casino-cum-strip-joint is a civilizational contribution up there with Notre-Dame, that the Trump Taj Mahal trumps the Taj Mahal? Are we supposed to snigger at people who ask that question? Are we supposed to abandon our traditional defense of standards to mimic Trumps bucket-of-KFC-and-gold-plated-toilet routine? "
*snip*
"What the Trump-style would-be tribunes of the plebs most have in common with self-appointed progressive advocates for the poor is ignorance of the actual subject matter. It werent the scheming Chinaman what stole ol Bubbas job down Bovina, cause ol Bubba didnt really have him a job to steal. And it isnt capitalism that made rural Appalachia or small-town Texas what it is. Well-heeled children of privilege such as Elizabeth Bruenig condescend to speak on behalf of people and communities about whom they know practically nothing people who have not, lets remember, asked the well-scrubbed sons and daughters of the ruling class to speak on their behalf. When they were asked, they chose Donald Trump by a very large margin, but then the poor make poor choices all the time thats part of why theyre poor. The Left is convinced of Thomas Franks Whats the Matter with Kansas? thesis, that the poor and struggling in the conservative and rural parts of the country are just too besotted with Jesus talk and homosexual panic to understand what actually is at stake, and who therefore the famous phrase vote against their own economic interests. Progressives preach about and to people with whom they have no real connection, and do so in ways that would embarrass them to death if it were a racial line rather than a class line they were crossing in such a state of pristine ignorance. They are the mirror image of white conservatives who wonder why poor black people in the Bronx cant just act white and get with the program. If I might be permitted to address the would-be benefactors of the white underclass from the southerly side of the class line: Aint nobody asked you to speak for us."
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