Rod Dreher understands, and sympathizes, with the anger that is causing a lot of people to rebel against the Establishment and support Donald Trump. He’s just sad at recognizing that Trump is a phony and that rebellion is going nowhere.
I’ve been pretty explicit in this space for some time about how I think the Donald J. Trump phenomenon is based in something real. I mean, the grievances to which he speaks are not phantoms. What I find impossible to accept is that Trump is anything other than a voice of resentment. If he offered some kind of way to redress those grievances, to do something concrete about them, things would be different. If he had the moral probity and personal character to lead others to solutions, things would be different. I keep wanting to think he does, and have been trying to give him the benefit of my own severe doubts about him. But after last night’s deplorable show on state in Detroit, it could not possibly be clearer that Trump will deliver for nobody. If he wins the presidency, he is going to betray the people who believe in him. That’s who he is. …
My own “burn baby burn†moment regarding the GOP was learning last fall from Congressional insiders that the party’s leadership had no plans for religious liberty legislation post-Obergefell. They don’t want to have to be told by the media that they’re all bigots. And, plainly, their deep-pocketed donors are embarrassed by the church people who give the Republicans their votes. So, screw us, is the thought.
I understand that Republicans cannot achieve, post-Obergefell, what people like me would like to see them achieve in terms of protecting traditional marriage. That ship has sailed. The culture has shifted. It’s unreasonable to expect the moon.
But for pity’s sake, when the Republican Party cannot bring itself to defend religious liberty, and the right of church people who don’t sell their Christianity out to be left alone, what bloody use are they? …
We are …watching the ongoing dispossession of people in this country of their history, at the hands of progressives — and the forces of political conservatism are saying nothing about it. From the front page of the Stanford University newspaper yesterday, a report about a move underway to purge the campus of all references to St. Junipero Serra, a Catholic missionary who was a pivotal figure in California history. Excerpt:
Leo Bird ’17 introduced the resolution in the ASSU senate. Bird, who prefers to be referred to by the gender neutral “they,†said that they were motivated by what they saw as the discrepancy between Serra’s actions toward Native Californians and his legacy on Stanford’s campus.
“It really started out of conversations that I started to have my freshman year at the Native American cultural center,†Bird explained. “I started to get involved with Bay Area activism and started to recognize that there was this historical figure [Serra] that was represented that was sort of praised, honored, in a way that I felt really did a disservice to a lot of the California Native community as well as to my own identity, being here at Stanford.â€
“They.†Good lord. This is the kind of person who triumphs, over and over, because our universities and the elites they serve have gone corrupt and insane. Who stands up to this? They win and they win and they win. If people conclude that they are being dispossessed in their own country, and the Republican Party is effectively colluding with the dispossession, then who can be surprised by a backlash that takes the form of support for Trump? When the left wages culture war, as it constantly does, it should not be surprised that at least some conservatives see the only one on their side who brings any kind of fight to the battle is an extreme vulgarian named Donald Trump.
I’m not defending Trump. I’m trying to explain his appeal. Believe me, my heart wants the Republicans to be spatchcocked and grilled, but my head says that the country would take an unacceptable risk with Trump in the White House.
Good article, read the whole thing.
bob sykes
The GOPe would rather let Hillary become President and lose both Houses of Congress than appease their voters. This may be the last election in which there is a national Republican Party.
SDD
You cannot govern unless you win elections, and all available evidence suggests that a Trump led ticket would not only lose the presidency but drag the Senate down with him. Three Supreme Court appointments from then and it will truly not matter whether there is a Republican Party or not.
Scullman
Post you evidence, SDD.
I think it’s crap she can’t be beat.
T. Shaw
The rebellion is going somewhere and that is away from the no-different-than-Democrats/serial-loser GOP.
SDD
Of course she can be beat. The Real Clear Politics poll averages show Clinton losing to every GOP candidate except Trump http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/2016_presidential_race.html
THAT is the best available evidence right now.
ThomasS
Of course Trump is going to betray his supports. Our system is based upon lies called promises and betrayals called compromises. Trump has two types of supports: those who have nowhere else to go (by far the biggest group) and those who have already gone, left the system. These former are old time believers in the American dream who can’t quite give up the dream. They will take the Trump betrayal hard. Perhaps they’ll even lose faith at first. As Nietzsche said, nihilism is a natural response to the loss of faith . . . at first. Then they will rebound and join the second ground of Trump.
The latter group knows the system is rotten to the core and is absolutely incapable of internal reform. To them Trump is just the stupidity of the system writ large. He offers several things to this group. One, pain to the left and right, but especially the left. They have reveled in their moment in the Sun; celebrated the suffering they have brought to others. On the right, the establishment has so thoroughly betrayed the rank and file that they have zero credibility. Theirs was the betrayal of a brother and though not as bad as the left in absolute terms, it in many way has cut even deeper. Let them suffer. When Trump says he’ll rope the Moon and they howl with derision, it is simply more proof that Trump will deliver, inadvertently of course, on one this one.
Secondly, trump accelerates the learning curve that must happen. This group knows the game is fixed and will remain fixed. It will only change when it must and probably through some man-made disaster. Right now the economy is looking like a good candidate. The demigods at the Fed have flown as high as they can and now heat and gravity will bring them back to earth where we mere mortals make our living with hard work and personal trade-offs that are not even on their mental maps. Trump speeds up the de-legitimization that must accompany this process of, hopefully creative, destruction. Of all the pundits I have read about Trump only Charles Krauthammer seems to grasp the gamble they are making with this line of thought. Lastly, sheer Schadenfrued at the systems own perversity circling back to bite it in the ass. What is more amusing that hearing the Babbitt’s on the left crow about their moral and intellectual superiority over the right (who is agreeing with them!) as they point and sputter at trump supports. It does not get any better for those with a satiric turn of mind.
Lastly, what does it matter? Really. Trump will bring disaster, but so will Hillary. She is the type of smooth-talking psychopath the middle-brow love to elevate, but I’m afraid that disaster is already baked into the American cake. These swine are mere symptoms of the hypocrisy and hubris that drive American life and have for a very long time.
I won’t vote for Trump, but only because I won’t vote at all. I don’t want the Karmic reward that will bring to me personally, but I clearly see the stars aligning and the circumstances that have brought the unthinkable into the realm of the possible and soon the probably. Hillary may bring a different colored frosting to the picnic, but that minor difference is simply a matter aesthetics at this point. Isn’t everything?
ThomasS
Damn, I wish I proofed before posting.
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