Attendees at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Source: Wikimedia Commons.
Ross Douthat has another head-scratcher of a column today in the New York Times, in vague and inconcise language as always. It’s “Do the Democrats Really Think Trump is an Emergency?” I had to reread it twice (ouch!) to even figure out what he’s trying to say. (William F. Buckley and George Will taught conservative writers that pompous writing sounds smart.) But I think that what Douthat is trying to say is that, if Democrats really think Trump is dangerous, then Democrats would make big concessions to Republicans to try to win them away from Trump.
Has Douthat forgotten that Democrats gave Republicans pretty much everything they wanted in bipartisan immigration legislation, but that it was Republicans who killed the legislation, because Trump wanted them to? As NBC News wrote, “But Trump’s hammering of the deal, while he uses immigration as a campaign issue, and his demands that Republicans reject it won the day.” Or what about the bipartisan infrastructure bill, which passed 69-30 in the Senate and 228-206 in the House? It’s not that infrastructure was a concession to Republicans, it’s that Republicans touted “Infrastructure Week” the entire time Trump occupied the White House, but it was Democrats under Biden who eventually got it done.
Just what kind of concessions from Democrats does Douthat have in mind, then? Is Douthat’s memory faulty about the concessions that Democrats have made (or offered), or is it that he thinks ours is? Does Douthat think that Democrats are ever going to make concessions to the likes of the right-wing crazies who have paralyzed the House, or, heaven help us, to Trump?
I’m very serious about using the word “delusional,” which means holding false beliefs or judgments about external reality. Douthat’s model of external reality is highly defective here, both in what he conveniently forgets and in what he foolishly imagines any politically or morally sane person ought to concede to people who are not sane, politically or morally. Douthat never suggests any particular concessions. He only repeats the false notion that Democrats keep moving to the left, apparently never having bothered to read the Democratic Party’s platform.
Every time in the past when some pissed-off conservative has attempted to lecture me for being a liberal, I have observed that they have no idea what I think or what my principles are. Rather, what they think I think is what right-wing propaganda has told them that liberals think. It’s a simple tale, designed to be self-evidently stupid, and designed to enrage conservatives. I don’t expect to ever meet a conservative — even an educated one like Douthat — who is capable of actually understanding, and representing honestly, what liberals actually think. I should hasten to add here that not all liberals think alike, and that when liberals organize politically, we organize into coalitions. Though what liberal college students think matters, the thinking of liberal college students, still in their intellectually formative years, would be much easier to target and demonize than the sources, the histories, the examples, the values, and the philosophies on which most liberals actually base their principles and their politics.
Douthat misunderstands, or misrepresents, external reality because arguing for conservative ideas leaves him no choice. I am still waiting to encounter a conservative mind that can unconvince me of my observation that conservatives lie about things (or misrepresent things, if you prefer a milder word) because defending the indefensible is impossible. They lie, even to themselves, because they have to lie. They could be honest and say that they want to return to aristocracy, or put an end to democracy, or preserve the “traditional” hierarchies of race and sex and caste, of privilege and peonage, of lords and serfs and oligarchs, of dominance and submission. A few even do. But being too honest about what conservatives actually want to do with power won’t get you into the New York Times, or win many elections, in France or even Alabama.
Update 1: We’ve normalized this kind of absurdity, though we shouldn’t. On the same day that the New York Times is running conservative nonsense like the Douthat column above, they’re also running this: “Unbowed by Jan. 6 Charges, Republicans Pursue Plans to Contest a Trump Defeat: Mr. Trump’s allies are preparing to try to short-circuit the election system, if he does not win.”
So we’re expected to make concessions to the people who would bring us this kind of Trumpian emergency — trying to short-circuit the election system, again? Is it too much to expect that Republicans make some concessions to the law, to the Constitution, and to the very democracy that has enriched them and that goes much too far in trying to tolerate them and satisfy them?
There are not enough editors in the world, I’m afraid, to keep conservative “voices” like Douthat’s from trying to gaslight us. Mr. Douthat can write whatever he wants, but no one is required to publish it.
Update 2: While we’re talking about concessions to Republicans, let’s not overlook this, in case you missed it.
Mark Robinson is the Republican candidate for governor of North Carolina. He was caught on video saying, “Some folks need killing. It’s time for somebody to say it. It’s not a matter of vengeance. It’s not a matter of being mean or spiteful. It’s a matter of necessity!” Robinson was introduced by a preacher, who said, “Who’s behind President Biden, and that administration? Is it Obama. Is it Clinton? Read your Bible. It is the Devil.”
The Washington Post today rounds up some of this lovely conservative thinking today in “Pro-Trump Christian extremists use scripture to justify violent goals.”
The post writes:
“At the recent Conservative Political Action Conference, a right-wing conclave now dominated by pro-Trump factions, far-right conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec, onstage with Trump ally Stephen K. Bannon, welcomed the crowd ‘to the end of democracy.’
“‘We’re here to overthrow it completely. We didn’t get all the way there on January 6, but we will endeavor to get rid of it and replace it with this,’ Posobiec told the audience, holding up a cross.
“‘Amen,’ Bannon said.”