Here's the problem
With each passing day, the nationalist-populist co-opting of opposition to collectivism increasingly makes the general public conflate the two
I have what amounts to a whole series of essays here at Precipice on the narrow sliver of terrain I inhabit. I’ve even begun to look at the consequences of being positioned thusly.
There are encouraging signs that actual conservatism, as opposed to Neo-Trumpism, has not gone anywhere, but they’re to be found at the national-discourse level, while articulation of conservative principles on the political field only gets the kind of airing that Neo-Trumpists care to give it, and they unfailingly mix it with their conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.
Those in the political fray tend to be of the always-was-that-way variety. In some cases, candidates or office holders who, to date, have stoked our hopes of being actual conservatives who made a point of distancing themselves from the crazy, have sullied themselves, apparently in the name of political calculation (also known as moral cowardice). The latest exhibit of this revelation of the limits of character is Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin, who is set to spend a day campaigning with Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake.
On the national-discourse level that I said was where I’ve turned for signs of hope, there are really problematic developments as well.
CPAC, of course, went from being conservatism’s premier yearly gathering to utter garbage.
But now, the Heritage Foundation is imbibing the Kool-Aid as well. Scholars are bailing over it.
The overt Neo-Trumpist activism is being handled by Heritage Action, the arm of the organization that goes beyond think-tank activity into, among other things, asking for money.
I got an email from Heritage Action this morning, asking me to donate to ESG Hurts, a project it recently embarked on.
Now, I am vehemently opposed to ESG. I wrote a post about the matter this morning over at Late in the Day. More LITD posts on the subject can be found here and here.
But the tone of the Heritage Action email made it clear that it’s seeking its support from Neo-Trumpists. The very first word in the body of it is “patriot,” which, when used in email headers from politicians of that ilk or the overtly boneheaded organizations spreading the MAGA gospel, is always a dead giveaway.
I don’t even mind the we’re-not-gonna-take-it/raised-pitchforks fury with which the email, and similar communiques, are reacting to ESG and the other means whereby progressives are imposing their collectivist vision on the country. I, too, am alarmed about it.
What deeply disturbs me is the coziness which Heritage and all the other above-mentioned people and organizations have willingly entered into with this toxic force.
For purposes of shorthand, my concern can be distilled down to the matter of denial of election results, but I’d prefer to consider the entire MAGA phenomenon, dating back to the descent down the escalator in the summer of 2015, when speaking of how toxic a force it is.
It should have been obvious to any grown human being with any kind of barometer for character and coherence from the get-go that Donald Trump was a non-starter as a presidential candidate.
Alas, our culture’s interest in that which is admirable and truly worthy of our enthusiasm was so badly degraded by 2015 that, within days of the Very Stable Genius’s announcement, the cult was already formed and his path to running the table in the following spring’s primaries was established.
It falls to those of us who still distinguish actual conservatism from this garbage to do our distinguishing vocally.
Our hope lies in the fact that we still have a voice.