Thoughts on the role of love in a very raw post-America

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From an August 2022 post:

[H]ere’s the dilemma for someone in my position: I am keenly interested in avoiding charges along the lines of, “Well, doesn’t that make you clever, to be above the fray, watching all this happen to our society and civilization from a vantage point the absolves you from getting your hands dirty making a difference?”

I know of some pundits who come close to making a world-weary pose out of their disillusionment. One sort of wonders what the point of writing can even be for them.

But what does engagement look like for someone for whom principles are primary in a world where said principles are generally either mocked or ignored?

In the more recognizable world of my younger years, the political calculation to cast one’s lot with forces best aligned with one’s values seemed like a wise course. There always seemed like another day before us in which to fight anew.

That way of proceeding now looks to me like the unavoidable unleashing of toxic forces.

Why do I continue to write, particularly about this set of circumstances?

Maybe I’m being called to offer that above-mentioned port in the storm. I do hear from Precipice readers that this site gives voice to their deep frustrations.

Maybe among us we can begin to see a viable way forward.

The post was titled “How Not To Be Above the Fray?” It’s a question with renewed relevance in this second week of November 2024, when the horse is out of the barn.

Copping an attitude is the least productive way of dealing with where the chips have fallen. Yet I see it all around me. The Left seems generally to have retreated to a phooey-on-all-you-doodie-heads stance. You know, racism and sexism. Bill Kristol and the crew at The Bulwark have demonstrated since November 5 that that their stance is not much different. “Look with horror at what a plurality of our fellow citizens are okay with!”

Well, yes, I resolutely concur, but it’s far from the entire story. For us inhabitants of the Narrow Sliver of Terrain, a credible position requires a separating of the wheat from the chaff, actual conservative policy stances disentangled from Trumpist incoherence. But I rather suspect the Bulwark bunch, the Lincoln Project, and many of the Principles First folks have no interest in such an exercise. In fact, their reaction so far seems to be closer to the position staked out by Stuart Stevens in his book It Was All A Lie, a vile chunk of dog vomit that posits that the whole conservative vision has always been a facade for bigotry, greed and a host of other unsavory human characteristics.

We know that that is horses—-.

The vision that encompasses Burke, Bastiat, William Graham Sumner, James Burnham, Russell Kirk, Frank Meyer, and, of course, Buckley, Goldwater, Reagan and the neoconservatives, is noble and correct. Whenever a nation has tried it to any degree, things have improved. It achieves the balance between freedom and acknowledgement of a transcendent order for which humankind has always strived.

I personally don’t care whether Stevens, Kristol et al get a clue or not. They seem to relish their marginalization. (Isn’t that what you’re doing with your narrow-sliver-of-terrain formulation, Mr. Precipice? Quite the opposite. Precipice would love nothing more than to persuade everyone on the planet of the efficacy of true conservatism.)

The truth of the matter is pretty simple. Economic insecurity and a rejection of leftism drove the election results. This time around, the specific issues that most Americans weren’t buying were “decriminalizing illegal immigration, eliminating private health insurance, confiscating guns, banning fracking and offshore drilling, and providing access to transition surgeries for transgender prisoners.”

And most Americans viewed the election through the binary-choice lens, so that they were willing to swallow hard and go with the Very Stable Genius to put an end to such poison.

But here on the Narrow Sliver of Terrain, there are still plenty of reasons for trepidation.

Trump and Zelensky have spoken frequently in recent weeks, even met, but no one claims to know what Mr. Transactional Relationships will put on the table when he turns to the Ukraine situation. Possible indications include Don Jr.’s Instagram “You're 38 days from losing your allowance” post. Is that an outlier? I have my doubts. J.D. Vance and Tucker Carlson have his ear as well. Yes, officials from NATO, the EU and individual Western allies will weigh in, but it’s a safe bet that arguments for the post-1945 world order are lost on the VSG. When he sits down at the deal-making table with whoever else is there, his main concern is going to be what’s in it for the US, period. That, and will whatever results bring him glorification.

Then there’s tariffs. The ones last time wiped out the benefits of his tax cuts. He’s proposing much bigger ones this time.

We can also safely assume that his preoccupation with long knives being after him will continue unabated. And on that score, the Bulwark types have something of a point. He’ll respond to long knives in the most authoritarian manner he thinks he can get away with.

But as I say above, the horse is out of the barn.

We now know the lay of the land.

If anybody of any stripe says to me, “So why don’t you join us in resisting it?”, my response is, “and replace it with what?”

I’m well aware that the post-American public isn’t buying Burkean conservatism any more than it’s buying Kamala Harris leftism.

I think Daren Jonescu sums up well the reason:

Serious discussion requires serious political thinking, which requires a deeper understanding of principles and a genuine desire to persuade and improve things, rather than merely to win a contest or gain material advantage by any means necessary. And in an age as illiterate and inattentive as ours, no one could win by offering serious discussion, because no one would listen to such a person.

Ah, but this gets us back to the question I posed in August 2022: How not to be above the fray?

I think it helps a great deal to ask oneself if there’s not some level on which one can love all these characters. Every last one of them. The most ate-up yay-hoos of MAGAland. The most identity-politics-and-climate-alarmism-besotted lefties. The Bulwark types. The Adam Kinzinger - Liz Cheney - George Will types. The I-mainly-keep-it-local-and-focus-on-family-friends-and-work types. See them all as foible-ridden participants in the parade of humanity, just like me.

I sound like a loon here in late fall 2024, don’t I? Who’s thinking about extending grace? Finding some enjoyable trait in one’s fellow human being, just because your heart compels you? Cutting slack to others, who are all just trying to hang on to their little piece of the planet?

But, as I’ve also asked a few times here at Precipice, is not the aim of conservatism a world conducive to human thriving generally? Is it not a worthy objective to see about increasing the sum total of joy in this world?

Does a focus on stomping half the country into the dust move us in that direction?

I suppose some random reader might respond to the foregoing with “I don’t care about any of that noble-sounding stuff. I just want an economically strong America so me and my family can feel secure.”

Well, if you’re fine with such a crimped vision of what life’s all about, knock yourself out.

I’m about finding a way to proceed into these very uncertain waters in a way that my heart and soul are okay with.