Anti-anti-Trumpers

Yesterday I listened to Coleman Hughes's interview with Niall Fergusson. Among other things, the discussion touched on America's handling of the pandemic. I had expected Fergusson to come up with his usual trope that how biased the mainstream opinion is for putting the blame fully on Trump, and he didn't fail to disappoint. He is probably right pointing to the mistakes and ineptitude of the CDC and the relevant institutions. Whatever the president of the United States' attitude is, a competent bureaucracy would have handled the crisis much better. However, he also made a passing remark of how the situation under Hillary Clinton would have probably not much different, apart from disinfectants and other antics of Trump. Had he not done that, his opinion could have been regarded as factually correct, even if one-sided. But Fergusson, in comparing Clinton to Trump, didn't see it important to mention that the current president has publicly and consistently belittled the crisis, disparaged scientific opinion, and personally attacked medical experts since the beginning of the pandemic. Almost everything can be explained away. But not this: Trump, after having admitted on tape that it's a deadly disease, has been, and still is, holding rallies where he encourages people the shout his name into each others' faces, and express their loyalty to him by not wearing masks. For the classical liberal Fergusson claims to be, it's a strange lack of reference to personal responsibility and individual agenda.

In concert, Hughes mentioned that the reason he hadn't voted for Trump in 2016 was that he had feared Trump would turn out to be a fascist. Seriously? The stretch of acceptability stops only at fascism? It's a shame because otherwise the wunderkind Hughes is a kind and brilliant person I like to listen to. And Fergusson is one of the most prominent historians of our time. I always (well, almost always) find his insights worthwhile, even if nowadays his deep and seducing voice and Scottish accent reminds me of an educated mob-boss who is telling you he is in a generous mood. 

So this whole affair leads me to a topic I've been planning to write about for a while. The people I despise most in the Trump-camp, the so-called anti-anti-Trumpers. As opposed to anti-Trumpers, it's a moniker some of its holders (Brett Easton Ellis, for example) explicitly like to attach to themselves. They are people who ostensibly dislike the president, but find that the "hysteria" around Trump deserves more criticism than Trump himself. Republican politicians have proved to be spineless cowards or worse, but at least they have the excuse of financial and professional risks that standing up to Trump would entail. But right-wing intellectuals, who are openly displeased with Trump and still make a living covering for the GOP and attacking Democrats, have no such excuse. Apart from friends not worth keeping, they had nothing to lose by choosing principle and not much to gain giving them up. There are plenty of other publications that would have employed them. David French and Jonah Goldberg bid farewell politely to the National Review, while Max Boots practically kicked over the table on his way out. They are the rare exceptions.

Let's see some examples for the rest.

When the NYT came out with the story of Trump's tax evasion, David Harsanyi of the National Review wrote an article titled "Avoiding taxes is patriotic". I shit you not. Harsanyi conveniently found his inside libertarian to argue that taxing by an incompetent government is practically stealing, so a real patriot should evade it out of principle. What about the police, the military, the judicial system, and similar trifles? I'm sure Harsanyi would have written the same in Biden's defense (out of principle, again), should Biden have turned out to be a lying cheating scum. I remember reading another article from Harsanyi, in which he thanked his parents for emigrating from communist Hungary and giving him an American life. There was really no need. Dictatorships have great use of people like him. He would have had a shining career in any one party-system in Hungary before 1989 or after 2010.

When America is in the twin grip of the biggest recession and deadliest pandemic since the Great Depression and the president both admits on tape the danger and publicly sabotages any solution, the National Review just finds out that 10 years ago Biden advised Obama against killing bin Laden. Surely, the story of the day.

Most recently, the NR expressed deep concerns that the Biden-presidency wouldn't be a trustworthy custodian of the Constitution. In the same week when Trump berated his Attorney General, Bill Barr, for not indicting Biden and Obama. Satire dies here.

I'll be charitable and assume that there are people here who are not merely shills for Trump, but kinda believe what they say they believe. And I see only two, probably overlapping, reasons to be in that position. One is running your confirmation biases on steroids in the past four years, then increase the dose in the last four months. The other is an addiction to the cheap sense of superiority coming from feeling intellectually sophisticated. Discovering subtlety in affairs dead obvious to anyone else with common sense. Playing the dispassionate, factual observer. These people, almost without an exception, found the realpolitiker in themselves. They measure the achievements of the Trump-administration (and obviously there are some) against the not-yet-manifested dangers of the coming Biden-presidency (there are some of that, too), and say "well, life is messy, politics is ugly, let's be serious here. This idiot is the price we have to pay for the sake of the country." So let's scratch the surface of the pile of shit they think the damage caused by a Democrat-presidency would dwarf.

• the president withholding military aid from a country unless they help to get dirt on his political opponent
• the president denying catastrophe-relief from California, because they don't support him
• the president publicly telling a white supremacist group to stand by
• the president personal lawyer, Rudy Guiliani, working with Russian agents and spreading Russian propaganda and misinformation
• the president personal lawyer, campaign manager, deputy campaign manager, long-time business associate, and national security adviser arrested
• the president publicly preferring Vladimir Putin's word over the report of his own intelligence services
• the president publicly refusing to accept the result of the coming election unless he wins
• the president calling California and New York, the biggest state and city he presides over, hellholes
• the president publicly demanding that his Attorney General indict his political opponents
• the president justifying abandoning the Kurds with "where were the Kurds when we needed them in Normany?"
• the president retweeting accusations that Obama and Biden have had Seal team 6 killed and faked bin Laden's death
• the president failing to reject the support of a group of lunatics who claim that Trump leads a secret war against Satan-worshipping, pedophile cabal of Democrats

Take only the last 3-4 points, and if we didn't live in the Trump-era, everyone would be sure that the president is sick. Not in the "despicable crazy bastard"-way. The "he is mentally ill, we need the vice-president to step-in now"-way. The mere need to belabor the point is mind-boggling.

And yet, the socialist danger to the American life is more worrying (not for 50 of the nation’s most senior Republican national security officials, who wrote an open letter to support Biden). As Tom Nichols, former Republican international affairs specialist, put it: it's like one is offered A and B menu on an airplane. A is a bowl of shit, B is chicken. And the man wants to know how the chicken is made.

To go back to Fergusson, and the type of people he represents: "I look at the masses beneath me, left and right, and I am disappointed." I am, too. I kinda liked the guy.