Welcome to the new Republican Party
Have we reached a tipping point where the magic spell our elites have cast over public discourse is starting to wear off? Is it ok to like Trump now?
For the first time ever, I watched the Republican National Convention, and I sat through Donald Trump’s entire keynote speech.
They had a truly astounding line-up: a woman famous mostly for an enthusiasm for sleeping with rappers, a union boss, and even a political prisoner — Peter Navarro, who gave an angry speech on the very morning he finished a four month sentence for the crime of refusing to snitch on Trump.
Union bosses, political prisoners and rap hos are Republicans now. While Mitt Romney, Liz Cheney and Mike Pence were nowhere to be found. What a time to be alive.
In the week since he missed death by a few millimetres, Trump has dominated the world’s attention. He appears a changed man - and certainly a more interesting candidate. He picked a youthful running mate from the humblest of backgrounds; and then on the RNC stage, he gave a genuinely moving, even gentle, account of being shot. Trump’s speech was conciliatory and thoughtful.
His pick for VP, Senator J.D. Vance, is an interesting character. He always impressed me in the interviews he gave on Bannon’s War Room over the years, and he gave a smart speech which really brought to life the reality of growing up in the Rust Belt. Especially the long, toxic, shadow that NAFTA cast over his life, and the lives of countless other working class kids who came of age in the shattered communities of the forgotten places. And despite my attempts to remain detached and cynical, I was entirely charmed by his accounts of his grandmother, MaMaw, who cursed like a sailor and threatened to murder people who annoyed her. My kind of gal.
Now, I grew up among writers and teachers, not Teamsters or soldiers. But even as a young adult, it was very apparent to me that in order function well, society needed to have a solid manufacturing economy to support a healthy and robust working class. Way back 20 years ago, or so, when New York City announced plans to revamp the old industrial railway, the High Line, into a park, I remember distinctly feeling dismayed. Because to me it meant that this piece of infrastructure that once was a place of employment for thousands of men would now become a place of leisure and aesthetic pleasure— for the rich. As far as I can remember, I was alone among my bookish and artsy friends, in my critique.
But I remain a person of bourgeois tastes, which is why I offer the following theory of what’s driving a lot of Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Of course, a lot of it is simply the successful outcome of a weapons grade psychological warfare effort unleashed upon unsuspecting normies across the entire First World. But, for the specific demographic that I am a member of — college-educated lefty Gen X’ers who were formerly sceptical of American power, before Obama came along — I can still understand why the sight and sound of Trump is so unsettling. In order to understand at least some of TDS, you have to understand the liberal arts-hipster mindset. I understand it, because I have it.
His showmanship is not elegant or even theatrical, it’s low-brow and carnivalesque. His voice is nasally and pinched, but not in a twee NPR host way, in an outer-borough car salesman kind of way. His way of speaking is strangely inarticulate but also very easy to understand, which is to say he sounds like your every day guy. This makes it almost intolerable for educated, ambitious people to accept that Trump might actually be a lot smarter than them — that he might be gifted enough to be a leader of nations.
For example, in his speech, he said: “And Wisconsin, just like I gave you that massive ship contract, and you’re doing a very nice job, Governor, right? And they’re doing a great job, in fact I had a little design change. We gave them what we used to call Destroyers, these are now the most beautiful, they look like yachts, I said we have to take the bow and we have make it a little nicer and a little point at the top instead of a flat nose and the people at the shipyard said ‘this guy sort of knows what he’s doing!’”
No other president in my lifetime sounded so unpolished, so… normal.
So I regret having to admit this, but my most instinctive reaction to him (and the reaction of many of my peers, I suspect) was one driven largely by snobbery. We all rushed to believe the media hatchet-jobs that were spoon-fed to us, because those stories validated our base class prejudice. It reminds me of that old adage about the difference between knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge is knowing tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
For my class’s collective inability to know the difference: sorry.
Even Andrew Sullivan, one of the more hair-on-fire Trump critics among the Gen X smart set, gave his stamp of approval for Trump’s performance at the convention, and even the possibility of a Trump second term. And with only a hint of bitter begrudgery! Sullivan wrote what may be the most passive aggressive concession of all time: “There are enough shreds of verity in Trump’s skewed version of events for the narrative to seduce.”
How big of you, Andrew. However, the window of approval is now open, if only by a crack. After feeling so at odds with my own people for so long, it feels like a win.
I am Hobbit-like in my love of my cozy home and eating cheese, as well as my big hairy feet. But I only became a populist when our elites showed themselves to be utterly incompetent and corrupt. Had we been lead by an upper caste of intelligent, thoughtful, enlightened Elves, I probably would not have protested.
But there is no Galadriel or Legolas here. The last decade has made clear that we being lead by the most venal, dishonest, ideological, and vengeful crew in the history of America. They have enriched themselves while overseeing the impoverishment of, first, the working class, and now, the middle class; the waste of lives in multiple unnecessary wars; the destruction of the American education system; and the taking root of a new caste system that — if unchecked — could soon be as brutal and unbreakable as any on the Indian subcontinent.
Have we reached a tipping point where the magic spell they have cast over public discourse is starting to wear off?
Who knows what will happen, but even imagining for one moment that Vance’s mother, a former heroin addict from Appalachia, might get to celebrate her ten year sobriety at a party in the White House — well, that just moves me almost to tears.