Note: This is a raw writing riff. I write these as a part of my bookclub. I read, I riff, I publish. It gets the briefest of passes editing wise. It will almost certainly have grammatical mistakes, spelling mistakes, and whatever else.
This one is long, and it’s rather scary publishing it as for something like this, I would prefer to flesh out my arguments and positions. But you’re getting what’s top of mind as I read A Patriot’s History of the United States.
The first part is to all subscribers, the second to my paid members, and it gets further into the nitty gritty. This one is long, I’m going to start on an article, so it may be a little bit before the next piece, but I’m available on the Substack chat for this bookclub.
And soon, I will be announcing the next bookclub topic, a topic that will be its own section. But I have a topic for that section.
I voted for Trump.
I voted for him three times.
On the first date with my wife, when I first sat her down at Leven’s Deli in Denver to find out more about her values, I said what I said to all my first dates post-2020: I voted for Trump. Saying those words to a woman in Denver, a progressive stronghold, I knew it was perverse. On another first date, I said the same thing, and the women at the table next to us got up and moved seats but made sure to complain about me to the manager. My wife’s reaction when I said it: she asked questions. “Tell me more about that” was the sentiment. When she told one of her friends, she got blowback, fierce blowback. One of her friends in her circle was a psychiatrist and told her that she was disappointed that she would even consider dating me, that Republicans are misogynists, racists, stupid, and illiterate, and that I’d likely beat her. Another called her on the phone and ranted about how awful I was (I had never met her), and that my wife couldn’t be serious in actually going out with me, that she was being stupid and reckless. It was an eye-opening experience for my wife.
Those reactions, the mix of self-regard, spite for Donald Trump, along with zero perspective, have been a feature of X lately among various right-wing personalities. Seeing it all, it’s been a mixture of exhaustion, comedy, and eye-rolling, along with plenty of muting and unfollows. Lately, for those of you not terminally online, a number of MAGA personalities (although these personalities always have a habit of defining themselves as above labels, not right-wing, not alt-right, not conservative, not independent, I guess they all exist on a higher metaphysical plane of political wisdom) are having theatrical complaints about Donald Trump and the Trump presidency. They’re “crashing out,” as the kids say. To me, I see it as a whole lot of personal theatrics and melodrama, comedic levels of self-regard, and a bizarre sense of entitlement.
The best-known one, arguably, might be Mike Cernovich. He was posting a ton (he still is), and it’s chaotic in nature, but an example:
From what I gather, leading up to this, he believes that he helped deliver the recent Trump win. It was put out there, during Trump’s first victory, that Cernovich had a hand. And granted, during the Biden administration, various people were attacked for being on the right. Pro-life protesters were arrested, Donald Trump was debanked, traditional Catholics were put on FBI watchlists, and so on.
Cernovich is a voice among the right, yet a sense of entitlement comes out: that he is the one delivering the elections. Or we find odd attacks:
Anyone who knows anything of Victor Davis Hanson knows Hanson is antithetical to the neocon faction of the right, speaks out against globalists, and decries forever wars, yet Cernovich takes this shot at him, and a shot that goes from VDH speaking about cartels to making it about forever wars in the Middle East. Hanson’s The Dying Citizen explicitly articulates the destruction caused by the neocons. Cernovich’s tweet betrays an utter lack of perspective and principle.
The rest of the tweets have had a doomer feel. He taunts that the midterms can’t be won by “New MAGA” and the rest.
Downstream of him, we have those parroting him, yet with more theatrics:
And why not include this anon’s truest fantasy:
Much can be analyzed here. I don’t believe in the cynical “they do this for clicks” to court attention, even if many political accounts do get money.
But to me, as I read through A Patriot’s History of the United States for the book club, I see a profound lack of perspective, laced with self-regard, self-importance, and a sense of entitlement when not a single reason for that entitlement should exist.
Why are various personalities complaining like this? To me, some of it is the war with Iran, some of it seems about Israel, but most of it seems to be a lack of perspective.
To address one part, Victor Davis Hanson recently discussed figures like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tucker Carlson. Both were close to Trump, then they were on the outs with Trump, and the about-face was wild. But he, I believe, correctly surmises that they had the president’s ear, felt entitled to it, that they could run the country, but then were placed further outside the president’s circle, for whatever reason, and they hated that. And they’re reacting like brats. It is the same with David French, Bill Kristol, and David Frum. When Trump was elected, they lost any say within the administration, and they acted like spurned teen girls.
But to come to the bigger point, these theatrical cries lack perspective.
Consider “getting everything we voted for.” I would love that. But that’s not how America’s civic system, a constitutional republic, works. The president does not rule by fiat. We have a Congress, a Senate, and an executive branch. Also, one must include the Supreme Court. That’s at the federal level. When you walk it down, each state, with the exception of Nebraska’s unicameral system, also has state senators, state representatives (an assembly), and its respective governor. Each also has its state supreme court, and each state has its own constitution.
The president cannot just rule by fiat. Even while executive power has expanded dramatically since America’s inception, most notably with Franklin Delano Roosevelt, he still can’t make up laws or do things without checks and balances. Plus, the executive office’s biggest powers tend to regard foreign policy.
Despite Trump winning the popular vote, he’s deeply hated. Why Trump will go down as one of the most consequential figures in American history is just how his existence ripped the mask off people and institutions. Like my opening mention of my wife in Denver, mentioning Trump instantly revealed a person’s true colors. My like of Trump to my wife’s friends ripped the mask off. Certain “conservatives,” like New York Times writer David Brooks, when Trump gained power, immediately dropped any association with the right. What Trump did to the psyche of many is uncanny. And it revealed how much mainstream media, universities, Hollywood, and the Democrats (which Trump revealed for what they are, largely socialists) hated not only Trump but also anyone to the right of them.
It should go without saying, but it needs saying, I guess, that the Trump administration faces enormous resistance at every turn. At the state level, especially in blue states, they act as neo-Confederates, defying federal orders and laws, and working hard to resist anything Trump does and any conservative-leaning or flavored legislation, particularly when it comes to what Trump ran on: crime, immigration, and the economy.
Trump surfaced the power and stronghold of particular ideologies. One need not look further than education, and how standards have lowered, private schools and colleges have essentially become left-wing think tanks, and anti-Western curricula are decrying America’s principles.
Some of these elements, many, in fact, are frightening. The education element frightens me the most. Consider education in my next home state. Nebraska is the home of Warren Buffett. Nebraska is a deep red state, and Omaha is a mixture of red and blue, and most deep red states have school choice and are open to or already have a robust charter school system. Yet Warren Buffett, through his Sherwood Foundation, has poured over a billion dollars into keeping school choice out of Nebraska. From movies that play statewide everywhere to various organizations, Buffett has kept school choice out, and has done, sadly, a remarkable job of painting it as an evil.
It should almost go without saying that resistance to Trump and his administration is enormous. Tie in that progressivism has become a religion to many on the left, and the resistance is even greater.
But go on X, and it looks like it does need saying that Trump can’t rule by fiat. Nor can he give someone with a big X following the exact ideological vision and the results to enact that vision perfectly, and in the manner desired by the personality.
Trump has, however, done a good job on his promises: immigration, crime, and the economy. The latter is still tough. The war with Iran has made things a little chaotic. But inflation has slowed, gas prices have gotten better, and the economy has performed. And furthermore, 2020 and the COVID era, when Biden and his administration enacted its policies, have consequences. Big consequences. And for many in the big cities, the resistance to Trump is more important, so they will double down on this. Denver, for instance, seems hell-bent on keeping the illegal aliens. They seem hell-bent on doubling down on the regulation policies that have contributed to soaring house costs and living costs. Rent costs are coming down, and while that is a good thing, in a sense, they’re coming down because people are leaving Denver in droves. Denver is still building a ton of apartments from when Denver was the fastest-growing city in the United States. Now Denver is the 10th most moved-out-of city, and rising. This is incredible since less than a decade ago it was number one as far as people moving in. And house sales here are slowing way, way down. Despite people complaining of expensive homes in other areas, like New York City, those houses are still selling, and people are still buying them: the demand is still there. In Denver, the demand is not there.
The last bit of perspective: some of those personalities are big, like Cernovich, but most are nowhere near the stature or impact of, say, Charlie Kirk. Charlie Kirk ran a massive operation. He was everywhere. He went into the public and debated his ideas. It was said that he would likely, at some point, be a presidential candidate. Nor are they of the stature of, say, Victor Davis Hanson. Hanson will leave a legacy of rigorous scholarship, best-selling books, and books that will likely be studied long after he’s gone, like his book on World War II or his work on ancient military history. Once many personalities stop tweeting, that will be it for them. It’s in the American spirit that they all speak up and opine, and that’s a wonderful thing. Yet the theatrics, the drama, and the lack of perspective, is at one end exhaustive nonsense fomenting shallow beliefs and at the other end telling certain people to not vote.
As for me, if you must know, I still support Trump. I’m white-knuckling right now with the whole Iran situation. I hope Trump sticks to his Jacksonian-style foreign policy here. But with the ideology of Iran’s leadership, Trump might have to go to the mat with them. I’m not pushing for that. I don’t want troops on the ground. But to break the back of an ideology, the examples in history: Sherman’s march, Patton’s march, Epaminondas’s march, and the dropping of the atom bombs. Regardless, I still remain a strong supporter of Trump.
Now, let’s address another element. Many like to claim America, right now, is like Weimar Germany. I’ve seen a few claim that a civil war is going to happen, and make a few comparisons to America pre–Civil War. And I’ve noticed a ton of claims that we’re like the Roman Empire, or something is like one tiny specific factor like something in the water lowering the testosterone of men that caused the Roman Empire to fall.
Which one of those is true?