Close to understanding Donald

Peter Wehner has an essay in the Atlantic in the “how did the Republican party degenerate from principled conservatism to this horror show?” genre. (I’m not focusing here on the extent to which the description of the former state of affairs is a revisionist whitewash).

The topic he focuses on is the cultural and symbolic meaning of Herschel Walker’s Senate candidacy, and how it represents the apotheosis of Trumpism. Specifically, he claims that supporting a brain-damaged moral degenerate like Walker can only be understood as an exercise in pure power worship, and that all the hypocrisy that such support entails is a product of a lust for power, unencumbered by commitment to any political principles whatever.

It’s essentially Orwell’s sadistic vision in Nineteen Eighty-Four:

But always--do not forget this, Winston--always there will be
the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing
subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory,
the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a
picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face--for ever.'

He paused as though he expected Winston to speak. Winston had tried to
shrink back into the surface of the bed again. He could not say anything.
His heart seemed to be frozen. O'Brien went on:

'And remember that it is for ever. The face will always be there to be
stamped upon. The heretic, the enemy of society, will always be there, so
that he can be defeated and humiliated over again. Everything that you
have undergone since you have been in our hands--all that will continue,
and worse. The espionage, the betrayals, the arrests, the tortures, the
executions, the disappearances will never cease. It will be a world of
terror as much as a world of triumph. The more the Party is powerful, the
less it will be tolerant: the weaker the opposition, the tighter the
despotism. Goldstein and his heresies will live for ever. Every day, at
every moment, they will be defeated, discredited, ridiculed, spat upon and
yet they will always survive. This drama that I have played out with you
during seven years will be played out over and over again generation after
generation, always in subtler forms. Always we shall have the heretic here
at our mercy, screaming with pain, broken up, contemptible--and in the end
utterly penitent, saved from himself, crawling to our feet of his own
accord. That is the world that we are preparing, Winston. A world of
victory after victory, triumph after triumph after triumph: an endless
pressing, pressing, pressing upon the nerve of power. You are beginning,
I can see, to realize what that world will be like. But in the end you
will do more than understand it. You will accept it, welcome it, become
part of it.'



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Now that's "owning the libs."

There is of course a lot to this: power worship and hatred of the Other are basically inextricable, especially in our culture.

And very often in liberal/progressive circles you hear something similar: the American right wing has no principles other than hatred of its enemies.

I think this is obviously wrong, and indeed so obviously wrong that merely stating it should make it so.  The substantive principles that animate the American right wing are:

(1) Cultural conservatism.  This simply means one of the two sides of the culture war.  American right wingers are cultural reactionaries in the most straightforward and uncomplicated sense.  The 1950s were better than today not despite the fact that abortion, birth control, interracial marriage, gay rights etc. etc. were illegal, while straight white men ran quite literally everything, but because of this.  One can find those beliefs deplorable while still acknowledging that they are real beliefs.

(2) White supremacy.  This is the love that dare not speak its name that Trumpism let out of the closet.  The relationship between (1) and (2) is obviously extremely intimate, to the point that the two commitments are inextricably tangled up with each other.  But it's certainly arguable that the commitment to (2) is what gives the commitment to (1) such an intense flavor of moral panic.

(3) Plutocracy. This is, in the contemporary American context, the bastard child of the Protestant work ethic and Ayn Rand and her countless epigoni. It will often as a functional matter be in some potential or real tension with (1) and (2), i.e., the cultural contradictions of capitalism, woke-washing corporations etc., but it's always a mistake to lose sight of the fact of the extent -- always considerable -- that right wing ideology in America is at bottom a rationalization for achieving and maintaining the maximum socially sustainable degree of economic inequality.

On a closely related point, supporting Herschel Walker and even more so his Svengali Trump is something right wingers do for three distinct reasons:

(1) The sadistic power worship Wehner notes in more sorrow than anger mode.

(2) A classic lesser of two evils rationale which actually makes perfect sense if you are dedicated to the right wing principles laid out above.

(3) An irrational belief in what might be called the narrative of continual redemption, which itself is integral to the whole born again Christian evangelical ideology.  For example:

Ralph Reed, the founder and chair of the Faith & Freedom Coalition, frames Walker’s story as that of a man of past imperfections who has turned his life around. “Herschel’s story is one of redemption and hope,” according to Reed. He told The New York Times he believes that the new reports could increase Republican turnout by rallying social conservatives to defend Walker. Reed may be right. At a prayer meeting for Walker at First Baptist Church in Atlanta the day after the story was published about Walker paying for the abortion, a large crowd gave him a standing ovation. The church’s senior pastor, Anthony George, prayed, “We ask you to rebuke the devil so Satan will not get the victory.” 

Now Ralph Reed has always been the smarmiest of smarmy sons of bitches, so I don't doubt for a second that he himself is spouting pure bullshit, but that's not relevant.  What's relevant is that tens of millions of Americans actually believe -- not just pretend to believe but actually believe -- in a redemption narrative in which Donald Trump, of all people, is genuinely a "baby Christian," who may have been the most degenerate sinner you can imagine last decade/year/month/week, but is now redeemed by his subsequent acceptance of Jesus Christ as his personal Lord and Savior.

They really believe this kind of thing out there, as you'll discover if you're ever appointed Chief of the Inner Station and decide to spend some time trying to convert the natives.