There'll be no civil war, but if Trump wins, especially if loses the popular vote by millions but wins the EC, I bet there'll be lots of demonstrations, some of them violent, across the country. If he loses, there'll be nothing: prosecutions for J6 have taught folks the folly of that sort of thing. If I'm right, what'll be interesting to see is how Trump reacts.
I don’t think Douthat’s arguments are contradictory. There are protests, which need to be explained. There is no civil war, and that also needs to be explained. It’s clear that the material conditions to have protests are met, since there are protests. He argues however that there is no civil war because the material conditions for a civil war are lacking, even though clearly people are very divided and upset with the other side. The protests on the other hand are happening and clearly « because they are possible » is not a very satisfying explanation. Now you can disagree with his answer, but I don’t think it contradicts what he wrote on a putative civil war. In logic you would talk about the difference between a necessary and a sufficient condition.
Great essay, Dan. I have difficulty reading Douthat after repeatedly encountering his religious tautologies that allow no argument. His essays are always riddled with errors of logic, and only “make sense” in his particular hot bath of religiosity.
I’m tired of “Politics is downstream from culture.” It just always comes across as a hedge; an excuse — like, someone’s in the process of justifying a bias or an injustice by dressing it up as some kind of irrefutable “foundational” belief.
Unfortunately for them, the pinhead/egghead and feminized and gender-gapped left's set of demands and values seems precisely designed to be repellent to meatheads and enforcers one would need in a civil war. Toxic masculinity (and mean girl-ness), exiled from the left and welcomed on the right, in a situation of civil disorder, is a feature, not a bug.
Leftists self-appointment as social justice and virtue aristocrats puts them in a tough spot in terms of exerting power, the higher the stakes and the more unrestrained and "physical" the politics becomes. Because since they lack the ideas or the communications style to appeal to the majority, they can't win majorities in enough diverse geographies to command branches of government to get what they want. They would need dictatorial control overriding majoritarianism to get their policy preferences. But the people who actually could and would wield power dictatorially want the opposite of what they want.
So, I see them as capable of ruining particular institutions and organizations, and annoying great masses of citizenry, but hardly able to direct the country or drive it into ruinous choices. Except inasmuch as their activities poke the bear, the bear of big, stupid reactionary instincts and politics.
Interesting argument, but I think the distinction here is that "culture" here should best be defined as *mass* culture. MAGA culture is incredibly niche, like evangelical culture, and has little to no cultural impact writ large. In contrast, the trends starting in Brooklyn and ideas in the classrooms in Cambridge eventually make their way (through an interesting mix of capitalism, bureaucracy, and simply "sharing ideas") throughout the country. Conservative culture just doesn't have much of an impact on national politics and trends, especially in comparison to liberal/cosmopolitan culture.
I also don't think there is (yet) a true cultural push for conflict and violence. There is a push for cultural differentiation and pride--which is just as strong in the left-wing parts of the country as in the right-wing parts--but fortunately violence is not a major part of this (for now).
In terms of ideas, I think you have a stronger point and Douthat ought to do more to wrestle with the right-wing intellectual shifts of MAGA and how those may be having more of an enabling effect on the boundaries of tolerance for drastic action, beginning with Anton's "Flight 93 Election" essay and up through 1/6. But many of those ideas seemed to be following Trump rather than opening up the space for Trump--Trump's violation of norms was seen as his differentiating factor, not that he was following a long intellectual tradition (as the Dispatch/Bulwark crowd much laments). If anything, the focus of the MAGA intellectuals now seems to be how to use the mechanisms of government more effectively for their purposes instead of general bluster.
Finally, the issue with the syllabus is not so much that it's the impact of the readings (or what is not read) from the syllabus alone, but what that syllabus reflects in terms of the ideas and culture of the education establishment more broadly. The syllabus itself is downstream of the intellectual currents that dominate journalism, the bureaucracy, the media, the academy, and increasingly many of the highest-class professions. In that way, it's an excellent example of the cultural/ideational feedback loop that takes place in terms of demonstrating what values are valued by these culturally powerful groups and then helping to select for, train, and employ those who uphold those values, who then go on to make and shape policy.
Sounds a lot like the pledges of academic faculty, staff and students to “decolonize spaces of Zionism” - you know, through indoctrination, firing professors who dare not sign up to pro Hamas statements, expulsion of Jewish students who dare be Zionists, shouting down speakers of Jewish clubs, threatening Jewish students in dorms and classrooms and public spaces on campus. This effort has been in progress for two decades or more. Maybe progressives should own what their support for the academic left has caused, rather than ignore it, claim that it’s merely “free speech”, and write a both-sides about far right activism on campus would be just as bad.
I dare to disagree. for one thing, what is needed to trigger a nationwide violent conflict is radically different from what is needed for igniting campus protests. It is at least reasonable to argue that the material and structural factors weight far more in the first case than in the second. For another, the fixation on Israeli-Palestine issue in American campus activism is something requires an explanation. After all, around the world, state sponsored mass violence against civil population is not in short supply. You can argue that Israel is a core partner of the U.S. so America is deeply complicit in this case. However, it still beg the question why Israel draws this kind of strict scrutiny in the first place.
Much as I try to avoid reading Tablet unless some other trusted person links to them, I am actually taking off from Alana Newhouse who wrote a few years ago that people do not give modernism enough credit for the actual diversity of voices that made it up. I would read what Ross Douthat said as that post-1960s intellectual trends need modernism, especially comfortable midcentury type, as their enemy, but if students never learn to take modernism on its own terms they will not know how seriously to take the post-1960s thinkers either. Israel is a creation of everything that had happened in 20th-century world politics until that time and offered an explicit promise to its citizens that they could be modern people without being feared and persecuted for their success.
Well there's a lot of talk about what "will" happen. Which is odd, as there's plenty to see of what "is" happening, if our pundits care to look. Politically motivated prosecutions, attacks on free speech, politicized agencies, deplatforming, labels, threats, etc. This is the here and now.
Why don't you just come out and say it? Cause it sounds like you think the prosecution of trump is politically motivated. Unless you are talking about the hapless Hunter Biden. If the latter, ok then. If the former, good day sir.
The separation from England was to set up a system without a king to protect the landed gentry from an insane king like George III. It got out of hand.
Now conservatives are really afraid of climate change because they know it's coming. They know it will be bad. But they will deny it until it happens and then blame somebody else.
So their response is?
Why of course, take over the government and make the money now.
They aim to exploit every resource they can forever.
They aren't worried about the middle classes because they will eventually be wiped out.
Eliminate taxes so they can keep all of their dwindling profits. (because of the lack of middle class consumption.)
Move to safe areas while developing new energy sources to power underground food production and light weight aircraft.
Ah, someone else can author the latest dystopian nightmare script.
I'm sorry, but Douthat being an example of a smart, thoughtful conservative columnist is simply an indictment of conservative columnists. Most of the time he's a moralizing fatuous gasbag.
Whether or not Douthat is right, I do not think his positions are contradictory. It is perfectly defensible to argue that a hypothetical macro event such as a civil war in the US is not plausible because the material conditions are simply not there; and that an ongoing micro event such the student protests at Columbia University is best explained in terms of the cultural influences overrepresented in the university and its curriculum. In this connection, I think that the students would gain to be exposed to genuinely deep thinkers such as Hayek, Strauss, Arendt and Schmitt.
"I’m sorry but that dog won’t hunt."
Too soon, Dan. Too soon. #Justice4Cricket
IDNSWHDT. (I didn't see what he did there. Thanks!)
There'll be no civil war, but if Trump wins, especially if loses the popular vote by millions but wins the EC, I bet there'll be lots of demonstrations, some of them violent, across the country. If he loses, there'll be nothing: prosecutions for J6 have taught folks the folly of that sort of thing. If I'm right, what'll be interesting to see is how Trump reacts.
I don’t think Douthat’s arguments are contradictory. There are protests, which need to be explained. There is no civil war, and that also needs to be explained. It’s clear that the material conditions to have protests are met, since there are protests. He argues however that there is no civil war because the material conditions for a civil war are lacking, even though clearly people are very divided and upset with the other side. The protests on the other hand are happening and clearly « because they are possible » is not a very satisfying explanation. Now you can disagree with his answer, but I don’t think it contradicts what he wrote on a putative civil war. In logic you would talk about the difference between a necessary and a sufficient condition.
Great essay, Dan. I have difficulty reading Douthat after repeatedly encountering his religious tautologies that allow no argument. His essays are always riddled with errors of logic, and only “make sense” in his particular hot bath of religiosity.
I’m tired of “Politics is downstream from culture.” It just always comes across as a hedge; an excuse — like, someone’s in the process of justifying a bias or an injustice by dressing it up as some kind of irrefutable “foundational” belief.
Agree. It sounds like a cop out to me
One should be keeping an eye on how right wing pro-dictator groups are infiltrating law enforcement and the military.
Hello! A big part of why it wouldn't be a civil war. It would be a coup, massacre, repression. Which side are all the meatheads on?
Unfortunately for them, the pinhead/egghead and feminized and gender-gapped left's set of demands and values seems precisely designed to be repellent to meatheads and enforcers one would need in a civil war. Toxic masculinity (and mean girl-ness), exiled from the left and welcomed on the right, in a situation of civil disorder, is a feature, not a bug.
Leftists self-appointment as social justice and virtue aristocrats puts them in a tough spot in terms of exerting power, the higher the stakes and the more unrestrained and "physical" the politics becomes. Because since they lack the ideas or the communications style to appeal to the majority, they can't win majorities in enough diverse geographies to command branches of government to get what they want. They would need dictatorial control overriding majoritarianism to get their policy preferences. But the people who actually could and would wield power dictatorially want the opposite of what they want.
So, I see them as capable of ruining particular institutions and organizations, and annoying great masses of citizenry, but hardly able to direct the country or drive it into ruinous choices. Except inasmuch as their activities poke the bear, the bear of big, stupid reactionary instincts and politics.
Interesting argument, but I think the distinction here is that "culture" here should best be defined as *mass* culture. MAGA culture is incredibly niche, like evangelical culture, and has little to no cultural impact writ large. In contrast, the trends starting in Brooklyn and ideas in the classrooms in Cambridge eventually make their way (through an interesting mix of capitalism, bureaucracy, and simply "sharing ideas") throughout the country. Conservative culture just doesn't have much of an impact on national politics and trends, especially in comparison to liberal/cosmopolitan culture.
I also don't think there is (yet) a true cultural push for conflict and violence. There is a push for cultural differentiation and pride--which is just as strong in the left-wing parts of the country as in the right-wing parts--but fortunately violence is not a major part of this (for now).
In terms of ideas, I think you have a stronger point and Douthat ought to do more to wrestle with the right-wing intellectual shifts of MAGA and how those may be having more of an enabling effect on the boundaries of tolerance for drastic action, beginning with Anton's "Flight 93 Election" essay and up through 1/6. But many of those ideas seemed to be following Trump rather than opening up the space for Trump--Trump's violation of norms was seen as his differentiating factor, not that he was following a long intellectual tradition (as the Dispatch/Bulwark crowd much laments). If anything, the focus of the MAGA intellectuals now seems to be how to use the mechanisms of government more effectively for their purposes instead of general bluster.
Finally, the issue with the syllabus is not so much that it's the impact of the readings (or what is not read) from the syllabus alone, but what that syllabus reflects in terms of the ideas and culture of the education establishment more broadly. The syllabus itself is downstream of the intellectual currents that dominate journalism, the bureaucracy, the media, the academy, and increasingly many of the highest-class professions. In that way, it's an excellent example of the cultural/ideational feedback loop that takes place in terms of demonstrating what values are valued by these culturally powerful groups and then helping to select for, train, and employ those who uphold those values, who then go on to make and shape policy.
Sounds a lot like the pledges of academic faculty, staff and students to “decolonize spaces of Zionism” - you know, through indoctrination, firing professors who dare not sign up to pro Hamas statements, expulsion of Jewish students who dare be Zionists, shouting down speakers of Jewish clubs, threatening Jewish students in dorms and classrooms and public spaces on campus. This effort has been in progress for two decades or more. Maybe progressives should own what their support for the academic left has caused, rather than ignore it, claim that it’s merely “free speech”, and write a both-sides about far right activism on campus would be just as bad.
https://substack.com/@ilanamaymind/note/c-54994337
I dare to disagree. for one thing, what is needed to trigger a nationwide violent conflict is radically different from what is needed for igniting campus protests. It is at least reasonable to argue that the material and structural factors weight far more in the first case than in the second. For another, the fixation on Israeli-Palestine issue in American campus activism is something requires an explanation. After all, around the world, state sponsored mass violence against civil population is not in short supply. You can argue that Israel is a core partner of the U.S. so America is deeply complicit in this case. However, it still beg the question why Israel draws this kind of strict scrutiny in the first place.
If only professors had assigned Francis Fukuyama and Christopher Lasch in freshman year, everything would be different!
Green Lantern theory of college curricula.
Much as I try to avoid reading Tablet unless some other trusted person links to them, I am actually taking off from Alana Newhouse who wrote a few years ago that people do not give modernism enough credit for the actual diversity of voices that made it up. I would read what Ross Douthat said as that post-1960s intellectual trends need modernism, especially comfortable midcentury type, as their enemy, but if students never learn to take modernism on its own terms they will not know how seriously to take the post-1960s thinkers either. Israel is a creation of everything that had happened in 20th-century world politics until that time and offered an explicit promise to its citizens that they could be modern people without being feared and persecuted for their success.
Well there's a lot of talk about what "will" happen. Which is odd, as there's plenty to see of what "is" happening, if our pundits care to look. Politically motivated prosecutions, attacks on free speech, politicized agencies, deplatforming, labels, threats, etc. This is the here and now.
This is satire, right?
Satire involves ridiculous statements. Nothing I've said is ridiculous.
Why don't you just come out and say it? Cause it sounds like you think the prosecution of trump is politically motivated. Unless you are talking about the hapless Hunter Biden. If the latter, ok then. If the former, good day sir.
Xxx
Donning my cynical hat
The Belly of Conservatism
The separation from England was to set up a system without a king to protect the landed gentry from an insane king like George III. It got out of hand.
Now conservatives are really afraid of climate change because they know it's coming. They know it will be bad. But they will deny it until it happens and then blame somebody else.
So their response is?
Why of course, take over the government and make the money now.
They aim to exploit every resource they can forever.
They aren't worried about the middle classes because they will eventually be wiped out.
Eliminate taxes so they can keep all of their dwindling profits. (because of the lack of middle class consumption.)
Move to safe areas while developing new energy sources to power underground food production and light weight aircraft.
Ah, someone else can author the latest dystopian nightmare script.
I'm sorry, but Douthat being an example of a smart, thoughtful conservative columnist is simply an indictment of conservative columnists. Most of the time he's a moralizing fatuous gasbag.
Whether or not Douthat is right, I do not think his positions are contradictory. It is perfectly defensible to argue that a hypothetical macro event such as a civil war in the US is not plausible because the material conditions are simply not there; and that an ongoing micro event such the student protests at Columbia University is best explained in terms of the cultural influences overrepresented in the university and its curriculum. In this connection, I think that the students would gain to be exposed to genuinely deep thinkers such as Hayek, Strauss, Arendt and Schmitt.