No. of Recommendations: 9
The (Ongoing) Agony of the Anti-anti- Trumpers
A Monday flashback to some things I’ve written about the sad case of the anti-anti-Trumpers among us.
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I find myself thinking about Dante lately. Maybe it’s because all the bugs around here make me think of certain scenes from the Inferno, or maybe it’s because I have been reading too much Twitter.
One of John F. Kennedy’s favorite quotes was something he thought came from Dante: “The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in time of moral crisis preserve their neutrality.”
As it turns out, he got the quote wrong. But what Dante did write was far better.
In Dante’s Inferno, the moral cowards are not granted admission to Hell; they are consigned to the vestibule, where they are doomed to follow a rushing banner that is blown about by the wind. When Dante asks his guide, Virgil, who they are, he explains:
This miserable way is taken by sorry souls of those who lived without disgrace and without praise.
They now commingle with the coward angels, the company of those who were not rebels nor faithful to their God, but stood apart. They are destined to be forgotten. “The world will let no fame of theirs endure,” Virgil explains. “Let us not talk of them, but look and pass.” Dante describes the vast horde who chase after the elusive banner that “raced on so quick that any respite seemed unsuited to it.” Behind the banner, he writes, “trailed so long a file/ of people—I should never have believed/ that death could have unmade so many souls.”
This, of course, got me thinking about the anti-anti-Trumpers and their season of agita.
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They have found a sweet spot where they can criticize the president, but also sneer at his critics, thus keeping their conservative credentials (if not their consciences) intact.
Back in 2017, I wrote about how this works:
For many in the conservative movement, this sort of anti-anti-Trumpism is the solution to the painful conundrum posed by the Trump presidency. With a vast majority of conservative voters and listeners solidly behind Mr. Trump, conservative critics of the president find themselves isolated and under siege. But, as Damon Linker noted, anti-anti-Trumpism “allows the right to indulge its hatred of liberals and liberalism while sidestepping the need for a reckoning with the disaster of the Trump administration itself.” . . .
Rather than defend President Trump’s specific actions, his conservative champions change the subject to (1) the biased “fake news” media, (2) over-the-top liberals, (3) hypocrites on the left, (4) anyone else victimizing Mr. Trump or his supporters and (5) whataboutism, as in “What about Obama?” “What about Clinton?” In the last three years, that has become a way of life, both in the tonier precincts of the right’s intelligentsia and its trollier suburbs.
For some, being anti-anti has been a simple matter of business model prudence. It is one thing to criticize Trump’s arrogance, recklessness, narcissism, and lawlessness—but quite another to take a stand in favor of his impeachment and removal, or now of his defeat. Best to hang back and prepare to slit the throats of the wounded when the battle is over.
So Trump can preside over a massive public health failure, tweet racist memes, and behave in ways that might bring a blush to a banana-republic dictator—but how about that media bias?
This failure to commit one way or another has many advantages, not the least of which are political. By staying above the fray, they can stay “relevant” in GOP politics, assuage donors, and escape blame for a Trump defeat. It wasn't me, they can say, it was those bastards over at the Lincoln Project.
But you can see the stress of this sort of mugwumpery, which carries a heavy whiff of guilty conscience. Most of the anti-antis have no illusions whatsoever about who Donald Trump is, or what a second term would mean.
Back in 2020, National Review’s Rich Lowry lamented the “QAnon Rot in the GOP,” and acknowledged Trump’s role in poisoning his party. The spread of QAnon, Lowry wrote, “shows that the Trump-era GOP has weakened antibodies against kookery.”
Trump himself sets the tone. He’s an indiscriminate tweeter of disreputable Twitter accounts, and he’s floated all sort of ridiculous conspiracy theories himself over the years—just ask Ted Cruz’s father, or Joe Scarborough. Trump fulsomely praised Marjorie Taylor Greene upon her primary victory as a Republican rising star.
A week earlier Lowry had described Trump as “thin-skinned, self-obsessed, small-minded, intellectually lazy, and ill-disciplined.”
But—and here is the thing—Lowry isn’t going to break decisively with Trump…. Instead, he will criticize Trump while lacerating those who actually oppose him….
But what has Lowry signed up for? A party infested with QAnon? Birthers? 9/11 Truthers?
Lowry wrote regretfully of Trump’s failures, but he was passionate in denouncing the anti-Trump Lincoln Project and its “spittle-flecked rage” against Trump. Trump may be a disaster, but Lowry saves his indignant disdain for the Never Trumpers who take positions that are “rageful and extreme, but satisfyingly emotive.”
Five years later, the anti-antis are still coming to grips with the reality that they have joined the ranks “of the coward angels, the company of those who were not rebels nor faithful to their God, but stood apart.”
Charlie Sykes
No. of Recommendations: 3
But, as Damon Linker noted, anti-anti-Trumpism “allows the right to indulge its hatred of liberals and liberalism while sidestepping the need for a reckoning with the disaster of the Trump administration itself.” . . .
Rather than defend President Trump’s specific actions, his conservative champions change the subject to (1) the biased “fake news” media, (2) over-the-top liberals, (3) hypocrites on the left, (4) anyone else victimizing Mr. Trump or his supporters and (5) whataboutism, as in “What about Obama?” “What about Clinton?” In the last three years, that has become a way of life, both in the tonier precincts of the right’s intelligentsia and its trollier suburbs.
This describes Dope, LM and, to some extent, BHM pretty well.
