Stephan: I have noticed a very interesting shift in conservative media. The establishment Rightist media has been forced by the Trump movement to confront the fact that their economics and governance has destroyed the middle class, to a point where even their hundreds of millions of dollars cannot placate them into supporting an establishment candidate.
So something is clearly wrong; who is responsible? It obviously can't be them or their policies, they are the uber-rich and elite. They see themselves as smart; they went to the right schools. So it must be the people themselves. National Review is the iconic establishment Rightwing publication, this is how they explain it.
I am sorry this essay is slow and given to insider references; this kind of writing is often turgid. And some of the most important material making what I think is the central point, about responsibility, doesn't show up until half way through. But it is hard to be any clearer than this:
"It is immoral because it perpetuates a lie: that the white working class that finds itself attracted to Trump has been victimized by outside forces. It hasn’t. The white middle class may like the idea of Trump as a giant pulsing humanoid middle finger held up in the face of the Cathedral, they may sing hymns to Trump the destroyer and whisper darkly about “globalists” and — odious, stupid term — “the Establishment,” but nobody did this to them. They failed themselves."
Supporters at a Trump Rally
Michael Brendan Dougherty is bitter. I think that I can write that in both truth and charity. (I think you might even say that he and I are friends.) Dougherty is a conservative of the sort sometimes advertised as “paleo” and served as national correspondent for The American Conservative. Like many conservative writers with those associations, Dougherty spends a great deal of time lambasting the conservative movement and its organs, from which he feels, for whatever reason, estranged — an alienation that carries with it more than a little to suggest that it is somewhat personal. In 2013, he announced that he planned to set aside political writing to concentrate on the relatively sane world of professional baseball, saying: “National politics has most of the vices of ‘bread and circuses.’ And if that’s the case, pro sports is a better circus.” But it is difficult for a politics man to give up politics — look at all the political crap that ESPN viewers and Sports Illustrated […]
