I remember reading as a boy that one can think for three days on the energy contained in a peanut. On the right, it seems, peanuts are getting scarce.
Over at the New York Times, David Brooks is finding solace in Donald Trump’s lizard brain, which, it appears, is kicking ass all over the world: “There is growing reason to believe that Donald Trump understands the thug mind a whole lot better than the people who attended our prestigious Foreign Service academies.” Because, yeah, who needs mammals?
I’m cheating, just a little, because Dave’s raptures, highlighting Big Donnie’s triumphs in his dealings with North Korea, China, and the Middle East, were written down several weeks ago, and everything Dave had to say is suddenly looking, well, so two weeks ago. Kim Jong Un has suddenly raised the ante for the long-heralded summit talks, and if El Trumpo has a comeback I haven’t heard it yet. As for China, Donnie’s already capitulated before the talks have even begun, “promising” (to the extent than one can rely on anything America’s skink in chief says) to bail out, not America’s high-tech industry, but China’s, as Donnie learns, to his immense and complete confusion, that his understanding of economics is entirely, you know, false!
In the Middle East, Trump’s policies have also led to “ambiguous” gains, as Israel has compulsively/willingly imbrued itself with the blood of thousands of Palestinian “martyrs” in order to obtain its vainglorious goal of claiming Jerusalem as its capital. This, coupled with Trump’s cancellation of the nuclear agreement with Iran, has immensely strengthened the anti-American/anti-Semitic/anti-Zionist nexus in Europe on both the left and right, which will seek allies in both Russia and China. Oh, and we’re now a lot closer to war with Iran than before.
Which is all just wonderful with the “militarists” (as I’m going to call them for the time being) over at the National Review, both goy (Andrew McCarthy and David French) and non-goy (Rich Lowry and Jeff Goldberg). Peace is just so confusing, you know? You have to deal with ambiguity, you have to be nice to people you don’t like very much. Most of all, you don’t get to kick ass! So let’s just fuck this peace shit and kick some ass! Hey, just because we spent $7 trillion (by Donnie’s count), lost thousands of lives, and took tens of thousands of casualties, and made things worse, doesn’t mean that everything won’t be cool this time! I’m sure it will be! Because war is so much fun!
Fortunately, not all the brains in the right have stopped working. Jay Nordlinger, whose conversion to good sense had previously impressed me, continues to impress, indeed, impresses more, since he has less company: “Who in the Republican party today speaks for liberal democracy? Ben Sasse? Marco Rubio? Let me borrow an old line: That’s not a wing of a party; it’s barely a feather. What the GOP is today, we saw earlier this month, when Vice President Pence praised Joe Arpaio as a champion of the rule of law.”
And let’s not forget one of my most beloved of all punching bags, George F. Will, devoting a full column, “Trump is no longer the worst person in government”, to a truly devastating takedown of our Arpaio-fancyin’ Veep, reaming “oleaginous Mike Pence” a new one, to the extent that an asshole can have an asshole (or, in fact, two).
And let’s not forget another Vanneman favorite, Ross Douthat, who, towards the end of a half empty/half full discourse on the less than riveting Kanye/Ta-Nehisi debate, remarks that if conservatives really want to impress black people, instead of praising rappers, they should stop trying to think up ways to prevent blacks from voting, something I also have complained about from time to time.
Yeah, thinking on the right is rare, and getting rarer, but it hasn’t yet disappeared. So thanks to those guys who still have a peanut or two in their pockets.
