Yes, NYT-approved conservatives Ross Douthat, who has, on occasion, received a hearty thumb’s up from me, and Trump-hatin’ Bret Stephens, whom I’ve basically ignored, have both been actin’ conservative and actin’ out in recent days.
First up, and the more dispensable, is Ross, who’s actin’ all Catholic and accusatory, heading off a recent column on Mr. Lechery himself, Harvey Weinstein, with a picture circa 1970 showing Hugh Hefner with Roman Polanski, proving that Hugh Hefner invented statutory rape, which did not exist when Bishop Sheen was on TV. Or so Mr. Douthat would have us believe.
Mr. Stephens is the less laughable and more offensive, in a column heartily praising President Trump’s decision to “decertify” the nuclear agreement with Iran, though rather pathetically wishing like Hell that it wasn’t El Donaldo at the throttle.
Even though decertification doesn’t abrogate the agreement, Bret tells us, it’s still totally cool, “a psychological step, a brash signal that Trump is prepared to see the deal fail and accept the consequences, including war, if he can’t negotiate a better one.”
Because what are we getting out of this agreement anyway, except the fact that Iran is complying with it? And that’s meaningless anyway, as Bret explains: “Iran doesn’t want a bomb today,” one senior Israeli official told me. “It wants a bomb tomorrow.” And Israelis are always right, of course, and they never lie, except that one might wonder why Benjamin Netanyahu and his clutch of right-wing Likudists have been “predicting” the Iranian bomb for the past 25 years at ever increasing levels of hysteria.
The “eat my cake and have it too” tone of Stephens’ piece is both pathetic and offensive, because he’s pushing the basic right-wing myth that we can get a “better” deal out of Iran—one in which they will basically agree to stop doing anything that bothers us—just because we want it. Because everything we want is good, which means that no one has the right to disagree with us, and therefore no one will disagree with us! All we have to do is demand what is really already ours! It’s so goddamn simple! Only a fucking pussy would disagree with me!
But even that isn’t enough for Bret. Suppose somehow, which I totally don’t believe, that Iran doesn’t totally kiss our ass to Donald’s satisfaction? “We are living through a nuclear nightmare on the Korean Peninsula after more than two decades of optimistic diplomacy. That’s a fate we ought to do everything possible to avoid with Iran.”
Remember Trump’s “brash signal”? Hey, the only thing better than a brash signal is a brash war! Let’s settle this mother once and for all, the way we did in Iraq!
Afterwords
We are, of course, not suffering through a nuclear nightmare with North Korea. Unlike Mr. Stephens, I know what it’s like as a six-year-old to crawl under your desk. I also remember what it was like to do it when I was eighteen. I remember when DC was ringed with anti-aircraft missiles. No one fears a North Korean attack unless their paycheck depends on it.
