You know what is like rape? Rape is like rape: when it’s inevitable, you might as well bend over and enjoy it.
Such is the gist and giblets of Rich Lowry’s recent post over at the National Review, “The Never Trump Delusion”, informing his principled peers that anal rape is the better part of valor—though perhaps not in so many words, which is why I really ought to let Rich speak in his own voice:
“I’m friends with many of these Never Trumpers [i.e., people who feel that Donald Trump is an amoral monster who corrupts all he touches, including, quite obviously, Rich Lowry], admire most of them, and have been numbered among them.
“It’d be much better, obviously, if the president didn’t conduct his administration like a reality TV show run by a mercurial and cruel executive producer. Indeed, most of the fears of how Trump would act in office have been realized (everyone would have thought Jeb Bush was crazy if he had predicted a President Trump would fire a high-level cabinet official via Twitter, and not even using direct message).
“Yet we shouldn’t buy into the fantasy either that Trump is going to disappear into thin air, or that Trumpism can be blithely dismissed so the party can return to what some Never Trumpers believe constituted the status quo ante.”
Well, no, we shouldn’t, in large part because Donald Trump is simply the Id of the Republican Party writ large, which first burst forth with the party’s hysterical over-reaction to the election of Bill Clinton, raged again with the “swiftboating” of John Kerry, and blazed forth once more on the election of Barack Obama. In all three cases, the Republican Party abandoned any pretense of respectability or honor and had but one goal, to destroy the enemy by any means necessary. Malcolm X was the dreamer, Donald Trump the deliverer.
Rich’s arguments are, as might be expected, pragmatic: Trump’s given us most of what we really wanted: lower taxes for the rich, a “manly” foreign policy, conservative judges, pro-gun, anti-abortion. As for all that fuss over immigration and free trade, well, he probably won’t do that much damage, and, anyway, he promised to shut off immigration and free trade in the campaign. You do want candidates to keep their promises, don’t you?1
Most of all, as Rich explains, the Republican Party is Donald Trump’s ship now. If it goes down, we go down. Sure, rats can abandon a sinking ship if they want, but what happens to them afterwards? Chum for sharks!
Unmentioned in all this is that Trump is destroying not just the Republican Party but the U.S. government. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is being turned into the Trump Bureau of Investigation. It’s job will no longer be to investigate possible crimes but to harass and humiliate people Donald Trump wishes to harass and humiliate. To the extent possible, the entire federal government will be made a vehicle for vanity and appetite of Donald Trump, two things of which it may be truly said are without limit. Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Rich fiddles while Trump waxes.
Afterwords
I’d need a condor’s quill and Vesuvius for an inkwell if I were simply to list the number of posts I’ve written on the horror that is Donald. I’ll link to an early one in particular, “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Donald Trump’. It is not at all difficult to be prescient about Donald Trump. The trick seems to be acknowledging that he is, and will always be, as bad as you expected. I’m afraid it’s rather like receiving a diagnosis of cancer: you’re horrified at first, but as time goes on, you can’t help thinking that it won’t be so bad. It can’t be, can it? And then, of course, you’re dead.
Apology
Despite my advanced age of 72, I have never had to endure anything resembling a serious illness. If my simile upsets anyone who has, I apologize, for what’s its worth, which is probably not much.
UPDATE
Jonah Goldberg and Ramesh Ponnuru, writing in the National Review, provide a response to Rich’s rape rhapsody, “Conservative Criticism of Trump Is Not Deluded” that is, unsurprisingly, a bit more restrained than mine. Jonah and Ramesh naturally skirt more than a few sticky wickets—the largest and stickiest being the fact that Donald Trump now owns the Republican Party lock, stock, and barrel. On a rough estimate, 75% of Republicans regard any criticism of Donald Trump as a lie, because it is a criticism of Donald Trump. Conservatives like Jonah and Ramesh who are repelled by Trump for any number of personal or policy reasons can have their say—and they should be praised for doing so—but there’s no question that they’re even more isolated than, well, pro-free market, pro-First Amendment, anti-interventionist, neo-liberal eight balls like myself.
Afterwords
An “Afterwords” to an “UPDATE”? This is intense! Anyway, one Peter Mulhern, commenting on Jonah and Rich’s article, says “Conservatism stands in opposition to identity politics. Trumpism is identity politics for stupid white people.” That’s a little harsh. I’d say it’s identity politics for people who feel that the forces unleashed by neoliberalism are causing them to lose control of their lives. They’re fearful, and this fear has as a very strong tendency to manifest itself in a racist and xenophobic manner.
- Pretty much forgotten by Rich and everyone else is Trump’s original promise to expell all 14 million “illegal” aliens (it is not illegal to overstay a visa), a promise heartily seconded by Rich’s National Review, whose only complaint was that Trump said he might let some of them back in! ↩︎
