Yes, it’s schadenfreude time around the Literature ‘R Us corral once more, and, yes, it is morally lazy in the extreme to snicker at the other side’s weaknesses without considering one’s own, but life is short, after all, and we’ll soon be in the clay, so before we submit to the clammy embrace of viscous hydrous aluminum phyllosilicates, why not enjoy a bit of malicious mirth at others’ expense, however shallow and undeserved it may be?
It is a brutal fact that the reaction against “globalism” and the sadly too optimistic notion that the ideals of western liberal democracy would soon prove triumphant in every nation around the world has itself been global. In “the West” this has particularly taken the shape of a deep frustration with the loss of our once dominant position in the world economy and anger over mass immigration from “the South”, much, though not all, of it triggered by the disastrous interventionist policies in the Middle East on the part of the United States, a frustration symbolized irresistibly by the figure of Donald Trump.
Donald Trump has splintered every sector of “the right” in half. His rise to power turned evangelicals against evangelicals, Catholics against Catholics, Jews against Jews, libertarians against libertarians, and interventionists against interventionists. And his massively illegal attempt to cling to power after he lost the 2020 election has splintered the splinters. Worst of all—for the splinters, at least—the weight of Trump and his multitudinous crimes is merely enhancing pre-existing fractures.
Politically conservative Jews, for example, consisted largely of two disparate groups: culturally conservative Jews of various factions (I confess I cannot identify, much less define, all the groups involved) who are generally hostile to secular modernism and, in particular, continue to reject leadership roles for women in religious matters, and the secular “neocons”, who are thoroughly modern in their cultural values but, for political reasons, soft-pedaled this fact for decades, uniting instead around the advocacy of a compulsively assertive foreign policy, seeking to convince other Americans that, in effect, the U.S. had only one true ally, Israel. All other nations should be regarded with suspicion, and accepted only to the extent that they were supportive of Israel and obedient to America’s will.
During the Reagan administration and thereafter, Jewish neocons and non-Jewish conservatives—mostly but not exclusively Catholics—all but merged into a single “neocon” bloc, passionately committed to an aggressive, fervently anti-communist foreign policy and opposed to what may be called “New Left” cultural values at home. After the collapse of communism, the neocons agreed on a new enemy, Saddam Hussein, and labored endlessly to provoke a conflict, imagining that an American invasion of Iraq would guarantee their rule for decades to come.
Well, be careful what you wish for, eh? The disastrous results of the American invasion of Iraq embarrassed a few former neocons, like Peter Beinart and Jonathan Chait, into departing from the fold. The rise of Donald Trump drove more neocons from their alliance with their Republican Party, and left them to struggle, with various degrees of honesty and success, to explain away their previous advocacy of the invasion. Leading examples include the likes of Bill Kristol and Jennifer Rubin.
Many non-Jewish neocons, like Anne Applebaum, found themselves facing the same quandary. But many, Jew and non-Jew alike, straddled the issue, albeit in a painfully unappetizing manner. The National Review was ground zero for conservative angst, first denouncing Trump during the Republican primaries but then accepting a wide range of views once he established himself as a “winner”, views ranging from the openly pro-Trump Victor Davis Hanson to the fiercely anti-Trump Jay Nordlinger, with the likes of Rich Lowry and Charles C. W. Cooke manning the anti- anti-Trump center. As time went on, the few pro-Trumpers were forced out, and Jan. 6 caused even the anti- anti-Trump folks to gag, though more for pragmatic reasons than principled ones.
Life post-Jan. 6 was a bit of a nightmare for the NR folks, when, following the 2022 mid-terms, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis emerged, like a dream walking. All the “good” of Trump—the toughness, the swagger, the contempt for the left—without all the, you know, crime! DeSantis was the delight of the anti- anti-Trumpers and the despair of the anti-Trump Republicans—those who had left the party in disgust over its embrace of the Donald—who feared that DeSantis might square the circle—create a winning Republican coalition that would honor Trump’s memory and continue most of his policies, but without all the, you know, crime! At least, not the public crime!
But then, only a few weeks ago, DeSantis threw a massive monkey wrench into the anti- antis’ dreams by going “full Trump” on Ukraine, dismissing Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked invasion and planned incorporation of Ukraine into Russia proper as a mere “territorial dispute”—the full abandonment of the policy of righteous interventionism that had been the soul of the post-Cold War Republican Party! WTF!
The Review is still rolling with the impact of this latest disaster. There are outright supporters of DeSantis’ “count me out” policy, like Michael Brendan Dougherty, whom I find myself sometimes agreeing with (but not this time), but in its current “Iraq 20 Years After” issue, NR gives pride of place to unrepentant superhawk John Bolton—"No one lied us into invading, and what came later was its own set of decisions,” (That is to say, everything bad that happened was all Obama’s fault.) Unless DeSantis can find a way to walk back his language to some ill-defined “middle”, the fragile NR “consensus” will be shattered once more. And Dougherty makes a good case for believing that DeSantis will have no reason to walk back his dismissive language—because the Republican base is no longer interested in Ukraine,
But Ukraine, one may say, is the least of the Jewish neocons’ problems. Their great danger is Israel itself, which, under Benjamin Netanyahu, is moving further and further away from assimilationist, secular Judaism, becoming instead increasingly intolerant, and leaving secular American Jews with no real identity at all, leaving them defenseless against complete assimilation via intermarriage into the “greater American secularism,” largely defined by the vague cultural inheritance of mainstream Protestantism, which lost all religious coherence decades ago.
Theologically conservative Jews are in an entirely different situation. Overall, their rejection of “modernism” has surely only been strengthened by the events of the last two decades and, thanks to their rejection of birth control, their numbers are growing. In New York, and in New York only, they are politically potent, yet it is likely that, in the long term, their cultural isolation will only grow as well, leaving them in danger of being regarded as an obscure, unintelligible, unimportant sect, rather like the Amish, except not so quaint, and without all the horses. One can wonder if the current practice of one group, the Ḥasidim, to rely on welfare to finance their way of life will prove politically acceptable in the future.
Where are the Catholics? Well, in an even worse situation, according to my scornful atheistic perspective. (I come from a nonreligious family and thus was spared any spiritual turmoil—at least, none of the religious kind.) Ross Douthat, whom I have pilloried countless times in this blog, has written quite honestly about the agony of the modern Catholic Church—in this post, for example, Pope Francis’ Decade of Division and this one, The First Afterlife of Pope Benedict XVI, acknowledging that the resignation of Benedict, treated as a complete non-story by the mainstream press in the U.S., represented an almost unprecedented crisis in the Catholic Church, a crisis that has only grown since his resignation.
As a nonbeliever, I have no confidence whatsoever that the Catholic Church will be able to resolve its divisions effectively. The age of faith is over. “Liberal Catholics”, as Mr. Douthat correctly points out, will simply morph into secularism. But, as he is clearly aware, the likelihood that his brand of “old fashioned” Latin mass Catholicism will triumph is vanishingly small—or, as I would say, nonexistent. The “pro-Trump” Catholicism of folks like Sohrab Ahmari strikes me as a parody of an idea, the notion that one can set up a pseudo-medieval Catholic regime to preside over sprawling, big-bellied America the product of too much sherry and too much leisure time.
Beyond these theological quarrels, which are potent enough, the Catholic Church faces an even greater problem, what may be called the “de-Europeanization” of the Catholic hierarchy. The Church dodged a bullet by selecting Francis as pope, non-European by geography but not by ancestry. However, unless the Church wants to appoint nothing but Argentinian popes for the next century—and I don’t think it does—sooner or later there will be a “dark Pope”. The American Catholic hierarchy is certainly going to grow increasingly Hispanic in the coming decades. If it remains “conservative” on sexual issues—which is less than certain—I think many Catholics of European ancestry will find themselves more comfortable with their formerly Protestant and formerly Jewish neighbors. As I say, the age of faith is over.
Libertarians, already not much more than a sliver of conservatism, in large part due to their lack of religious faith, are as shattered as any, as I’ve discussed at some length here The “old libertarians”, who believed in such things as free speech, free trade, and unrestricted immigration, seem to be in the minority now, scorned by a gang of pseudo-Nietzschean bad boys, partial to pumping iron, black muscle shirts, shaven heads, and Shavian beards. And there is no health in them. We’re a long way from either Hayek or Friedman.
You’ll notice that I’ve left the evangelicals for last. I have the least to say about them because they have the least to say for themselves, Those deeply repulsed by Trump will inevitably, in my opinion, stumble further and further towards secularism. Those who remain will either become more and more strident or more and more passive, unwilling to object but rarely willing to act.
Of course, this is all in the long run. In the short run, anything can happen. And if the past is any guide, a lot of it won’t be good.
