D B Hart: A Person You Flee At Parties | First Things
In particular, I recalled how, back in 1993, when Trump decided he wanted to build special limousine parking lots around his Atlantic City casino and hotel, he had used all his influence to get the state of New Jersey to steal the home of an elderly widow named Vera Coking by declaring “eminent domain” over her property, as well as over a nearby pawn shop and a small family-run Italian restaurant.
She had declined to sell, having lived there for thirty-five years. Moreover, the state offered her only one-fourth what she had been offered for the same house some years before, and Trump could then buy it at a bargain rate. The affair involved the poor woman in an exhausting legal battle, which, happily, she won, with the assistance of the Institute for Justice.
How obvious it seems to me now. Cold, grasping, bleak, graceless, and dull; unctuous, sleek, pitiless, and crass; a pallid vulgarian floating through life on clouds of acrid cologne and trailed by a vanguard of fawning divorce lawyers, the devil is probably eerily similar to Donald Trump—though perhaps just a little nicer.
From: A Person You Flee At Parties | David Bentley Hart | First Things
I mean, honestly I try to be “rational,” as much as I can. I know that true objectivity is elusive. I know I have my own prejudices. Likewise, I can see how someone might loathe Clinton. But still — I think Trump is a genuinely broken human being, and this is glaringly obvious, whereas Clinton is flawed, but in a “politics as usual” sense. Like, if you yearn for some kind of Jimmy Stewart world of politics, then yeah, I get how the Clintons fall short. But then, maybe hoping for Jimmy Stewart politics is naive. I dunno. I think in life we must balance our aspirations with our reality.
But Trump? OMG, no. Just no. No, no, no.
I really-truly think one thing is correct: the right-wing “thought bubble” landed in a really broken “feedback loop,” quite distinct from the corresponding “thought bubble” on the left. Sure, if you look, you can find a thought bubble on the left, with its own deep dysfunction. (I’ve lived in that space. It’s very real and very awful.) So sure. But there was a difference in scope. With Trump, this has become undeniable.
Blah.
Dear Republicans, you all fucked up hard. It started with Limbaugh. You let it run amok, and it’s come home.
Fix this.Report
This is pretty close to where I am. I don’t know how evil Donald Trump truly is or isn’t. But I believe he speaks to the evil in people. He speaks to what is wrong about people. He touches that nerve like ice cream with a gaping cavity.
That a lot of people don’t see this (including people I respect, and not just Republicans or his supporters) makes me wonder if I’m just being too melodramatic. But it’s not just his position on immigration (I felt this way about him in 2012, when he was far more moderate on the subject). It’s not really his crudeness (it’s only unusual because it’s a politician). It’s… him.Report
He wasn’t so extreme about immigration in 2012, but he really embraced bigotry and xenophobia then, too. He battened onto Birtherism was impressive gusto. Policy considerations aside, that’s really where he goes first, and it seems like he’s had a long history of going there first, even outside of politics.Report
@will-truman — Yeah, it’s the “speaks to the worst in us.” That is really it.
I dunno. Rush Limbaugh was mean. He was always mean. I get it. Snide can be fun. I can do snide. I doubt any of us have gone through life never entertained by something snide. But it became a cycle.
I guess John Stewart was also snide. So what is the difference?
My first guess is, maybe snide-in-service-of-bigotry is just fundamentally different from snide-in-service-of-diversity.
See, that’s my prejudice in action. Is that correct? Is that a proper social analysis? I don’t know.Report
Stewart is funny. And I don’t say that just because I tend to agree with him. P J O’Rourke is funny too. Bill O’Reilly is funny. George Will can occasionally be funny. (O’Reilly is actually hilarious. When he’s talking to Stewart or Colbert, you can see him step just over the line of self-parody, winking at us as he goes. It’s amazing.)
Limbaugh and Coulter aren’t funny, because they’re primarily both partisan and self-righteous, and that pervades everything they say that might otherwise be clever enough to be funny.Report
The way I hear it (and this from someone who works for hillary), Clinton’s broken in a way that you don’t often see.
Trump? Trump’s an ass and is escalating his levels of “I don’t give a shit”, but at least he’s sane.
Hillary? not so much.Report
If you’re going to assert things that are totally unsupported by publicly available evidence, why not assert something more fun? Say she’s an immortal who’s going to kill Chelsea and wear her skin in order to prolong her own life (so as to better serve the glory of Baal).Report
Because the truth’s the truth, and there’s never a reason to lie.
Truth is often stranger than fiction, after all.
Fiction has to be plausible.
And what I’m saying isn’t totally unsupported by freely available evidence. That you’re having some trouble interpreting the freely available evidence suggests that you aren’t an expert at “telepsychology” (*snort* just coined the word, don’t google it).
Do you know the tells for when Hillary is lying?Report
Her lips move.
Now I’ll ask you one: What are the tells for Kimmi fabulating?Report
Forget it Don, it’s Kimmitown. OT needs a conspiracy nut with a tinfoil hatReport
@veronica-d, Most of the time I find myself in agreement with your thoughts, but I have to disagree that it started with Limbaugh. In my opinion Rush is merely a symptom, like the end result of dysentery. I think it started with Nixon and has been growing exponentially ever since. Hopefully, Trump will allow the right to see the error of their ways and they will return to a DDE type of right wing party.Report
@dexter — Recently I read some conservative commentator who traced it back to Goldwater. (I’m sure I saw that link somehwere on OT.) Anyway, some biography: I remember quite well Reagan and the “welfare queen” discourse, which was every bit as racist as we say it was. Likewise, I played at being a “libertarian” in the mid-80’s. I recall hanging out at gun shows, getting into silly debates with (I’m not kidding) Bo Gritz supporters about who really supports gun rights. We all agreed it was not the Republicans. (The Democrats were obviously terrible.)
Anyway yeah, this stuff did not begin with Limbaugh. That said, I think there is something about the right-wing “media machine” that did begin with Limbaugh. Just as Reagan was able to tap into something ugly for political gain, Limbaugh was the first to tap that vein for personal media stardom. I think it is a notable event.
That said, I agree with your broad point. It is not only Limbaugh. That said, it was the media machine that transformed the lukewarm racism of your average Reagan voter to the widespread acceptance of something resembling the ranting paranoia of the Bo Gritz supporter. The point is, it took decades to lead to Trump, but it led to Trump.Report
“And thinking about all of these things reminded me of a conversation I had, not long ago, with my friend the inimitable Ambrose d’Arcangeli (what a marvelous name that man has) about literary depictions of Satan, and how attractive, witty, glamorous, or appealing they often make the devil seem.”
Ah yes, our conversations on the not mundane…so drool. How DO you portray the devil? He’d be like Donald Trump. Of course. What would you expect from a self described “Christian Marxist.”?
And for @veronica-d, action & reaction. Trump did not come out of nowhere. He was created. Your side had a hand in it. Watch and learn. Thus begins the steeper drop of the empire’s collapse.Report
“Trump did not come out of nowhere. He was created. Your side had a hand in it.”
What’s funny is that people will say “pfft, it’s not my vicious anger-addict attitude that created a hostile, you people just need to Deal With It when someone calls out your racist bigotry“, and then then turn around and tell us how Milo created a dangerous environment through inconsiderate and intemperate speech and that’s why he and people like him shouldn’t be allowed to take part in public conversation.Report
If your side does something wrong, it’s because you’re all evil bastards.
If my side does something wrong, it’s because you’re such evil bastards that you forced us to retaliate.
You can get the same stuff over at Kevin MacDonald’s site, but it’s more entertaining when the good guys are literally the Nazis.Report
Or, to say it another way, yes my side may dox people, threaten to rape any kill them, and literally force them to go into hiding, but your side tried to ban big cups of soda.Report
See, there it is. “your side”. Why are these awful people on “my side”?Report
Yeah no.
People fighting for their civil rights and equal access to civil and economic life are not responsible for a racist and bigoted monster like Donald Trump and his small cult of followers.
There will always be prejudiced bigots but I don’t think minorities should be expected to be silent and servile because of this fact.Report
To quote you, “yeah no.
“People fighting for their civil rights and equal access to civil and economic life are not responsible for a racist and bigoted monster like Donald Trump” Fully responsible? No. But I said “Your side had a hand in it”. And they did. People fighting for civil rights and such COULD have taken the higher road many times, but the nasty behavior they used, in many cases, just feeds the fire that’s already started to burn. I watched it. I watched them alienate folks sympathetic to their side. I watched them refuse to extend a hand after they won, desiring only to stomp on looser. Don’t tell me they didn’t contribute to the problem.Report
Yeah, I mean, it’s fine to say black people should be equal and all, but electing one of them president? That’s beyond the pale.Report
Liberals indulging in the uncomplicated pleasure of extremist, exclusionary rhetoric are not responsible for Trump in the same way that conservatives indulging in the uncomplicated pleasure of extremist, exclusionary rhetoric are not responsible for women’s whole-country average pay being 77% of men’s whole-country average pay.Report
I watched it. I watched them alienate folks sympathetic to their side. I watched them refuse to extend a hand after they won, desiring only to stomp on looser.
Isn’t stomping on the loser exactly what you’re doing now?
“I watched it. I watched while Damon alienated folks sympathetic to his side…”Report
But who created the civil rights fighters? Weren’t’ they created by the bigots and racists and homophobes were oppressed them for years. So if the civil rights fighters acted poorly it isn’t really their fault i guess since they were made by the bigots.Report
So if the civil rights fighters acted poorly
I think an important dynamic in Damon’s view here is that “acting poorly” is functionally defined: ie., actions which engender an extreme or even violent reaction from the opposition, full stop.Report
Well people opposed to civil rights sure as hell reacted in an extreme manner.
I’m more just taking the idea of blaming Trumpets on some group of liberals and seeing if it is a general principle or just applied conveniently against liberals. If its the first its one kind of thing ( not that i think it’s all that useful) and if its the second ( which is my guess) then it’s just a standard conservative attack.Report
Yeah, I agree. Let me try again. I was trying to point out that focusing on the political conflict rather than the content of the conflict is mistake, one of those above the fray things I’ve harped on over the years. By analogy to your example, such a view would assert that the civil rights movement “had a hand” in creating white supremacists/anti-black racists. Which of course reverses the causal arrow.
But if so, even granting that possibility, it makes no sense to say that civil rights activists ought to be blamed for that. Unless the claim is that principles being disputed simply don’t matter. In which case the discussion is taking place exclusively at meta-political level.Report
It does make no sense which is pretty much my point. The desire of right leaners to ascribe some blame for Trump on liberal types is more about their own embarrassment or just plain dislike of liberals or the reflexive blaming the left for everything bad.
The “blame” principle really isn’t’ treated like a general principle so i don’t take it very seriously.Report
How Paul Krugman Made Donald Trump Possible – The Daily BeastReport
Liberal Claim: “Trump’s a travesty.”
Contrarian libertarian response: “You liberals created him.”
Conservative claim: “Trump’s a travesty.”
Contrarian libertarian response: “Yeah, I know. Too bad liberals created him.”
Disinterested third party question: “Did libertarians or conservatives have anything to do with it?”
Contrarian libertarian response: “Of course not. It was The Liberals.”
Add: for all the talk about agency and freedom from you guys, you sure are willing to exonerate people for irrationally reacting to liberals.Report
Yeah i’ve seen that. Its horse crap. Liberals speaking harshly do not control the minds of conservatives. That is infantalizing of conservatives. Have liberals used hyperbole, well yeah of course they are like the worst ever in the universe at that. But if people couldn’t tell Trump was a what he is because of liberals using hyperbole then again you are making people out to be idiots whose only method of understanding the world is based on what liberals say.
I’ll also note that conservatives have been calling D’s and liberals traitors who hate america for decades. Long before the rise of PC liberals were demonized by conservatives. I remember the 80’s and the pronouncements of the Moral Majority. Hyperbole is not some liberal thing, sadly it’s an American thing. So if liberals are to blame for trump then what is conservative hyperbole to blame for? This is the blindness of right leaning folk, they hear the over heated statements from the left and make grand claims about it but seem to lack the same ears for it from the right and deny the same mechanisms.
The point i’ve made in the previous posts is that if we are to blame trump, or some of him, on hyperbole from the left then we need to generalize that principle instead of just when it is convenient to attack the left. But people don’t want a general principle of how people react to being attacked or overheated language. What they seem to want to blame liberals for what conservatives have done.
And in case it isn’t clear, i fully admit liberals have over used terms like nazi and facsist, etc. Conservatives ( and libertarians) have overused a boat load of terms themselves like PC, socialism, unamerican, etc.Report
“I’ll also note that conservatives have been calling D’s and liberals traitors who hate america for decades. ”
And do you listen to any conservatives at this point? My point being that the two sides are completely ignoring each other, blaming everyone but themselves. Both sides are to blame, as you well point out.Report
Ohh sorry no. I listen to plenty of conservatives and libertarian types. Even some i disagree with. I don’t pay attention to Fox news or ted sporking nugent. But if i say something stupid ( well, beyond my normal amount) or hold crazy ass beliefs, you know who is responsible: Me.
Taking your point that neither partisan side listens to each other, which has some truth to it, then how in the hell could liberals bare any blame for Trumpy. Conservatives don’t listen to liberals! Right? Conservatives don’t’ trust Krugman or the MSM. They listen to talk radio or Fox none of which are presenting liberal ideas at all or if they are it is in strawman fashion. So if they don’t’ listen or just hear hyperbole then how did that affect them? And where is the liberal Trump? Clinton is many things but she ain’t a mirror of Trumpy.Report
then how in the hell could liberals bare any blame for Trumpy. Conservatives don’t listen to liberals! Right?
Exactly.
Well, to be fair, maybe they feel the Liberal Force working on them from a distance and intuit the negative energy emanating from Liberal Power Sources via political-somatic receptors in their skin. Very sensitive those, I’d guess. But apparently not rare: all not-liberals appear to have such things.Report
And do you listen to any conservatives at this point? My point being that the two sides are completely ignoring each other,
If “the two sides” are to blame for Trump, then it seems to me you and your side are just as much to blame, Aaron: the constant cynicism expressed from your side has created the hyper-partisan environment which you criticize.
That claim, btw, has just as much empirical and logical support as the thesis that liberals created Trump.Report
That is infantalizing of conservatives.
Well, they did nominate a presidential candidate who is basically a giant infant…Report
I’ve a question Aaron: Is The Daily Beast a reliably non-partisan media outlet, one without bias or agenda, or are they just like everyone else? I ask because you’ve asserted that all media has a bias, none of them are trustworthy, so I’m wondering why you reference this article as contributing anything useful to an ideologically based argument.Report
I do consider them biased, just as all of the chattering class is biased. Though they do try to keep themselves balanced, much as the OT does, it isn’t always easy, or possible. I use DB articles as a point that might, or might not, catch some eyes on a site such as OT. Daily Beast runs parallel for the most part with OT (of which I am a member of also, in full disclosure) as opposed to, say, Breitbart, which would only raise hackles if used. Make sense?
As far as partisanship, DB isn’t too bad. It isn’t a cesspool of derp such as the above mentioned Breitbart or TPM. Let alone Reason or Cato. (my kind of partisans so I tolerate them more)Report
Make sense?
No, none at all. It seems you’re playing a meta-political game at that point, merely catering to what you believe to be the ideological biases of the commentariat to garner support for your argument rather than offer objective data to substantiate that point. It should be obvious that citing someone claiming that Krugman created Trump isn’t evidence that liberals created Trump, it’s only evidence that there are people who argue that liberals created Trump. Which is a different thesis, yes?
Here’s another way to say it: the strength of a news or political analysis story isn’t the media outlet in which it is published, but the argument and evidence presented within it.Report
” it’s only evidence that there are people who argue that liberals created Trump.”
That is the point I am trying to make, nothing more.
And yes, the strength of an argument is in the argument, not the place that the argument comes from. In theory. In practice, if, say, the Lancet has an article saying eating babies is great for heath, but Weekly World News has an article saying eating babies is bad for your health, which would you believe? The Lancet has a long tradition of good articles, so is eating babies the new thing to do? WWN has BatBoy, so we know they are full of it, but not eating babies seems logical, no?
In other words, who the messenger is makes a big difference in this politically charged world.Report
I do consider them biased, just as all of the chattering class is biased.
You’re part of the chattering class, Aaron. You’re here, chattering. Are you biased?
If so, then why would I ever take anything you say seriously from this point forward, given that facts and argument are in service to bias and not the other way around?
I mean that seriously, btw. Post-modernism is a poison, dude, and I think you’re in need of an anti-dote. 🙂
Either that or you think that facts and argument don’t matter, which is a self-defeating premise to argue from.Report
You know, I have an ex with a PhD in Critical Theory…
Joking aside, I know I am of the chattering class, and as you well know, I am biased. I am a libertarian. You can take anything I say seriously or not, what ever topic it is, you can look at anything that I post here the same way, as I with you. That is a fact of the internet.
When I post a link, whether it is about old New York or commentary on current politics, you get to choose to read it or not, read any comment I leave, or not. Do facts and arguments matter? Of course. But, the starting position of the arguer matters just as much as the argument in many cases. As I simply put up a link that shows that some people feel a certain way, and I chose to link to a site that the former senior editor writes for (appeal to authority, I know.) That doesn’t make a position that I am arguing, and as I stated above, my argument, such as it is, is simply that everyone is at fault, to which you and Greg disagree and give reasons for that. To each there own.
As far as the The Beast goes, I work with the partisan of it. Does that fail? Maybe. But if I just put up Breitbart, I think anything they said would be called into question before being read. Much the same way that I do with B-Bart. YMMV
(And you are totally right about PoMo, the ex and I broke up due in part to it. Horrible stuff.)Report
But the racists were created by Reconstruction. Before the war, everybody got along fine.Report
“Slaves built the White House, but they were well fed.”Report
But they weren’t real slaves, since they weren’t forced to pay taxes.Report
Or practice optometry under PPACA.Report
I assume you mean “stomp” here metaphorically.
As opposed to the actual, real, literal stomping that was done to gay activists, or black civil rights marchers, or striking farmworkers.
Yeah, I’m being pedantic here, because of course we can all agree that reading an unkind post on Facebook for using the word “faggot” is totally the same as being beaten to a pulp or jailed or shot or burned alive, that much everyone knows.Report
Um, no.
Look, each person contributes something to the great dance of life. Likewise, there is a certain wisdom to being able to see one’s own failings. This is true. But the problem is, this is always true, so it tells us little about the particulars. In other words, it’s not something you can hang your hat on, because it proves too much.
“The left,” broadly defined, is not responsible for Limbaugh or Fox News. Nor is it merely the existence of Limbaugh and Fox, for surely there are rotten people on every side of every debate, in all of its multiplicity. That’s not the point. The point is, the right-wing echo chamber found fertile ground for its paranoia, and those paranoid are responsible for their own irrationality. Likewise, racists are responsible for racism, sexist for sexism. Round and round we go.
“Trumpism” is its own thing, its own rotten human failure mode. Those caught up in it are responsible for buying what Trump is selling. Full stop.
I am a feminist. However, I choose among feminist theorists, to discover what is reasonable, to cull away what goes too far, what falls short, and so on. These decisions belong to me. I own them.
We can argue about where I draw the line. But it remains my line, 100%.
With the current American right-wing, the “line” has been shattered.
Trumpism is repulsive. Those drawn to repulsive things — they own that, 100%.Report
Yah, your side has clean hands. Then crap like this comes along and people raise an eyebrow.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3711930/Melbourne-artist-Lushsux-painted-Hillary-Clinton-accuses-Instagram-censorship.html
But hey hey…free speech, not gov’t. All true, but let’s not fool ourselves into thinking crap like this in radio and tv back in the day didn’t have a hand in people wanting an alternative to the agenda they were getting in the “establishment media”.Report
What? Since when was effing instagram the official photo sharing app of The Left(tm)?Report
If you read the article (which I’d think would be a requirement for posting links, but c’est la vie), you see that the guy has also done naked murals of Trump, Mrs. Trump, and a bunch of pop stars, but assumes without any evidence that the Hillary one was the dealbreaker.Report
My point exactly. And yes, I read the article. That’s why I challenged V when I said her side has clean hands and used the link to cast suspicion that those hands are really dirty.Report
Other than there being no reason to consider Veronica and Instagram to be on the same side, and there being no evidence that Instagram’s hands are dirty, you’ve made your case admirably.Report
Good grief. I’ve never maintained that “my side” has perfectly clean hands, as if that even means anything. Like, so what? There are 300 million (or more) Americans. Even if 0.01% of those on “the left” are batshit jackasses, there will still be plenty to keep Fox News going.
vice versa etc. duh.
It will always be true that, “I can find people just as bad on the other side,” no matter what the topic. Because that is always true, it really proves nothing about the particular case. When we want to examine a particular case, we need to look at things such as proportion and impact.
The Trump nomination establishes a degree of proportion and impact quite beyond that of the “crazy left.” In fact, I would insist, overwhelmingly so. My point is, the right-wing media bubble along with the insular resentments of the WWC are their own self-perpetuating shitshow.
I am not arguing that “we” are “free of sin.” Why would I? That would be silly. On the other hand, I’m not really interested in arguments such as, “Oh, if only the civil rights movement had been a bit nicer about everything, then the racists might have been nicer.” Likewise for LGBTQ+ right. Etc.
I don’t see how any broad social movement can achieve some perfect optimum of conflict free achievement. Of course there will be overreach and conflict and people out of line and radicals “pushing too hard” and peacemakers trying to find compromise and all of that. Of course. This is how politics works. For everyone. Always. Duh.
But Trump.Report
I think you’re straw-manning @veronica-d ‘s point, in a very odd way.
As near as I can tell your argument goes:
– @veronica-d is claiming that people’s deeds are their own responsibility
– I now define the claim that that people’s deeds are their own responsibility as claiming “clean hands” on the part of people whose deeds are not under discussion
– I now hold on to the claim of “clean hands”, let go of my previous definition of the term
– I now define “clean hands” to mean having committed no misdeeds of any kind
– I find evidence of misdeeds on the part of people not under discussion, which disproves the claim of “clean hands”Report
You are drawn to repulsive things as well (and for much the same reasons!). But then again, I’m way more of a utilitarian than you are, I suspect.
If I had to murder you outright, to save a thousand people, I’d consider it.
{Eta: I am NOT calling you a racist. I am merely noting that either you have been blinded by being too close to certain issues, or that you are being willfully misled by people who mean you ill. The latter is happening with Trump supporters.}Report
So, wait, we shouldn’t call the members of the right out on their racist bigotry because the right welcomes racist bigots like Milo with open arms?
That really doesn’t make much sense to me.Report
“the right welcomes racist bigots like Milo with open arms?”
Keep screaming at people, bro, maybe it’ll work this time.Report
I’m not sure how pointing out your argument is incoherent nonsense qualifies as “screaming”, bro, though I’m sure pretending it does must be much more convenient than trying to actually defend it.Report
Conservatives are resolute; liberals are shrill.Report
The only reason I joined the Klan was because you called me a racist. Well, that and because you made me sit next to those people in Woolworth’s, and hire them and let them sleep in the same hotel and, and , and.Report
Cold, grasping, bleak, graceless, and dull; unctuous, sleek, pitiless, and crass; a pallid vulgarian
He left out “short-fingered”.Report