Not surprising, given his attempt to castigate white identitarianism, National Review’s Jonah Goldberg has been tripping over himself penning anti-Trump articles, recent titles being:
- “No Movement That Embraces Trump Can Call Itself Conservative”!
- “The Great Trumpian Divide”!
- “Trump Doesn’t Represent the Conservative Base”!
- “Trump’s Ideas are Frivolous – And It’s Defenses Aren’t Holding Up Either”!
- “Trumpbait Redux”!
(The exclamation points are my flourish, intended to highlight JG’s hysterics.)
The latest we’re treated to is titled “Trump’s Cult of Personality is Corrupting Conservatism”!
According to Goldberg, “Trump is like a cat trained to piss in a human toilet.”
Quite subtle, there, Jonah.
And, maybe it’s because I rarely read NR anymore, I didn’t expect the ‘Trump is a Fascist’ meme to appear in even NR. But then again, let us count the ways NR has ‘changed’ over the years.
JG writes:
[John Lukacs] also understood that fascism and Communism were examples of bad populism. When populism is yoked to a cult of personality, the mob defines success as success for their leader, principle be damned. The leader becomes a repository for resentments, a vehicle for power, both cultural and political. As Willie Stark says to the adoring crowd in All the King’s Men: “Your will is my strength. Your need is my justice.”
As Matthew Continetti notes, it is entirely possible that, win or lose, Trump will transform the Republican party into a different kind of right-wing party. He will attract new voters, banish old ones, and permanently repulse others who might otherwise have been persuaded to join our cause. As an American Le Pen, or even a reincarnation of Richard Nixon, he would no doubt call attention to issues that liberals want to ignore.
And that’s a bad thing?
He might do some things I would agree with, while surely doing other things I would find reprehensible. But he has given no indication that his lodestar would be anything other than the greater glory of Trump, and that is not a principle I can attach myself to, now or ever.
Goldberg shows his Goldberg-ness with passages like this:
Trump’s glass-bottom id lets the whole world see his megalomania. He talks about himself in the third person all the time. He explains that Trump is great because Trump is rich and famous. He’s waxed profound on how he doesn’t want blacks counting his money (he prefers Jews in yarmulkes).
There’s this related, candid moment where Goldberg demonstrates the messianism of securalized Judaism:
Karl Marx coined the term lumpenproletariat to describe working-class people who could never relinquish their class consciousness and embrace the idea of a classless socialist society. Hence, they were useless to the revolutionary cause. I’m no Marxist, so I don’t buy the idea that anybody — never mind a whole class of people — are beyond persuasion. But I am tempted to believe that Donald Trump’s biggest fans are not to be relied upon in the conservative cause. I have hope they will come to their senses. But it’s possible they won’t. And if the conservative movement and the Republican party allow themselves to be corrupted by this flim-flammery, then so be it. My job will be harder, my career will suffer, and I’ll be ideologically homeless (though hardly alone). That’s not so scary. Conservatism began in the wilderness and maybe, like the Hebrews, it would return from it stronger and ready to rule. But I’m not leaving without a fight. If my side loses that fight, all I ask is you stop calling the Trumpian cargo cult “conservative” and maybe stop the movement long enough for me to get off.
Like the Hebrews… ready to rule.
