No roots to pull up for sure. JD Vance is the poster boy for the fact that this rot is a kind of fungal spread. He's moved through multiple social sites that might have provided an ethical grounding for his politics––post-industrial Ohio, US military, elite east coast academia, Silicon Valley venture capitalism, normie Republicanism, rightwing Catholicism. But there doesn't seem to be any moral conviction or ethos, good or bad, that has survived his move into what seems like his real home, the MAGA extremely online dudeworld.
He disparages Popes but stands up for adult men who live to yuck it up about rape and the Holocaust.
Even aside from politics, it's beyond me how that is supposed to lead to a remoralizing of young men who are adrift so as to make them appealing enough to young women in 2025 to marry and have kids with them.
Given his concern with birthrates, he seems to wish for a world where more men like him are husbands and fathers. But he found a mate before his extreme online days. He circulated among women he appeared to respect, and had female friends who say they no longer recognize him from the Yale days.
All of those Young Republicans on the group chats, and the many disaffected young men behind them that Vance et. al. say they want to help, are marinating in online discourse that will turn off the majority of young American women.
Making birth control hard to get will only go so far. Trying to roll back professional careers for women will only work at the margins. Because at this point, anyway, you still have to get women to agree to date and marry you before you can acquire the husband and father status.
A lot of traditionalists deride their own programme because they implicitly back the notion that they can succeed only if society imposes penalties on acting any other way…much as any religion seems to be reaching a bit if their Unique Value Proposition is 'itʼs better than eternal, infinite, punishment'.
(Of course, that's judging from an Enlightenment point-of-view that says that what people want is at least not totally depraved, and might well be a decent guide to what were best to happen to them.)(…except, of course, when they reject vaccines and social democracy.)
I’ve been saying to my comrades that we will need a Nuremberg Trial of the apparatchiks of the current regime in order to try to steer away this country from the abyss. But I doubt this crop of Democrats will have the stomach for it, and too many other people on the left have a fatalist “well this country has always been like that, it’s just that the mask is now off.” Okay sure, whatever, so they just get away with it?
I think there is no effectiveness without power, and no real power in our system without party discipline and solidarity, and none of that without making life worse for peopke not in your party than in it, so how about first replacing Sens. Sanders and Collins and Murkowski with Democrats? (…or if they stay but affiliate.)
I may be giving them too much credit , but it seems like they are conservatives who actually believed it was all about low taxes and small government out of people’s personal business, and were disillusioned when it revealed itself to be be in reality, only elaborate justifications of racism.
A lot of them actually just… liked America; like its diversity, like its constitution, like it having a foreign policy that is at least intending to do good things for the world. Trump is so obviously vile and hate-filled and cynical, he’s extremely off-putting to any genuine patriot.
Fair enough, but if humans are pretty much the same all over and the Middle East now and everywhere at some time or another—yes, I'm including indigenous peoples—'not letting them get away with it' can be taken too far. More personally, one of the wiser men I've known was at his stupidest when determined 'not to be made a schmuck of'.
On a practical level, the fact that these courts would never be seen as legitimate by many would limit their usefulness—Germany was an exception both because of the level of their devastation and because they'd had twelve recent years of an ideology that saw Victory as the ultimate endorsement of the authority of the victors.
Ya I don’t know how you fix a problem this dire without vigorous de-groyperification campaign. Once you’ve been DOGEd you gotta DOGE ‘em right back. My Canadian countrymen are cheering on any vengeance you can extract.
It’s reminiscent of the question you got in your talk about tit for tat Gerrymanders. Of course you might be sowing seeds of a future backlash. But they’ve made it pretty clear they’re gonna be sickos regardless.
It makes one sympathetic to the old-men-yelling-at-clouds about norms. Once things have gone down a bad road, hard to fix it. Also true if judicial politics in the states; other countries have managed to have judicial review without it getting quite so weird, but how the hell do you fix it when you’ve reached this point.
an entire generation of conservative youth spent their formative years binge watching anti-SJW ragebait, lurking /pol/, irony OD'ing on edgy memes, trolling as a second language, and fantasy-role-posting behind marble bust avatars and we have yet to fully account for its consequences
“On the one hand, the discourse of white supremacy did not differentiate properly between the center and the far right, and viewed racism as so endemic to the American experience that virtually everyone was culpable if they were not actively “anti-racist” in just the right way, that is to say, echoed the correct shibboleths. One might argue that recent events vindicate this account of total depravity, but in practical politics, it had the deleterious effect of not properly isolating the real threat. “ this is brilliantly put
Given that a pro-Nazi agent of Germany was ghost-writing Senatorial speeches—thanks Dr Maddow—I'd say the Browns were in pretty deep in our power-structure.
Quick fyi and thank you- reading your work is helping me with messaging re my union. We are in the middle/beginning of some really hard fights and thinking in terms of rhetoric and practical politics is helping me work on how I talk with my coworkers.
With the Senate structure lopsided in their favor and generational control of the Supreme Court, the Republican Party being brought to heel simply is not on the menu in any of our lifetimes.
I wish it were otherwise, but we've got to see the world as it is. The anti-MAGA coalition as currently construed is checkmated.
I think I might be echoing Matt Yglesias here, apologies, but the fall of the republic is far more imaginable that the Democratic Party winning a Senate race in Arkansas. Until that changes we're just shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic.
I suppose the Yglesian response would be that it's not so much dooming as demanding the question of how do we win a Senate race in actually existing Arkansas? His prescription for that is laughably substandard and naive, but I do feel like that's fundamentally the right question as a matter of politics.
And it's precisely because of the dynamics you describe in this piece. It's not clear how willing or able anyone is to isolate "the bad ones" from the broader right anymore. A bigger picture realignment is the more plausible hope.
I never agree with Arendt about Eichmann and fascism. The roots are deep. First psychologically, as in Theweleit’s Male Fantasy (U. Minnesota, see intro by me and Anson Rabinbach) second see George Mosse’s work from several points of view. History of religion wasn’t Arendt’s strong suit. Think of the film The White Ribbon as a counter-argument to her position.
It suddenly seems to me that some of those Orthodox Jews willing to back these people aren't bothered by the antisemitism because that's what they _expect_ from non-Jews, but believe that there are some with whom they can work.
I think “rootless fascism” is an important and proactive thesis, precisely because it is so contrary to the dominant school of thought on all of this, which is that there exists some deep “root cause” of fascist radicalization that must be engaged with sympathy and understanding. I think it’s rooted in a tendentious form of left-wing intellectual thinking, especially Marxist thinking, where everything must have a material explanation and right-wing voters are just temporarily confused socialists.
Welll… speaking of rotted through, you have to add the post-DLC national Democratic Party; the establishment media with their willful disregard of the truth in important issues; and Big Business. Which is to say our entire leadership class or whatever is rotted.
And outside the leadership class is the far left who pretty much refuses to engage with electoral politics and, you know, help elect politicians who are not corporate puppets. Yeah, yeah, I know of the exceptions but, you know, exceptions are by definition not the rule.
And that’s why when Trump and his party are neutralized to whatever extent they’re neutralized, very little of their harm will be undone.
"the discourse of white supremacy did not differentiate properly between the center and the far right, and viewed racism as so endemic to the American experience that virtually everyone was culpable if they were not actively “antiIracist” in just the right way."
No roots to pull up for sure. JD Vance is the poster boy for the fact that this rot is a kind of fungal spread. He's moved through multiple social sites that might have provided an ethical grounding for his politics––post-industrial Ohio, US military, elite east coast academia, Silicon Valley venture capitalism, normie Republicanism, rightwing Catholicism. But there doesn't seem to be any moral conviction or ethos, good or bad, that has survived his move into what seems like his real home, the MAGA extremely online dudeworld.
He disparages Popes but stands up for adult men who live to yuck it up about rape and the Holocaust.
Even aside from politics, it's beyond me how that is supposed to lead to a remoralizing of young men who are adrift so as to make them appealing enough to young women in 2025 to marry and have kids with them.
Good post. I mean the dude has a group chat with 20-year-old groypers, that’s who he is.
Where is his incentive for their remoralisation? (See: fulfilling lives for possible future M.A.G.A. cultists.)
Given his concern with birthrates, he seems to wish for a world where more men like him are husbands and fathers. But he found a mate before his extreme online days. He circulated among women he appeared to respect, and had female friends who say they no longer recognize him from the Yale days.
All of those Young Republicans on the group chats, and the many disaffected young men behind them that Vance et. al. say they want to help, are marinating in online discourse that will turn off the majority of young American women.
Making birth control hard to get will only go so far. Trying to roll back professional careers for women will only work at the margins. Because at this point, anyway, you still have to get women to agree to date and marry you before you can acquire the husband and father status.
His main things go way beyond 'birthrates.'
Because they have to. We could always be at replacement level or above.
Low very plausible is we get 2 billion more added to the 8 billion now on Earth.
But they cannot immigrate here like they used to if JD has his way.
It's all tied up in Nazi shit. Nobody should let this replacement theory claptrap be packaged as reasonable.
It's exactly the same as all their pearl clutching for the past 50 years.
A lot of traditionalists deride their own programme because they implicitly back the notion that they can succeed only if society imposes penalties on acting any other way…much as any religion seems to be reaching a bit if their Unique Value Proposition is 'itʼs better than eternal, infinite, punishment'.
(Of course, that's judging from an Enlightenment point-of-view that says that what people want is at least not totally depraved, and might well be a decent guide to what were best to happen to them.)(…except, of course, when they reject vaccines and social democracy.)
I’ve been saying to my comrades that we will need a Nuremberg Trial of the apparatchiks of the current regime in order to try to steer away this country from the abyss. But I doubt this crop of Democrats will have the stomach for it, and too many other people on the left have a fatalist “well this country has always been like that, it’s just that the mask is now off.” Okay sure, whatever, so they just get away with it?
Our allies may be Bulwark centrists. Tim Miller joked about the need for American Nuremberg Trials the other day
Feel like the Bulwark types understand the current peril better than the Dem leadership and donor class.
any purge has to start with the septuagenarians in Congress and Dem leadership.
I think there is no effectiveness without power, and no real power in our system without party discipline and solidarity, and none of that without making life worse for peopke not in your party than in it, so how about first replacing Sens. Sanders and Collins and Murkowski with Democrats? (…or if they stay but affiliate.)
Much as I like him, Sanders should fall on his sword
They’re scorned lovers of the GOP
I may be giving them too much credit , but it seems like they are conservatives who actually believed it was all about low taxes and small government out of people’s personal business, and were disillusioned when it revealed itself to be be in reality, only elaborate justifications of racism.
A lot of them actually just… liked America; like its diversity, like its constitution, like it having a foreign policy that is at least intending to do good things for the world. Trump is so obviously vile and hate-filled and cynical, he’s extremely off-putting to any genuine patriot.
Fair enough, but if humans are pretty much the same all over and the Middle East now and everywhere at some time or another—yes, I'm including indigenous peoples—'not letting them get away with it' can be taken too far. More personally, one of the wiser men I've known was at his stupidest when determined 'not to be made a schmuck of'.
On a practical level, the fact that these courts would never be seen as legitimate by many would limit their usefulness—Germany was an exception both because of the level of their devastation and because they'd had twelve recent years of an ideology that saw Victory as the ultimate endorsement of the authority of the victors.
Ya I don’t know how you fix a problem this dire without vigorous de-groyperification campaign. Once you’ve been DOGEd you gotta DOGE ‘em right back. My Canadian countrymen are cheering on any vengeance you can extract.
It’s reminiscent of the question you got in your talk about tit for tat Gerrymanders. Of course you might be sowing seeds of a future backlash. But they’ve made it pretty clear they’re gonna be sickos regardless.
It makes one sympathetic to the old-men-yelling-at-clouds about norms. Once things have gone down a bad road, hard to fix it. Also true if judicial politics in the states; other countries have managed to have judicial review without it getting quite so weird, but how the hell do you fix it when you’ve reached this point.
*taps sign*
an entire generation of conservative youth spent their formative years binge watching anti-SJW ragebait, lurking /pol/, irony OD'ing on edgy memes, trolling as a second language, and fantasy-role-posting behind marble bust avatars and we have yet to fully account for its consequences
“On the one hand, the discourse of white supremacy did not differentiate properly between the center and the far right, and viewed racism as so endemic to the American experience that virtually everyone was culpable if they were not actively “anti-racist” in just the right way, that is to say, echoed the correct shibboleths. One might argue that recent events vindicate this account of total depravity, but in practical politics, it had the deleterious effect of not properly isolating the real threat. “ this is brilliantly put
Given that a pro-Nazi agent of Germany was ghost-writing Senatorial speeches—thanks Dr Maddow—I'd say the Browns were in pretty deep in our power-structure.
“Are you now, or have you ever been associated with Pepe the Frog memes?”
Quick fyi and thank you- reading your work is helping me with messaging re my union. We are in the middle/beginning of some really hard fights and thinking in terms of rhetoric and practical politics is helping me work on how I talk with my coworkers.
With the Senate structure lopsided in their favor and generational control of the Supreme Court, the Republican Party being brought to heel simply is not on the menu in any of our lifetimes.
I wish it were otherwise, but we've got to see the world as it is. The anti-MAGA coalition as currently construed is checkmated.
I think I might be echoing Matt Yglesias here, apologies, but the fall of the republic is far more imaginable that the Democratic Party winning a Senate race in Arkansas. Until that changes we're just shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic.
No dooming in the comments.
I suppose the Yglesian response would be that it's not so much dooming as demanding the question of how do we win a Senate race in actually existing Arkansas? His prescription for that is laughably substandard and naive, but I do feel like that's fundamentally the right question as a matter of politics.
And it's precisely because of the dynamics you describe in this piece. It's not clear how willing or able anyone is to isolate "the bad ones" from the broader right anymore. A bigger picture realignment is the more plausible hope.
just at ground level, in the streets (like Saturday) being an active Legal Observer is a working class hero and something to be.
I never agree with Arendt about Eichmann and fascism. The roots are deep. First psychologically, as in Theweleit’s Male Fantasy (U. Minnesota, see intro by me and Anson Rabinbach) second see George Mosse’s work from several points of view. History of religion wasn’t Arendt’s strong suit. Think of the film The White Ribbon as a counter-argument to her position.
I’m a fbig an of all those guys, and think Arendt doesn’t mean that there aren’t precedents or psychological dimensions.
It suddenly seems to me that some of those Orthodox Jews willing to back these people aren't bothered by the antisemitism because that's what they _expect_ from non-Jews, but believe that there are some with whom they can work.
I always love a Ribuffo reference.
The man was a chaotic scene all to himself.
I think “rootless fascism” is an important and proactive thesis, precisely because it is so contrary to the dominant school of thought on all of this, which is that there exists some deep “root cause” of fascist radicalization that must be engaged with sympathy and understanding. I think it’s rooted in a tendentious form of left-wing intellectual thinking, especially Marxist thinking, where everything must have a material explanation and right-wing voters are just temporarily confused socialists.
Welll… speaking of rotted through, you have to add the post-DLC national Democratic Party; the establishment media with their willful disregard of the truth in important issues; and Big Business. Which is to say our entire leadership class or whatever is rotted.
And outside the leadership class is the far left who pretty much refuses to engage with electoral politics and, you know, help elect politicians who are not corporate puppets. Yeah, yeah, I know of the exceptions but, you know, exceptions are by definition not the rule.
And that’s why when Trump and his party are neutralized to whatever extent they’re neutralized, very little of their harm will be undone.
If that’s too dark for you, blame reality.
"the discourse of white supremacy did not differentiate properly between the center and the far right, and viewed racism as so endemic to the American experience that virtually everyone was culpable if they were not actively “antiIracist” in just the right way."
Just the right way.... Goldilocks politics.