there is a really primal desire on the editorial level for a civil conservative voice and while that's good in theory there should really be some reflection about why every single one of the voices they find is fundamentally dishonest, because there *is* no civility in american conservatism
between the dubious anecdote and the smear of a veteran journalist i am fascinated to know how that atlantic piece got published. i’m also amused at how the piece itself is an example of why it is difficult to find conservative opinion writing that meets basic journalistic standards
modern american conservatism is fundamentally opposed to the entire idea of civitas and thats why you cant find an honest voice who can span that gap.
This should cause some reflection except that most of our journalist/editorial class are too dim and provincial to really self-reflect on it
My guess is a lot of it is due to the rather hermetic nature of conservative media/thought. So much of it, even in the more “intellectual” wing, is dependent on an audience already having bought into the approved slate of beliefs and opinions that there’s no real need for rigor.
I think there's no rigor because conservatism is fundamentally walking backwards from socially assumptions made on innate superiority/inferiority (guess which one the conservative thinks he is).
I'm now some 50 or 60 years into an awareness of Conservatism. In that time, we've seen each element of it Fail.
Conservatism comprises a discrete, small portion of human life. When taking over a life, it fails. No wonder so-many Conservatives do so-much that's bad. E.g., oppose Civitas.😐
(($; -)}™
Yeah, the alternative history/facts/heroes/villains that span the Right Wing Cinematic Universe, are a bit weird when you look at them in reality and oh hey, it's just fiction.
The Conservative-seeking mind has a limited field of view. Even when talking with reasonable/moderate/independent Conservatives, they insist on breaking Forests down into Trees. "Holistic" is beyond their grasp. Persistent concern: "unintended consequences." Because of a limited field of Vision.😐
Especially true about the journalism part, adulthood has been such a disappointment compared to what I imagined it to be when I was a child. I assumed that people just got smarter as they got older, but in reality most people's intelligence peaked in high school and it shows in their work. It hurts.
Their curiosity died, their childish joy was strangled out, even "adulthood" is a construct they place their failures into.
Never calcify, always do your best to engage with supposedly "childish" (but often best and core) aspects of yourself when you can.
If only we had a descriptor for the sorts of people who distrust education to the point of hating the pronouns in the only language they know...
The kind of people that always needed lethal weapons in reach...
Maybe Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post, who underwent a two decade transformation from a kneejerk partisan Republican to a (mostly) thoughtful anti-Trump, anti-GOP moderate conservative.
Though afaik she's never acknowledged *why* her former party could end up with Trump as its leader.
it’s, like, the exact opposite, the mainstream of the party moved further toward the center left and has dragged the center left of the republican party into the center right of the democratic party
I'm trying to work out what a 'centre left' of the Eugenics For Ever party looks like and it's like doing metric to imperial conversion on the soul of an undead creature
I used to listen to the Left Right and Center show on KCRW. I started listening until they named the Right person. If they were a former member of the Trump admin, I'd just stop listening to that episode. After several weeks I just stopped listening all together.
In my mind, if someone was part of the Trump administration then they are just compromised. It's to find someone with a conservative perspective that wasn't part of the Trump admin. I follow them on social media. I refuse to participate in the rehabilitation of these folks.
With only one or two exceptions I can't think of a Trump cabinet member or top aide who come out with a scorching indictment when it might have mattered - subtle digs or insults reported second-hand don't count for me, or dumping on him after he lost in 2020.
The thing about all of the people mentioned in this thread is that they all burned their bridges in such a way that they know most of their conservative readership will not come back. There’s a difference between them and the one foot in one foot out Nevertrumpers who are only against *him*.
You're right, she never has acknowledged it, because it would require honestly grappling with her own role in it. e.g. she was obsessed with Benghazi for the longest time and used her platform to spread lies like "they watched in real time" and never acknowledged or retracted.
I refuse to read anything that person writes.
She may have forgotten her previous decade of rabid and incoherent support for the Right but I have not. (How does the Washington Post reconcile this is another good question).
I can understand the feeling, but then that potentially closes the door on the small number of political columnists who change in ways other than becoming repetitive or more reactionary over time.
I would never have expected Bush-era Jennifer Rubin to ever write something like this, for example:
It’s not the change that’s the problem.
When she was writing as a conservative her thinking was sloppy, incoherent and nonsensical.
Now she appears to recognize some of reality with some similar views to Dems. Sounds like pandering.
As you said, if she wants to offer a different explanation ok.
This would apply equally to someone like Thiessen.
If he suddenly saw the light and posted sane supportive views that were anti-Trump, I wouldn’t be as impressed with his conversion as wondering if his earlier screeds weren’t all just bad faith.
My main problem with Rubin is that I do think she's still looking for some way the GOP can be salvaged, and won't see that Trump was the outcome of 60 years of Republican strategies and tactics
Thiessen's on my list of 6-10 Post columnists I've permanently boycotted as irredeemable partisan idiots
I think it's the mix of political hegemony with societal unpopularity that really shapes this.
Institutionally, US conservatives have won for decades now (Reaganomics getting pushback under Biden a little for the first time, but anything big is blocked; the Supreme Court etc.).
Meanwhile, culturally, they are right in observing that they are losing a lot - but they don't see that that's just market dynamics (Disney wants to sell to gay kids, too).
That is frustrating - "We won, why are you not giving up?"
For most people, humility comes from not being dominant - the best left-wing authors on my bookshelf are from eras where leftism was in retreat, the same for liberalism and conservatism.
So having power to ignore other voices is one part.
Havin power to ignore voices AND losing ground outside of state policy, no matter what you do, doubles that: They are not humbled by a strong opposition, and they are frustrated because their power is not acknowledged by everyone.
And they had those ‘civil conservative voices’ for the entirety of the Bush years and those guys just kept going more and more insane and right wing as they got older. Andrew Sullivan is a great case study of that.
Yeah, although I'm not sure if it's so much "growing older" as just "moving with the movement". It's not like the *young* conservatives these days are any less deranged.
Not a single conservative policy is good is why. Democrats immediately glom onto any policies that have merit and then the GOP ditches them. See also Romneycare
I am results driven. I want certain results and am not married to how we get there. If X policy doesn't increase affordable housing, I am willing to try Y.
Conservatism seems more along the this is how we think things should be and we will bend reality to fit it, even when it doesn't.
The biggest lie of all is that conservatism is about facing hard realities (unlike wooly-headed liberals), when it's fantasy all the way down. Ban abortions, and they'll just stop. "Just say no", and drug use will end. Lower taxes, and tax revenues will rise. Just risible bullshit, all the way down.
Basically, American conservatism that had ANY point besides hate and all the bad things about conservatism as a worldview was played out by 1980, and then they embraced the anti-abortion zealots who are definitional reactionaries rather than "conservatives."
