Fish In A Barrel

Liberals arguing with Trump supporters is a sideshow. These liberals, largely devoted to the Democratic Party, are playing tag-team gotcha with MAGA types, who live in a reactionary fantasy world. Each reinforces the other; an ongoing display of empty partisanship.

I understand the temptation, and engaged it in my younger years. I once became somewhat friendly with a few ex-editors of the Dartmouth Review, the leading right wing campus paper in the country. I was fascinated with Ivy League Reagan Youth, and read the Review whenever I snagged a copy.

For all their moaning about the loss of Western Civilization to the Mud People, their critique was adolescent. They felt betrayed, that they weren’t getting their due, something they were clearly owed. Self pity is rarely attractive, especially when you receive money from the likes of the Scaife Foundation.

I drank beer with some Review guys. We talked about the American conservative tradition, though I knew more about it than they did, which, given their love of reactionary history, kind of surprised me. They made such a big deal of it, but in a corner pub, they played dumb.

I asked them what they thought of James Burnham. They’d never heard of him. I patiently explained that Burnham was an ex-leftist who co-founded the National Review and is considered a founder of neoconservatism. He set the table for them. They shrugged and ordered more beer.

I didn’t take it too seriously. Shooting down ideologues eventually became boring and it was on to something else. Anything else.