Some pretty interesting material here from Matthew Continetti, a guy who is son-in-law to a Never Trump rightist.
He begins with a prophetic quote from Reagan (1977): "The new Republican Party I am speaking about," he said, "is going to
have room for the man and the woman in the factories, for the farmer,
for the cop on the beat, and the millions of Americans who may never
have thought of joining our party before, but whose interests coincide
with those represented by principled Republicanism."...
Continetti found a new magazine to be interesting.
....The first issue of American Affairs,
a quarterly journal of policy and political thought, was feted at a
reception in New York City on Tuesday. I found the magazine lively and
thought provoking and at times deeply insightful. In their mission
statement the editors reject "a misguided and complacent consensus" that
too easily dismisses widespread protest against social problems as
populist exercises in nostalgia. "But our intellectuals as well as our
politicians are subservient to an even more debilitating nostalgia," the
editors say, "which views the ideologies of the last few decades as the
only alternatives and their policies as the only solutions. They are
nostalgic for a present they think they inhabit, but which has already
slipped away." And this nostalgia led the intellectuals and politicians
so far afield that they missed completely the economic crisis, the Arab
Spring, Brexit, and the rise and victory of Donald Trump....
Holy pistol-whipping, Batman!
And--please, Sir--here's another one:
"What binds globalism and identity politics together," says Joshua Mitchell of Georgetown, "is the judgment that national sovereignty
is not the final word on how to order collective life. This judgment
against national sovereignty—let us state that matter boldly—was the
animating principle of the post-1989 world order, an order that is now
collapsing before our eyes."...
Yes, indeed. Remember that Trump came after Brexit; and both France and Italy are about to have elections with similar stakes on the table.
Anyhow, that 'new world order' required a Managerial Class to run it. The UN was already around, of course--a bit dowdy and having scandal problems--but there were all sorts of other Managed Global Entities which stepped up, such as the World Bank, the E.U., and various multi-national for-profits.
But the Managerial Class was not accountable to anyone except other (un-elected) Managers.
...This lack of accountability has been highlighted again and again over
the last sixteen years. First 9/11 happened and no one was fired. Then
Saddam turned out not to have had WMD and no one was fired. The economy
came close to collapse—and the banks were bailed out. Government reform
of health care only made the individual market worse. The depression of
rural and working-class America was exacerbated by imperialistic
environmental and financial regulations, liberal welfare and minimum
wage policies, and further global economic integration. "The economic,
foreign policy, and technological optimism of previous decades is gone,"
writes Krein. "Preserving the status quo has become the sole
aspiration—and primarily for the purpose of preserving the class
privilege of the current elite, which, even if not admitted, is becoming
obvious to voters."...
Yes, those pesky "voters." See, they could have kept the status quo by electing Hildebeeste--but they did not. So that status quo-Managerial Class was the problem--as Steve Bannon has emphatically stated.
As for the kvetching press/Democrat/NeverTrump twits:
...nationalism means distinguishing between members of a political
community and outsiders, and privileging the former over the latter.
Such distinctions make many people profoundly uncomfortable. Look at the
headlines surrounding the Trump administration's policies on refugees,
travel from failed or terrorist-sponsoring states, and illegal
immigration....
Got it? Good. STFU.
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