Thursday, March 21, 2019

Christopher Lasch on Never Trumpers

PowerLine dug up this quote from Christopher Lasch which was in a 1994 (!!!!) book of his.  Lasch was something of a political enigma, disliking both the "fusion Conservatism" of Buckley and the Progressivism of the Left.  It's interesting that one of his influences was Orestes Brownson, and that he thought very highly of MLK's populism.

Anyhow,  here's a quote from that 1994 book:

...Simultaneously arrogant and insecure, the new elites, the professional classes in particular, regard the masses with mingled scorn and apprehension. In the United States, “Middle America”—a term that has both geographical and social implications—has come to symbolize everything that stands in the way of progress: “family values,” mindless patriotism, religious fundamentalism, racism, homophobia, retrograde views of women. Middle Americans, as they appear to the makers of educated opinion, are hopelessly shabby, unfashionable, and provincial, ill-informed about changes in taste or intellectual trends, addicted to trashy novels or romance and adventure, and stupefied by prolonged exposure to television. They are at once absurd and vaguely menacing—not because they wish to overthrow the old order but because their defense of it appears so deeply irrational that it expresses itself, at the higher reaches of its intensity, in fanatical religiosity, in repressive sexuality that occasionally erupts into violence against women and gays, and in a patriotism that supports imperialist wars and a national ethic of aggressive masculinity. . .
The reek of Kristol, Boot, Sykes, and Hayes (not to mention the Establishment (D) and (R) twits such as Paul Ryan and Joe Bidet) just leaps out at you from that quote, eh?

1994.  Damn!!

1 comment:

William said...

Amazing. I don't know dad. I don't want anything to do with the Party of Death and Perversion but lately, teh Stupid Party isn't much to crow about.