It was an odd Sunday morning last weekend, since for some undetected reason it took me forever to wake up. That’s not my lifelong habit: usually, upon awakening—sometimes when the rooster crows—I reach for my glasses, put on pre-shower clothes, bound upstairs, two steps at a time, to check email, get an iced coffee from the fridge, a Marlboro Light for outside by the garbage cans, retrieve and scan headlines from the Journal and Times, and get to work.
As a younger man, when friends said it took them at least 15 minutes to rub the sleep from their eyes, I bragged that my first order of business was performing 50 jumping jacks. On occasion, that was true. But last Sunday, I stumbled through the routine, groggy, still pissed that the Yankees nosed out the Royals the night before (with the help of a botched replay, but more K.C.’s wild bullpen) and annoyed that the newspaper delivery guy hadn’t made his rounds yet. Print dailies are mostly useless now, but when the Times doesn’t hit the bushes outside until nine a.m. that’s a sign that someone doesn’t give a shit.
The above is of no importance, solipsistic, but less offensive, I think, than the X/Twitter posts of Tom Nichols, another Never Trumper who can’t find his way home, wasted or sober as a bluebird. I read the following, thankful for a strong gastrointestinal constitution, and it was worse than usual. He wrote: “People ask me why I became a Republican back over 40 years ago. It's because back then the GOP was the party of adults, the uncool dads and the boring old men in suits. Now it's a weird, juvenile cult full of the guys who creeped you out in high school.”
It’s possible “people” really do ask 63-year-old Nichols, a staff writer for The Atlantic—a Never Trump slipshod site that’s a Franklin-popping ATM for slipshod writers—why he became a Republican in the 1980s, and if that’s an exaggeration, so what. But Nichols’ generalizations are silly: if the “GOP was the party of adults,” what were the Democrats? The party of Led Zeppelin-besotted adolescents? And “uncool dads and the boring old men in suits”? I’d doubt the Republicans won three straight presidential elections—including Reagan’s 1984 landslide—on the backs of that relatively narrow demographic.
In my high school class of 500 in Huntington, New York, I can think of only two “guys” who “creeped me out.” One was a malcontent who spent biology class seeing how much dandruff he could accumulate on the black desk. The other was an intense—today he might be pegged as a pistol-packing crazy who might shoot up the cafeteria—fellow in Mr. Ambrosino’s history class who, no matter what the discussion was about, went on a rant about how Charlie Company was kicking ass in Vietnam. This was 1970, and few students supported the war, but Greg could ruin a round-robin on the Alamo or Grover Cleveland by tying it into the current armed forces, once with a loud, but feeble, defense of William Calley.
There’s no denying the MAGA “cult,” but does Nichols really believe that nearly half the country is “juvenile” for supporting Trump? I suspect the author/academic/essayist has many friends/acquaintances who’ve stuck with the GOP, and Trump, and unless he’s as boorish as his articles/social media posts suggest, he’s probably a “we’ll agree to disagree” kind of guy. It’s hard, and stupid, to terminate lifelong friendships over mere politics. But maybe he’s just an asshole.
I read The New Yorker’s long endorsement of Kamala, and while it was more “professional” (a word that may soon be excised from the dictionaries still purchased) than Nichols, the editors at the weekly are charter TDS members. An excerpt: “The United States simply cannot endure another four years of Donald Trump. He is an agent of chaos, an enemy of liberal democracy, and a threat to America’s moral standing in the world. Kamala Harris—who has shown herself to be sensible, humane, and liberal-minded—is our choice for the Presidency.”
Question: what is America’s current “moral standing in the world”? No better, no worse, I’d venture, than when Trump was president. And, if Democrats are correct in their propaganda that Trump’s tenure still stains the United States, why do so many countries come to Washington with their hands out?
Finally, at The New York Times, columnists Gail Collins and Bret Stephens have a written “conversation” about the election. Stephens, an often-conservative Never Trumper, asks his colleague why Harris isn’t trouncing Trump. She replies: “Can we blame the Republican Party? It used to specialize in conservative financial options: lower taxes, fewer government services. But now it’s the voice of the alienated, often rural and less well educated, who are just ticked off at everybody else.”
Makes sense! Collins can’t Blame It On the Bossa Nova, so instead goes after those who aren’t as learned as her circle of peers and Republicans who are “ticked off.” I’d assumed that angry voters (but a number less than the media says) are Republicans, Democrats and, as St. John McCain used to say, Vegetarians, but now I know better.
—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER2023
