By Kevin D. Williamson
Friday, March 04, 2016
‘He may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a
bitch.” That observation is attributed (possibly erroneously) to Franklin D.
Roosevelt, expressing his feelings about Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza
García. That’s the American version of “The enemy of my enemy is my friend,”
and it has produced mixed results as a foreign-policy guideline: Saddam
Hussein, the Afghan muhajideen, and the Pakistanis were our sons of bitches
right up until they weren’t. Moammar Qaddafi was our son of a bitch for about
five minutes, and a fat lot of good it did him.
Strange thing: A fair number of purported Republicans
annoyed at enemy-of-my-enemy thinking as a rule of thumb for international
affairs have embraced it as a model for choosing a president. This isn’t going
to work out well for them.
Donald Trump is not your son of a bitch. He’s just a son
of a bitch.
To long for a strongman to rule over us with a whip hand
is unworthy of Americans, but Americans are human beings, too, and they suffer
from a common human affliction: They desire to be dominated by a strong man.
The man on the horse offers them protection for their vulnerability, direction
for their directionlessness, strength for their weakness. All he demands in
return is servility, which devotees of Der Apfelstrudelführer — singing
hilariously homoerotic hymns to his purported status as “alpha male” — are all
too happy to provide.
It has provided an embarrassing display: Ann Coulter, who
affirmed that she’d be happy to support Trump even if he “wants to perform
abortions in White House” — actual quote, there — huffed that Marco Rubio was
being unseemly when he criticized her man on his own terms. Sean Hannity, who
purported to be a Catholic, repeated ancient Martin Luther-era slanders against
the papacy and the Catholic Church when the pope seemed to criticize the great
man.
“Abject” is not a strong enough word for Laura Ingraham’s
performance. Point to Trump’s corruption and his support of odious politicos
ranging from Chuck Schumer to Nancy Pelosi to Harry Reid to Herself, and
they’ll scoff: “He was a businessman — what do you expect?” Well, George Soros
is a businessman, too — what do you expect? Point to Trump’s inconsistencies —
the so-called conservative does not believe in free enterprise, property
rights, the First Amendment, the Second Amendment, or the rest of the Bill of
Rights — and people who denounce George Will for once having had dinner with
Barack Obama when he was president-elect will weep that you’re a “purist.”
Donald Trump has lied about practically everything a
human being can lie about — ask his wives and children — but he did tell the
truth about one thing: He really could shoot people down on Fifth Avenue
(assuming that the TV tough guy actually knows how to operate a firearm) and
none of these unsouled minions would bat an eye, their eyes being exhausted
from batting them at Der Apfelstrudelführer.
A caller on Rush Limbaugh’s program yesterday insisted
that, all appearances to the contrary, Trump voters have taken the measure of
their man and know exactly what they are doing. Trump, he said, would either be
their instrument for taking over the Republican party or their instrument for
destroying it. My impression was that he preferred the latter.
That’s all fine as millimeter-deep talk-radio rhetoric
goes: “The Democrats inflicted upon this republic a so-called constitutional
scholar who abuses and subverts the Constitution at every turn — we’ll answer
with a guy who doesn’t even know how a bill becomes a law, or care!”
But I wonder how Team Trumpkin actually imagines that
will work.
It isn’t impossible to believe that the 2016 electorate
will be exactly as stupid and childish as the electorate that twice chose
Barack Obama over a flawed but preferable candidate in 2008 and over an
immeasurably preferable candidate in 2012. Let’s say that all the greybeards in
Washington are Sidney J. Mussburger but the median voter is more of a Norville
Barnes kind of thinker. (“Voting! You know, for kids!”) So everybody sings a
chorus of “Populism, Yeah, Yeah!” and Donald J. Trump, scion of a Queens
slumlord empire who can’t quite get his story straight on the Ku Klux Klan even
though his father was arrested after a Klan riot (“native-born Protestant Americans,”
they styled themselves; the orange doesn’t fall far from the tree) becomes
president of these United States.
Then what?
There almost certainly will be a Republican House, full
of conservative Republicans who believe the things conservative Republicans
believe and Donald Trump does not. There probably will be a Republican Senate,
too, though it is difficult to imagine that Trump’s agenda would fare any
better under a Senate led by his old pal Chuck Schumer. Trump already has
threatened Paul Ryan — he’ll toe the line or “pay a big price,” Trump said —
and he’ll do the same with Mitch McConnell and others, one imagines. The list
of people who thought they were cleverer operators than Mitch McConnell is
long, and it does not contain very many happy people. Trump can rail against
trade with Mexico and the nefarious Canadians, but NAFTA is the law of the
land. So are our other trade treaties. Those claiming to be true-blue
conservatives who believe that the president has unilateral power to withdraw from
a treaty should consult Barry Goldwater. Even assuming that the nuke-NAFTA
movement prevails, what do they imagine would replace it?
The preferred answer seems to be: “Never mind puny
treaty! TRUMP SMASH!”
Trump’s health-care plan is mainly a dead letter, with
the exception of his proposal that we create health-savings accounts, which we
created more than a decade ago. (Trump does not keep up with the news.) His tax
plan, to the extent that it is a plan, is dead on arrival. Even his vaunted
immigration agenda, which largely replicates pre-existing law, isn’t going
anywhere: His touchback amnesty is simply regular old familiar amnesty dressed
up as deportation. Neither Republicans nor Democrats to the right of far left
are going to go for that.
Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are going to be a lonely
couple.
The so-called establishment that Hannity et al. rage
against for fun and profit does not actually exist. What does exist is a wide
array of political and economic interests that sometimes overlap and sometimes
do not, and that sometimes produce good results and sometimes produce hideous
ones. (Come on, Senator Rubio: Sugar subsidies are not a national-security
priority.) Those aren’t going away simply because Americans turn off their
neocortices, give in to their inner chimpanzees, and pull the Trump lever.
And never mind that the idea that Trump wants to smash
the nexus of media-political-financial power that has helped to keep him rich
and made him famous is patently absurd. If we take him at his word, it was
important enough for him to have the Clintons at his wedding (his third?) that
he paid them to be there. Trump likes to scorn those who have sought his
assistance (donations for the Club for Growth, an endorsement for Mitt Romney)
as “begging like dogs” (Trump has watched Batman
Begins too many times), but he in fact has been so desperate over the
course of his life for the approval of his betters that he has been willing to
pay for it, or for a facsimile of it — that being the only way he knows to get
what he wants.
Who’s a good boy?
Now, roll over and write the Clintons a check.
But money is the only tool in his toolbox. You think he
started a modeling agency because it’s a good business? Please. Ask his H1-B
visa wife (this one, not the other one) about that.
Like the saps who fell for the Trump University scam,
Trump voters have convinced themselves that a man who has shown nothing but
contempt for his fellow Americans, his business associates, and his family cares
about poor sad-sacks like them. They are mistaken.
He isn’t your son of a bitch. He’s just a son of a bitch.
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