By Jonah Goldberg
Saturday, May 27, 2017
Greetings from the Magic Pan at Ronald Reagan National
Airport. When I say “Magic Pan,” I do not mean one of the lesser deities in the
Celestial Kingdom of the Orb (That’s not even the right translation for that
deity, which would be closer to “Thaumaturgical Skillet of Woe and
Uncomfortable Urination of Lava”) — I’m at the “Magic Pan Crepe Station” at the
airport. I can report that the crepes meet nearly all of the minimal
requirements to make them fit for human consumption.
I’m not at the airport just because I like to pay as much
as possible for small bags of beef jerky. I’m shipping up to Boston, or
wherever Radcliffe College is, for something called Radcliffe Day, where I’ll
be on a panel saying panel-y things.
So, I should warn you Up Front, if that’s your real name,
or even if you’re not a member of the Front family, that today’s “news”letter
is going to be a little different. As Bill Clinton likes to say when over
international waters, “it’s going to get a little weird.”
That’s because I’ve been writing this thing piecemeal
over the last 24 hours while doing 37.3 other things and not getting much sleep
(I’m on the plane now, btw). Also, because I keep licking that Australian toad.
Also, because I am now in the thrall of the Orb. No, it’s not my golden calf —
which always gets weird looks when I wear shorts. (“Hey, why is the lower half
of one of your legs gold color?”) It’s because I can’t stop making jokes about
how the Orb is my master now. I think Orb worship is a perfect meme-fad-faith
for our craptacular new age. For instance, you know that old thing about how
God backwards is “Dog”?
Well, hie thee to the Ye Olde Photoshoppery and make me
one of these: “The Orb Couldn’t
Physically Be with Us, So He Gave Us Bros to Remind Us What a Stupid Time It Is
to Be Alive. And Notice Orb Spelled Backwards Is Bro Because LOL Nothing
Matters and SMOD Let Us Down.”
Anything Goes
Here’s an example: The assault on Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs in Montana was just about the perfect
episode for the Bro Age. It could be in the Orbian Bible as the Book of Bro.
According to the Old God of the Jewish and Christian
Faith, what GOP candidate Greg Gianforte did the night before the special
election was inexcusable. Okay, technically, the Judaism 1.0 of my forebears
with all the Smiting and Wrath, might have made some allowances for it. But as
a matter of traditional ethics and morality, what he did was, again,
inexcusable. But in the Bro Age, when one of your Bros does something wrong and
oh-so-Broey — particularly if there’s proof that it happened so you can’t blame
it on anonymous sources — the first thing you must do is defend your Bro’s actions.
After Gianforte’s body slam, Twitter was full of people, even those of the blue
checkmark variety, talking about how the Jacobs guy deserved it. I even caught
Rob O’Neill on Fox saying that Jacobs was a “snowflake” and that the assault
was “kinda funny” and that this was just “Montana Justice.”
Obviously, I have enormous respect for O’Neill’s
accomplishments (he was the guy who plugged Osama bin Laden, which earns him a
lifetime coupon for free drinks as far as I’m concerned), but this is repugnant
and stupid and insulting to Montanans. If O’Neill were still in uniform and had
done what Gianforte did, his career would have been destroyed and he’d likely
be in a stockade. Oh, and it was
Gianforte who literally freaked out in a fight-or-flight panic when asked a
question about a frick’n CBO score! But Ben Jacobs is the snowflake?
Moreover, if a Democratic politician attacked, say, Jesse
Watters (who routinely asks far more provocative questions than Jacobs did)
never mind a serious reporter like James Rosen, the conservative media complex
would be lit red with sirens and we’d all be covering our ears from the din of
the “Aroogah! Aroogah! Battle Stations! Battle Stations!” blasting from the
loudspeakers.
But no, for an entire day, countless people defended the
assault because they didn’t like Jacobs, or they wanted to win an open House
seat, or they wanted to play yet another round of whatabboutism, or help Donald
Trump in some way or — in the case of the alt-right — because any attack on a
Jew is defined as a good start.
So, let me ask the people who spent the day defending
Gianforte: How do you feel now that he won? Is it all you hoped it would be?
Oh, and how did you feel when he apologized? Did you regret all that Montana
justice and he-had-it-coming talk? I mean, you probably didn’t really believe
that stuff anyway. You just let people believe you did because the cause was so
important. Or maybe you’re mad that Gianforte apologized after spending all
that time arguing he did nothing wrong? Probably not — because one of the Orb’s
first commandments is “Thou Shalt Not Care about Anyone’s Hypocrisy but the
Enemy’s.”
So, congrats! You held a seat in Montana (which you were
going to win anyway). I guess you can take some credit for somehow helping Trump
avoid a marginally bad one-day story (though the “Trump encourages atmosphere
of violence” story is worse). What did you have to give up? Just any claim to
the moral high ground and any credibility when it comes to condemning political
violence down the line.
That’s okay, because in the Bro Age, all of the
creativity is in how to leap over, skate around, or dive under objective
standards of right and wrong. “Hold my beer while I abandon my principles . . .
(Orb willing).”
Memory Lane
So, now I’m in the car from Boston’s Logan Airport out to
Radcliffe (no I’m not driving). Radcliffe, as you may know, is a former
all-women’s college and I have a warm spot in my heart for such institutions
because I attended one. I went to Goucher College — my freshman year was the
first fully co-ed class. There were 30-odd men (and I do mean odd men) and over a thousand women.
The reasons I went to an all-women’s college have less to
do with the late-night Cinemax scenarios most men leap to when I mention these
stats (“Dear Penthouse, I never thought I’d be writing a letter like this . . .
) and more to do with the fact that I was rejected from every other college I
applied to.
This used to be a mid-sized chip on my shoulder. I’m the
first to admit that I was your classic underachiever at my (fairly ridiculous)
high school (Fellow alums: Vin Diesel, Paris Hilton, and, I just learned,
Walter Lippmann!). I did just enough to avoid getting kicked out for one reason
or another (“I swear, that goat isn’t mine!”). Sure, I got my share of good
grades when the subject or the teacher interested me, but in the great battle
for my attention comic books, TV, sci-fi, video games, girls, and, eventually,
beer were like Seal Team Six fighting the support staff of the House
Subcommittee on Low-Flow Toilets in a gladiatorial battle to the death for the
amusement of the Orb’s Triskelion in-laws (“10,000 Quatloos that the one with
the asthma inhaler cries before death!”).
One of my yearbook quotes was from Joe Walsh’s “Life’s
Been Good”: They say I’m lazy, but it
takes all my time.
Now, Homo
underachievus has many subspecies and phyla. Not everyone sets out to do
the bare minimum for the same reasons or the same way. Yes, I cannot deny that
I was a member of the great and glorious cult of Sloth (Standard Chant: “Hail
Sloth, Hail Sloth, Hai . . . Oh look, Knight
Rider is on!”). But laziness is just one of the requirements of the truly
accomplished underachiever.
Fear is another one, specifically fear of trying your
best and coming up short. This is the dilemma of being told that you have great
potential. I always tested fairly well. I always liked to write. I always liked
to read. I was a good talker.
And I had very smart parents who talked knowledgably
about politics and current events. My dad in particular was a walking
university, as far as I was concerned. And one of his only hobbies was going on
long walks with his boys and talking about history and philosophy and, of
course, why Communism is Very Bad.
(My dad’s humor was so dry, cacti would whither on its
landscape during the “rainy season.” For example, when I was no older than six
or seven, he told me he liked to carry bombs on planes. He explained that since
the odds of one bomb being on a plane were very high, the odds of two bombs
being on the same plane were so
astronomically high as to make it impossible for a bad person to bring one
on the plane. Whether you think it’s funny or not — I do — it’s the kind of
thing that gets a little kid thinking. He had a kind of Socratic gift that way.
He liked to tell me that if humans ever got to Mars, it was far more likely
we’d find a functioning pocket watch there than alien life, since pocket
watches are far less complicated than living organisms. He was wrong on the
science, which he knew, but again it was a good way to get a seven-year-old to
think outside the box. And it amused him greatly to say weird stuff like that
to me and my brother, perhaps because he couldn’t say it to anyone else.)
The Underachiever
in Chief
Anyway, where was I? Oh right, underachievers. So, I had
a reputation for being smart — not a genius, but certainly much smarter than my
school “work” suggested. The problem with such reputations is that the only
thing that can destroy them is actually trying your hardest and coming up
short.
So you create excuses. You write your English assignments
on the bus ride to school (a skillset that has come in handy for this
“news”letter more than once). If you do poorly, well, what did you expect? You
didn’t really try. If you do well, “Hey just imagine how much better it would
have been if I gave it my best!”
I bring all this up for a few reasons, starting with the
fact that nostalgia is as good a muse as any. Also Radcliffe sent me down this
odd mental trail and this “news”letter has always been a kind of Ouija Board:
Start chasing letters and see what comes out.
But also because I’ve long thought that my underachieving
youth gave me a particular insight into Donald Trump.
Bear with me. Of course, it’s insane to call President
Trump an underachiever, and I don’t mean to suggest otherwise. But in the
primaries, whenever Trump talked about winning states he “didn’t even try” to
win, or when he said he could learn whatever he needed to learn once he was in
the White House; or when he bragged about winging it in debates, it was a kind
of Nightingale’s song of the underachiever, triggering memories and mental
habits I’ve struggled to put away (save in this “news”letter).
Donald Trump works hard, or so I’m constantly told. But
there are many kinds of “working hard.” Staying busy and active is a kind of
hard work, and by all accounts Donald Trump does that. But he also seems to
have taken the habits of the underachiever — relying on your wits in the moment,
counting on the fact that you’re better on the fly than the well-prepared are
if you can manage to knock them off balance or in some other way Kobiashyi Maru
the crap out of the situation. In every profile of Trump, much is made of his
need to dominate the room or the conversation to his advantage. Even his
handshakes are about dominance.
You can see how this skill would be an asset in sales and
real estate — and in Republican primaries. Winning the soundbite, dominating
the stage, grabbing all the attention: This, it turns out, is gold.
But you can also see why such skills would or could steer
you wrong in situations where there is no substitute for doing your homework.
Chesterton’s
Invisi-Fence
Now that I’m in a van outside the Cambridge Marriot waiting
to be joined by E. J. Dionne, Al Hunt, and Judy Woodruff so we can drive to
breakfast (no, I’m not making that up), let me switch gears . . .
Actually, now that I am sitting outside Logan Airport
five hours later, let me switch gears.
I’ve been writing about Chesterton’s fence for years. For
those of you who don’t remember because they lost most of their memory after
waking up in that dumpster handcuffed to a horse’s severed leg (or for some
other reason), here’s the relevant passage:
In the matter of reforming things,
as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a
principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case
a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence
or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up
to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which
the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see
the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think.
Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may
allow you to destroy it.
I reference Chesterton’s fence all the time, usually in
the context of progressives who are imbued with the fierce arrogance of now.
They have special contempt for tradition, custom, etc.
And that is basically the context Chesterton had in mind.
But I think there’s a lesson here for Trump as well. Trump’s glandular approach
to every situation is a kind of lizard-brain version of progressivism. Tell
Trump he can’t do or say something and he almost instinctively does it or says
it. It’s like there’s a homunculus in there screaming, “You’re not the boss of
me!” 24/7. His fans love this blunderbuss approach. And whenever you criticize
it, the immediate response is some version of “It got him elected!”
And it’s true: Trump has been an improviser in the grand
tradition of underachievers his whole life. His entire, spectacular, run to the
White House was like a running spontaneous jazz performance. And he hasn’t
stopped improvising. The problem is that the White House and Washington in
general are a vast maze of what might be called Chesterton’s Invisi-Fences.
Unlike the original Chesterton fence, these fences cannot be seen, but they
exist all the same. Some of them, of course, should probably be gotten rid of —
but, again, you have to know why
they’re there before you try.
Trump simply didn’t know, or at least he didn’t fully
understand, that you’re not supposed to fire the FBI director to thwart an
investigation into your activities or the activities of your campaign. And,
even if he did know that, Trump didn’t know that you’re not supposed to admit
it.
I have no problem with the president firing Jim Comey. I
have no objection, in principle, to Trump declassifying information. I loved
his counterprograming to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. But the way
Trump does these things and so many others is counterproductive precisely
because he doesn’t know how to do them to his advantage — and that’s because he
doesn’t know where the lines are. The Invisi-Fences are like the security
lasers in some ridiculous heist movie. Every time Trump crosses one, he gets
cut and bleeds a little more political capital, in part because his missteps
undercut his image as a mastermind who thinks six steps ahead.
Liberals are still convinced Trump is some kind of
autocrat-in-waiting. And he may well be in his heart. But the would-be
autocrats who actually become real-life autocrats only achieve success because
they are popular and know how to manipulate the system from within — and because they did their homework.
That’s not Trump. Yes, he’s violating democratic and political norms, but he’s
not doing it according to some master plan like an Erdogan or a Putin, he’s
doing it more like a weird hybrid of Mr. Magoo and Chauncey Gardiner.
It may not sound like it, but this is actually a powerful
defense of Trump against his harshest critics. I listened to Chris Matthews
last night and he was giddy to the point of orgasmic about the Jared Kushner
story. He so desperately wants the Trump-Russia stuff to be like Watergate,
where the dots get connected to reveal some grand intricate pattern of
well-conceived skullduggery and treason.
But the Trump presidency is in reality turning out to be
much more like the story arc of Battlestar
Galactica. It began with a lot of talk about how the Cylons had some grand
plan to achieve interstellar domination. But as the seasons ticked by and the
plot became more convoluted, it turned out the writers never had a plan and
they were winging it all along.
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