thebulwark--2020-05-22--Never Trumpers and the Future of American Conservatism

Never Trump The Revolt of the Conservative Elites by Robert P. Saldin and Steven M. Teles Oxford , 287 pp.
, $ 27.95 Halfway through Never Trump , the Republican strategist Stuart Stevens lets loose .
“ To buy into Trump , ” he says , “ you have to believe that the essence of what the Republican Party stood for—personal responsibility , embracing of legal immigration , character counts , strong on Russia—you have to believe that all of that was just a marketing slogan and it didn ’ t mean anything—any more than ‘ We say , “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” ’ ” What ’ s more , Trump has “ made every critic of the Republican Party right ” —all the critics who “ said the Republican Party really didn ’ t care about people , that it wasn ’ t a party that was inclusive .
Just go down the list— ‘ doesn ’ t respect women.
’ He ’ s made all that true .
And he made all the wrong people right.
” Political scientists Robert Saldin and Steven Teles , authors of studies on health reform , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and the conservative legal movement , examine how and why elites from the extended Republican party network came to oppose their party ’ s nominee .
In fact , Saldin and Teles write , “ there has never been a party in the Western world that was elected and sought to govern with such a wide range of intraparty opposition.
” With extensive quotation from their “ informants ” —the sixty-two individuals they interviewed between May 2017 and October 2019—Saldin and Teles articulate the convictions of Never Trumpers with clarity and fair-mindedness @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who disagree deeply with the Never Trumpers will learn at least a little something about the very human motivations that caused them to make the choices they did.
” Saldin and Teles don ’ t focus only on their interviewees ’ beliefs about the president and his party .
As social scientists , they also identify material and structural factors—financial livelihoods , audience ratings , party patronage , and donor networks—that allowed some members of the extended conservative network to break with their party but worked to keep many others in line .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ was for conservative elites .
As traditional candidates like Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush competed for high-information voters , Trump swept up low-information voters , securing the nomination over “ Against Trump ” finger-wagging .
This isn ’ t just a problem for moderate Republicans and aging neocons , Saldin and Teles warn .
A body of literature suggests that by restraining and marginalizing extremists on their own side , right-wing elites are essential to sustaining democracies .
Never Trump takes each elite component of the extended Republican party—defense hawks , party operatives @ @ @ @ @ @ @ economists—in turn , describing their institutional structures , ideological makeup , and the push/pull factors in their relationship with Donald Trump and the greater Republican party .
Saldin and Teles ’ s analysis of this disparate political force is even-handed and perceptive , laying out the Never Trump movement and its place in the political scene .
Of the groups studied , the conservative wing of the national security establishment formed the staunchest Never Trump faction .
Saldin and Teles characterize the extremely inside-the-Beltway defense intellectuals , led by scholars like Eliot Cohen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at Johns Hopkins and Bryan McGrath of the Hudson Institute , as the most culturally moderate and bipartisan of the extended GOP .
Immediately alienated by Trump ’ s rejection of the foreign policy consensus , the tight-knit defense establishment largely unified around two anti-Trump letters and a refusal to work with the administration .
Trump himself facilitated the defense intellectuals ’ anti-Trump stand by refusing to bring them on board .
Many of the organizational efforts described in Never Trump are symbolic : letters , meetings , hashtags .
Throughout , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the world to return to its regular axis .
Attempts to stymie Trump politically came largely , though fruitlessly , from party operatives .
Mindy Finn , a conservative digital media strategist , launched the hashtag # NeverTrump— “ what , at least by conservative standards , would become a genuinely hip , if ultimately fleeting , ‘ Never Trump ’ trend.
” ( Perhaps the first use of “ hip ” in a study of conservatism . )
Never Trump spends a chapter tracing plans to enlist a challenger to Trump , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ defense establishment was primed to oppose Trump , party operatives , by contrast , felt pressure to board the Trump train .
“ Because they earn their living by providing services to the party , their personal livelihoods are almost always entirely dependent on being in good standing with its formal organization.
” As the Republican Party became Trumpified , operatives fell in line .
Saldin and Teles quote Bulwark contributor Tim Miller as estimating that more than 85 percent of the party ’ s operatives were originally anti-Trump but made their peace @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Miller ’ s colleagues at “ Our Principles , ” an anti-Trump PAC .
Saldin and Teles describe “ a deep sense of abandonment ” that is “ universal among the political operatives who stayed Never Trump.
” An interesting subplot in Never Trump is pre-Trumpian visions of the future .
Some Republicans were committed to the findings and recommendations of “ The Autopsy , ” the report written after the GOP ’ s 2012 election loss , which suggested combining conservative economics with socially liberal positions and immigration reform .
An opposite @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Teles describe as the most “ ambivalent ” anti-Trumpers , the “ Reformocons ” like Reihan Salam and Ross Douthat who saw Trump as a crude vindication of their idea of a working-class-oriented GOP .
Both these groups had on some level concluded , in the years before Trump , that sustaining the party would require changing its issues or coalition or both .
The chapters on economists and lawyers are slighter , and suggest how little institutional strength conservative elites possessed to wield again Trump .
Saldin and Teles argue that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and cynicism curbed academic economists ’ capacity for collective anti-Trump action .
Conservative lawyers were also muted .
Motivated by their hopes for how Antonin Scalia ’ s empty Supreme Court seat would be filled and by resentment for Clinton , and mollified by Trump ’ s outsourcing of legal policy to the Federalist Society , most Republican lawyers got into line—with the exception of a few paper organizations .
The category of Republicans perhaps most invested in maintaining guardrails—not only for the party , but for the broader conservative movement and the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ associated with magazines like National Review and the Weekly Standard , new media blogs and websites , and often with berths in mainstream venues .
In some cases , these men and women had individual brands and a degree of traditional journalistic independence that allowed them greater independence than party operatives and lawyers .
Never Trump delineates two models of conservative public intellectuals .
On the one hand are those in the mainstream whose role is to persuade liberal and independent audiences .
“ This physical and social proximity can make them highly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ draw their sustenance and friendship networks from within generally liberal institutions and wish to preserve , while also comprehensively reforming , them.
” For this type of intellectual , like Yuval Levin , Ramesh Ponnuru , or David Brooks , to do their work they “ need to be recognized by the very actors they are criticizing to avoid being cast as ‘ wingnuts.
’ ” These conservative intellectuals , Saldin and Teles suggest , understood themselves as belonging to a conservative tradition that attempted to maintain conservative respectability dating back to William @ @ @ @ @ @ @ John Birch Society .
From this view , Trump represented a literal alternative right , one repeatedly suppressed over the conservative movement ’ s history .
This print-oriented category of public intellectual produced some of the leading Never Trumpers .
The second type of public intellectual exists primarily within the conservative media bubble , especially Fox News and talk radio .
These figures , like Rush Limbaugh , Tucker Carlson , and Mark Levin , relied on “ negative partisanship ” intellectually and the partisan base financially .
They quickly went Trumpist .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ most conservative elites opposed Trump .
Saldin and Teles draw out several trends to explain how their commitments moved to Trump .
Finances and livelihoods were a major factor .
The Heritage Foundation , closely in touch with donors , and hosts on Fox News and talk radio , attentive to the ratings , shifted into line with the base .
Likewise , Republican operatives needed the wider party blessing to work .
They too got in line .
Beyond money , the extent to which Trump , since taking office , has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ some elites into the fold but kept others outside .
His deference to legal conservatives has brought most lawyers on , while his heterodox foreign policy and trade views continue to alienate defense intellectuals and economists .
Meanwhile , conservative elites who live and work close to liberals—even if in intellectual opposition—were more likely to oppose Trump and stay opposed .
Regular engagement with political opponents seems to foster essential norms of “ forbearance , ” which include a willingness to accept the opposition as legitimate and the rules and processes of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the Never Trumpers ’ party-transcending commitment to institutions would be praised .
For the Trumpist right , it ’ s evidence their critics are RINOs and cucks .
Relatedly , polarization shaped conservative elites ’ decision-making in different ways .
The assumption that Clinton ’ s victory was inevitable lowered the cost of opposing Trump .
When Trump won the nomination and then election , that cost of opposing him became extremely high .
But the inverse happened as well : Opposing Clinton , a conservative bogeywoman for 25 years , unified @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lesser evil .
We ’ re learning how corrosive polarization can be for functioning politics .
Republican government needs both forbearance and a sense of proportion to survive .
Research suggests that in polarized countries , voters do care about institutions and norms , but not if they require major policy sacrifices—like Supreme Court seats , abortion legalization , or the perceived future of religious freedom .
Saldin and Teles warn that , “ disturbingly , the more a political system polarizes the more there is at stake , in terms of public @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the position of deciding whether or not to vote for a demagogue or authoritarian of their own party.
” In Saldin and Teles ’ s hands , Never Trumpers are genuinely concerned about America ’ s political norms and institutions .
What ’ s missing from their informants ’ remarks is a deep reckoning with their role in the polarization that facilitated Trump ’ s emergence .
As evident from Michael Anton ’ s infamous “ Flight 93 ” article , apocalyptic thinking came to define Trump ’ s active supporters among conservatives @ @ @ @ @ @ @ forces polarization and negative partisanship , have been central to the movement conservative project since its inception .
The foundational conservative thinker James Burnham pathologized liberalism as a syndrome of Western suicide ; National Review ’ s longtime publisher William Rusher actively worked to redefine the GOP on ideologically polarized lines ; Barry Goldwater rallied conservatives against John F. Kennedy by warning “ we are facing Democrat candidates and a Democrat platform that signify a new type of New Deal , far more menacing than anything we have seen in the past.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of policing its ideological borders is much more complicated than the way many conservative writers and thinkers remember it .
Take perhaps the most famous example , William F. Buckley ’ s kicking of the John Birch Society out of the movement .
In fact , while Buckley was distressed by the Birchers , he vacillated and only took decisive action after the 1964 LBJ landslide—five years after first registering his discomfort with the organization while at the same time carrying water for the Southern Strategy .
Before the John Birch Society , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dallied in responding to the anti-Semitic American Mercury .
Contemporary Never Trumpers are only just beginning to reflect on the extent to which they participated in the demonization of liberals , worked within a party that invited proto-Trump Pat Buchanan to address its convention in 1992 , and justified , ignored , or spit-shined the arguments of many who flocked to Trump—or , like Michelle Malkin , even worse extremes .
As Saldin and Teles put it , “ the enthusiastic response that Trump ’ s cruelty , racism , and misogyny generated @ @ @ @ @ @ @ base lent support to charges that those inclinations were in fact baked into the party ’ s DNA.
” They note that “ many Never Trumpers had minimized ” these characteristics of the conservative movement , “ or insisted [ they ] were outdated or flat-out wrong.
” And the distinction Saldin and Teles draw between ideas-oriented public intellectuals and red-meat cheerleaders is perhaps blurrier than they and their informants allow .
For example , David Brooks complains about conservative media personalities Dinesh D ’ Souza and Laura Ingraham and their breakthrough at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ Even in those days , ” Brooks tells the authors , “ they were much more confrontational , much more anti-left , much more shock the bourgeoisie , and that turns out to have been a significant difference.
” Yet both were mentored by National Review senior editor Jeffrey Hart , in whose living room the paper was founded and whose sensibility they inherited .
And both were once taken seriously as intellectuals .
D ’ Souza ’ s movement pedigree is outstanding .
After Dartmouth , he worked in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Hoover Institution , and was contributing editor to Policy Review when it was published by the Heritage Foundation .
Even now , he is still on National Review ’ s masthead .
In other words , conservative intellectuals and institutions have been too willing to work with and defend questionable actors until they become a public relations liability—and in some cases after .
( For its part , the Weekly Standard criticized D ’ Souza as early as 1995 , in its second issue , but went on to publish him six @ @ @ @ @ @ @ later years , though , it was frequently critical of D ’ Souza , through to its final issues . )
Never Trumper and defense scholar Philip Zelikow complains that Trumpism is “ an attitude .
It ’ s a posture .
It ’ s a signal of identity , and they look for hot-button ways of expressing these postures.
” That ’ s true , but it ’ s also true about much of the history of movement conservatism .
Ronald Reagan built part of his national profile on the back of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ keeping the Panama Canal .
Historians like the Niskanen Center ’ s Geoffrey Kabaservice have demonstrated how conservative “ rule and ruin ” politics polarized the Republican party and , in effect , paved the way for Trump .
Among the interviewees , Mona Charen , a columnist , fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center , and Bulwark contributor , is one of the most reflective as she considers conservatives ’ tortured history with racism .
“ It wasn ’ t entirely just with Trump , it had started before then @ @ @ @ @ @ @ thing , ” she says .
It made her “ realize that racism wasn ’ t as fringey a phenomenon as I had thought it was .
I thought it was just in the fever swamps , but I don ’ t think that anymore.
” Many observers on the left have delighted in the fall of the conservative elites Saldin and Teles deal with .
But as Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote in 1950 , “ a responsible liberal .
.
.
would rather have a healthy and intelligent conservative party , which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ then , than a dull and hopeless conservative party , threatening at any moment to break into pieces and leave its members prey for fascist-minded demagogues.
” “ There is no guarantee , ” he also remarked , “ that any new party which rises in its place will have a basic respect for constitutional processes and public order.
” In this case , the demagogues eviscerated the elites .
But Saldin and Teles offer hope for Never Trumpers .
They suggest the loose group may play a key role in the future @ @ @ @ @ @ @ concludes with the hypothesis of the re-emergence of factionalized parties instead of leadership-dominated ones .
In such a future , the Democratic party is split between moderate and leftist factions while the GOP is primarily nationalist-populist .
But Saldin and Teles envision a Never Trump faction with a strong independent brand analogous to the Democratic Socialists of America or the Democratic Leadership Council—part of the Republican party , but crucially close to the center and able to leverage their position .
If this factionalized party system is to emerge , it will require @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s unclear what exactly Never Trump is .
Like the Whigs of old , it has formed first in opposition to a larger-than-life figure and fading older allegiances .
Is it a commitment to small-L American liberalism and constitutional arrangements ?
Or an ideological critique of Trumpism ?
An antipathy to the man ?
A commitment to small government and free market nostrums ?
The personal nature of Never Trump means all of the above apply to individuals .
Without a serious reckoning with conservatism ’ s sins and blind spots , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be to reconcile with Trump ’ s enablers when the Democrats inevitably retake the White House .
It is by no means guaranteed , but it is quite plausible there will be a rapprochement on the right united in opposition to Joe Biden or whoever is the next Democrat to sit in the Oval Office , especially once Trump leaves the political scene .
A sincere reflection on the dark sides of conservatism—including those that some Never Trumpers failed to counter , or even facilitated—is necessary to salvage the American right from Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ task of keeping the monsters at bay .

Never Trump
The Revolt of the Conservative Elites
by Robert P. Saldin and Steven M. Teles
Oxford, 287 pp., $27.95
Halfway through Never Trump, the Republican strategist Stuart Stevens lets loose. “To buy into Trump,” he says, “you have to believe that the essence of what the Republican Party stood for—personal responsibility, embracing of legal immigration, character counts, strong on Russia—you have to believe that all of that was just a marketing slogan and it didn’t mean anything—any more than ‘We say, “Chevrolet’s the heartbeat of America.”’”
What’s more, Trump has “made every critic of the Republican Party right”—all the critics who “said the Republican Party really didn’t care about people, that it wasn’t a party that was inclusive. Just go down the list—‘doesn’t respect women.’ He’s made all that true. And he made all the wrong people right.”
Political scientists Robert Saldin and Steven Teles, authors of studies on health reform, the effects of war on the U.S. government, and the conservative legal movement, examine how and why elites from the extended Republican party network came to oppose their party’s nominee. In fact, Saldin and Teles write, “there has never been a party in the Western world that was elected and sought to govern with such a wide range of intraparty opposition.”
With extensive quotation from their “informants”—the sixty-two individuals they interviewed between May 2017 and October 2019—Saldin and Teles articulate the convictions of Never Trumpers with clarity and fair-mindedness. They “hope that even those who disagree deeply with the Never Trumpers will learn at least a little something about the very human motivations that caused them to make the choices they did.”
Saldin and Teles don’t focus only on their interviewees’ beliefs about the president and his party. As social scientists, they also identify material and structural factors—financial livelihoods, audience ratings, party patronage, and donor networks—that allowed some members of the extended conservative network to break with their party but worked to keep many others in line.
Saldin and Teles highlight how shocking 2016 was for conservative elites. As traditional candidates like Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush competed for high-information voters, Trump swept up low-information voters, securing the nomination over “Against Trump” finger-wagging. This isn’t just a problem for moderate Republicans and aging neocons, Saldin and Teles warn. A body of literature suggests that by restraining and marginalizing extremists on their own side, right-wing elites are essential to sustaining democracies.
Never Trump takes each elite component of the extended Republican party—defense hawks, party operatives, public intellectuals, lawyers, and economists—in turn, describing their institutional structures, ideological makeup, and the push/pull factors in their relationship with Donald Trump and the greater Republican party. Saldin and Teles’s analysis of this disparate political force is even-handed and perceptive, laying out the Never Trump movement and its place in the political scene.
Podcast · August 15 2023 A.B. Stoddard: All the Ex-President’s Conspirators Donald Trump has been a low-rent mobster for his entire career, and now he’s getting…
Of the groups studied, the conservative wing of the national security establishment formed the staunchest Never Trump faction. Saldin and Teles characterize the extremely inside-the-Beltway defense intellectuals, led by scholars like Eliot Cohen of the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins and Bryan McGrath of the Hudson Institute, as the most culturally moderate and bipartisan of the extended GOP. Immediately alienated by Trump’s rejection of the foreign policy consensus, the tight-knit defense establishment largely unified around two anti-Trump letters and a refusal to work with the administration. Trump himself facilitated the defense intellectuals’ anti-Trump stand by refusing to bring them on board.
Many of the organizational efforts described in Never Trump are symbolic: letters, meetings, hashtags. Throughout, the Republican elites seem shellshocked, waiting for the world to return to its regular axis. Attempts to stymie Trump politically came largely, though fruitlessly, from party operatives.
Mindy Finn, a conservative digital media strategist, launched the hashtag #NeverTrump—“what, at least by conservative standards, would become a genuinely hip, if ultimately fleeting, ‘Never Trump’ trend.” (Perhaps the first use of “hip” in a study of conservatism.) Never Trump spends a chapter tracing plans to enlist a challenger to Trump, with diminishing returns.
If the Republican defense establishment was primed to oppose Trump, party operatives, by contrast, felt pressure to board the Trump train. “Because they earn their living by providing services to the party, their personal livelihoods are almost always entirely dependent on being in good standing with its formal organization.” As the Republican Party became Trumpified, operatives fell in line. Saldin and Teles quote Bulwark contributor Tim Miller as estimating that more than 85 percent of the party’s operatives were originally anti-Trump but made their peace with him—including some, ironically, of Miller’s colleagues at “Our Principles,” an anti-Trump PAC. Saldin and Teles describe “a deep sense of abandonment” that is “universal among the political operatives who stayed Never Trump.”
An interesting subplot in Never Trump is pre-Trumpian visions of the future. Some Republicans were committed to the findings and recommendations of “The Autopsy,” the report written after the GOP’s 2012 election loss, which suggested combining conservative economics with socially liberal positions and immigration reform. An opposite lesson was drawn by the group Saldin and Teles describe as the most “ambivalent” anti-Trumpers, the “Reformocons” like Reihan Salam and Ross Douthat who saw Trump as a crude vindication of their idea of a working-class-oriented GOP. Both these groups had on some level concluded, in the years before Trump, that sustaining the party would require changing its issues or coalition or both.
The chapters on economists and lawyers are slighter, and suggest how little institutional strength conservative elites possessed to wield again Trump. Saldin and Teles argue that geographical dispersal and a combination of caution and cynicism curbed academic economists’ capacity for collective anti-Trump action.
Conservative lawyers were also muted. Motivated by their hopes for how Antonin Scalia’s empty Supreme Court seat would be filled and by resentment for Clinton, and mollified by Trump’s outsourcing of legal policy to the Federalist Society, most Republican lawyers got into line—with the exception of a few paper organizations.
The category of Republicans perhaps most invested in maintaining guardrails—not only for the party, but for the broader conservative movement and the United States writ large—was the public intellectuals associated with magazines like National Review and the Weekly Standard, new media blogs and websites, and often with berths in mainstream venues. In some cases, these men and women had individual brands and a degree of traditional journalistic independence that allowed them greater independence than party operatives and lawyers.
Never Trump delineates two models of conservative public intellectuals. On the one hand are those in the mainstream whose role is to persuade liberal and independent audiences. “This physical and social proximity can make them highly oppositional to liberalism, but they also draw their sustenance and friendship networks from within generally liberal institutions and wish to preserve, while also comprehensively reforming, them.” For this type of intellectual, like Yuval Levin, Ramesh Ponnuru, or David Brooks, to do their work they “need to be recognized by the very actors they are criticizing to avoid being cast as ‘wingnuts.’”
These conservative intellectuals, Saldin and Teles suggest, understood themselves as belonging to a conservative tradition that attempted to maintain conservative respectability dating back to William F. Buckley’s disciplining of the John Birch Society. From this view, Trump represented a literal alternative right, one repeatedly suppressed over the conservative movement’s history. This print-oriented category of public intellectual produced some of the leading Never Trumpers.
The second type of public intellectual exists primarily within the conservative media bubble, especially Fox News and talk radio. These figures, like Rush Limbaugh, Tucker Carlson, and Mark Levin, relied on “negative partisanship” intellectually and the partisan base financially. They quickly went Trumpist.
Early in the 2016 election cycle, most conservative elites opposed Trump. Saldin and Teles draw out several trends to explain how their commitments moved to Trump. Finances and livelihoods were a major factor. The Heritage Foundation, closely in touch with donors, and hosts on Fox News and talk radio, attentive to the ratings, shifted into line with the base. Likewise, Republican operatives needed the wider party blessing to work. They too got in line.
Beyond money, the extent to which Trump, since taking office, has delivered on different ideological priors has brought some elites into the fold but kept others outside. His deference to legal conservatives has brought most lawyers on, while his heterodox foreign policy and trade views continue to alienate defense intellectuals and economists.
Meanwhile, conservative elites who live and work close to liberals—even if in intellectual opposition—were more likely to oppose Trump and stay opposed. Regular engagement with political opponents seems to foster essential norms of “forbearance,” which include a willingness to accept the opposition as legitimate and the rules and processes of the democratic regime. In a humane republic, the Never Trumpers’ party-transcending commitment to institutions would be praised. For the Trumpist right, it’s evidence their critics are RINOs and cucks.
Relatedly, polarization shaped conservative elites’ decision-making in different ways. The assumption that Clinton’s victory was inevitable lowered the cost of opposing Trump. When Trump won the nomination and then election, that cost of opposing him became extremely high. But the inverse happened as well: Opposing Clinton, a conservative bogeywoman for 25 years, unified many conservative elites behind Trump as the lesser evil.
We’re learning how corrosive polarization can be for functioning politics. Republican government needs both forbearance and a sense of proportion to survive. Research suggests that in polarized countries, voters do care about institutions and norms, but not if they require major policy sacrifices—like Supreme Court seats, abortion legalization, or the perceived future of religious freedom. Saldin and Teles warn that, “disturbingly, the more a political system polarizes the more there is at stake, in terms of public policy, for a voter placed in the position of deciding whether or not to vote for a demagogue or authoritarian of their own party.”
In Saldin and Teles’s hands, Never Trumpers are genuinely concerned about America’s political norms and institutions. What’s missing from their informants’ remarks is a deep reckoning with their role in the polarization that facilitated Trump’s emergence.
As evident from Michael Anton’s infamous “Flight 93” article, apocalyptic thinking came to define Trump’s active supporters among conservatives. But apocalypticism, and its driving forces polarization and negative partisanship, have been central to the movement conservative project since its inception. The foundational conservative thinker James Burnham pathologized liberalism as a syndrome of Western suicide; National Review’s longtime publisher William Rusher actively worked to redefine the GOP on ideologically polarized lines; Barry Goldwater rallied conservatives against John F. Kennedy by warning “we are facing Democrat candidates and a Democrat platform that signify a new type of New Deal, far more menacing than anything we have seen in the past.”
The conservative movement’s vaunted history of policing its ideological borders is much more complicated than the way many conservative writers and thinkers remember it. Take perhaps the most famous example, William F. Buckley’s kicking of the John Birch Society out of the movement. In fact, while Buckley was distressed by the Birchers, he vacillated and only took decisive action after the 1964 LBJ landslide—five years after first registering his discomfort with the organization while at the same time carrying water for the Southern Strategy. Before the John Birch Society, Buckley took up anti-anti-Joseph McCarthy positions and dallied in responding to the anti-Semitic American Mercury.
Contemporary Never Trumpers are only just beginning to reflect on the extent to which they participated in the demonization of liberals, worked within a party that invited proto-Trump Pat Buchanan to address its convention in 1992, and justified, ignored, or spit-shined the arguments of many who flocked to Trump—or, like Michelle Malkin, even worse extremes. As Saldin and Teles put it, “the enthusiastic response that Trump’s cruelty, racism, and misogyny generated in a large part of the party base lent support to charges that those inclinations were in fact baked into the party’s DNA.” They note that “many Never Trumpers had minimized” these characteristics of the conservative movement, “or insisted [they] were outdated or flat-out wrong.”
And the distinction Saldin and Teles draw between ideas-oriented public intellectuals and red-meat cheerleaders is perhaps blurrier than they and their informants allow.
For example, David Brooks complains about conservative media personalities Dinesh D’Souza and Laura Ingraham and their breakthrough at the Dartmouth Review, a student newspaper. “Even in those days,” Brooks tells the authors, “they were much more confrontational, much more anti-left, much more shock the bourgeoisie, and that turns out to have been a significant difference.” Yet both were mentored by National Review senior editor Jeffrey Hart, in whose living room the paper was founded and whose sensibility they inherited. And both were once taken seriously as intellectuals. D’Souza’s movement pedigree is outstanding. After Dartmouth, he worked in the Reagan administration, held a fellowship at the Hoover Institution, and was contributing editor to Policy Review when it was published by the Heritage Foundation. Even now, he is still on National Review’s masthead. In other words, conservative intellectuals and institutions have been too willing to work with and defend questionable actors until they become a public relations liability—and in some cases after. (For its part, the Weekly Standard criticized D’Souza as early as 1995, in its second issue, but went on to publish him six times between 1997 and 2002; in later years, though, it was frequently critical of D’Souza, through to its final issues.)
Never Trumper and defense scholar Philip Zelikow complains that Trumpism is “an attitude. It’s a posture. It’s a signal of identity, and they look for hot-button ways of expressing these postures.” That’s true, but it’s also true about much of the history of movement conservatism. Ronald Reagan built part of his national profile on the back of the symbolic and strategically nonsensical issue of keeping the Panama Canal. Historians like the Niskanen Center’s Geoffrey Kabaservice have demonstrated how conservative “rule and ruin” politics polarized the Republican party and, in effect, paved the way for Trump.
Among the interviewees, Mona Charen, a columnist, fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and Bulwark contributor, is one of the most reflective as she considers conservatives’ tortured history with racism. “It wasn’t entirely just with Trump, it had started before then, it started with the Trayvon Martin thing,” she says. It made her “realize that racism wasn’t as fringey a phenomenon as I had thought it was. I thought it was just in the fever swamps, but I don’t think that anymore.”
Many observers on the left have delighted in the fall of the conservative elites Saldin and Teles deal with. But as Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote in 1950, “a responsible liberal . . . would rather have a healthy and intelligent conservative party, which might even win an election now and then, than a dull and hopeless conservative party, threatening at any moment to break into pieces and leave its members prey for fascist-minded demagogues.” “There is no guarantee,” he also remarked, “that any new party which rises in its place will have a basic respect for constitutional processes and public order.” In this case, the demagogues eviscerated the elites.
But Saldin and Teles offer hope for Never Trumpers. They suggest the loose group may play a key role in the future of the Republican party.
Never Trump concludes with the hypothesis of the re-emergence of factionalized parties instead of leadership-dominated ones. In such a future, the Democratic party is split between moderate and leftist factions while the GOP is primarily nationalist-populist. But Saldin and Teles envision a Never Trump faction with a strong independent brand analogous to the Democratic Socialists of America or the Democratic Leadership Council—part of the Republican party, but crucially close to the center and able to leverage their position.
If this factionalized party system is to emerge, it will require hard work and organization.
But it’s unclear what exactly Never Trump is. Like the Whigs of old, it has formed first in opposition to a larger-than-life figure and fading older allegiances. Is it a commitment to small-L American liberalism and constitutional arrangements? Or an ideological critique of Trumpism? An antipathy to the man? A commitment to small government and free market nostrums? The personal nature of Never Trump means all of the above apply to individuals.
Without a serious reckoning with conservatism’s sins and blind spots, the great temptation of Never Trump will be to reconcile with Trump’s enablers when the Democrats inevitably retake the White House. It is by no means guaranteed, but it is quite plausible there will be a rapprochement on the right united in opposition to Joe Biden or whoever is the next Democrat to sit in the Oval Office, especially once Trump leaves the political scene. A sincere reflection on the dark sides of conservatism—including those that some Never Trumpers failed to counter, or even facilitated—is necessary to salvage the American right from Trump so it can perform the vital democratic task of keeping the monsters at bay.


thebulwark--2020-05-23--Kramerbooks, Sentimentality, and Me

Kramerbooks, Sentimentality, and Me

“ I have heard that this pain can be converted , as it were , by accepting ‘ the fundamental impermanence of all things.
’ This acceptance bewilders me : sometimes it seems an act of will ; at others , of surrender.
” As the coronavirus reorganizes cities , the Washington Business Journal reports Steve Salis , the owner of Kramerbooks , is considering moving the bookstore from its Dupont Circle location in Washington , DC .
For many this news is disappointing .
There is a chorus of lamentations on Twitter .
The emotional undercurrent on which many @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nostalgia and sentimentality .
In De Profundis , Oscar Wilde described sentimentality as wanting “ to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it .
We think we can have our emotions for nothing .
We can not .
” The Washington Post has published a brief missive from Daniel Drezner expressing sorrow for the store ’ s potential departure .
He writes that nostalgia has gotten a bad rap .
The piece is a defense of the overwhelming sentimentality towards the bookstore .
“ Regardless of the immediate object of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ also sentimentalized , ” wrote Joseph Kupfer in his 1995 essay The Sentimental Self , “ Sentimentality is a powerful vice because it is perspectival .
It shapes , colors , and conditions what we see and how we see it.
” Drezner recognizes the danger of letting nostalgia distort perspective .
However , he argues that those who ignore emotional responses and reactions do so in peril .
He makes a fair point , but there is a difference between ignoring emotion and indulging overly-rosy sentiment .
The specific nostalgia Kramerbooks inspires @ @ @ @ @ @ @ city and the unusual transience of Washington D.C. ’ s middle class .
New York is better acquainted with restaurants disappearing and the turnover of various storefronts .
By contrast , the change in Washington is driven by the replacement of people .
Washington is a company town and the company is Politics .
This means politicians come and go and as they transit , so do a constant stream of schedulers and interns and policy wonks .
Not to mention the tourists .
The thing about company towns is the people who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t see the world that exists outside the company .
The class of temporary residents and tourists who have a finite period of contact with the city fix it in their minds as a place that once belonged to them .
While the people who actually live in the District separate from the world of Capitol Hill and the Cherry Blossoms are ignored .
“ I only lived in Washington for a brief spell , ” Drezner admits in his remembrance of Kramerbooks for the Post , “ but in the decades since @ @ @ @ @ @ @ meeting friends and colleagues.
” The past is a foreign country , even when you remember it as an idyll .
One of the reasons people have been so distraught by the possible move of Kramers is because for decades , the book store stood apart from the carousel of turnover in the city .
Its 44 year tenure might not seem as impressive compared to the Strand ’ s 92 years of prominence , but by Washington standards , it has been around long enough to be considered an epoch .
For @ @ @ @ @ @ @ youth , Ben ’ s Chili Bowl—a family-run restaurant , and probably the most iconic private business in Washington—has been around for 62 years and survived the race riots in the late ’ 60 ’ s that took place almost a decade before Kramers was founded .
Washington has so few independent establishments that contribute to the city ’ s cultural identity apart from the monuments and museums that the potential loss of any seems like a tragedy .
Kramerbooks isn ’ t just another storefront—it is integral to an idea of what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a sense of permanence to a place in constant political flux .
Like so many , I have my own history with Kramerbooks .
I grew up in northern Virginia and I lived in the Southeast quadrant of the District after college .
I understand the outpouring of feeling and support for the store .
But not the histrionic sentimentalism .
This is not an effort at “ hip cynical transcendence of sentiment ” as David Foster Wallace put it , but a reckoning with my own habits of consumption and behavior .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ concerns to the circumference of ourselves.
” Kupfer concluded in his essay , “ The self-absorption which feeds off our direct emotional focus makes sentimentality a deceptive , dangerous vice , not something to be brushed off as little more than a genteel foible.
” Still , I understand the vice .
It ’ s hard to avoid a glut of emotion when you ’ re thinking about a place of personal significance .
By nature , I am not a sentimental person .
But I was sentimentally attached to Kramers for a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and self-reflexive .
Actual mourning is complicated .
For me , Kramers was a site of quiet , private humiliations .
It was also a site of refuge .
And disappointment .
As a place , Kramers has the same emotional weight in my life as a high school bathroom where I would go to hide rather than socialize in the cafeteria .
The most fitting example of Kramers ’ s definitional role in my life is the night of the White House Correspondents ’ Dinner in 2017 .
I was in my @ @ @ @ @ @ @ after a year of freelance meandering and humanitarian travel .
I had a job at a doomed weekly magazine and I had just gotten out of a toxic relationship ( a perennial hobby of mine ) .
On that night a friend asked me to meet at one of the rooftop afterparties for Washington ’ s one night of rented glamour , “ Nerd Prom.
” But , I was unable to get into the party early in the evening—my friend was held up at the dinner .
Growing more and more anxious @ @ @ @ @ @ @ expectations , in an evening dress and heels , I walked a mile and a half to Kramerbooks .
Blistered and bleeding through my shoes when I arrived at the bookstore , I crouched down against the poetry shelf in a puddle of the dress ’ s sparkling translucent black fabric .
I picked up Maggie Nelson ’ s Bluets and read and read until at last my friend texted to tell me to come back and rejoin the world .
I picked up several other books and checked out .
I then @ @ @ @ @ @ @ party like a weighted blanket against my nearly insurmountable anxiety .
Jostling through a crowd of new friends and old enemies I wondered what exactly I was hoping to gain from the experience .
Why hadn ’ t I just stayed at the bookstore ?
In the catalog of liminal public spaces—gas stations and parking lots , libraries and parks , graveyards and churches , stadiums and movie theaters—restaurants and bookstores stand apart and inspire a unique emotional valence for every independent visitor .
As the years passed , this is what Kramerbooks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the threshold of social participation .
Whether it was an event or a relationship , I was convinced Kramers was the best place to begin .
The best place to linger and kill time , to find and be found .
For every occasion seeped in the pain and anticipation of waiting for a party—waiting to be granted admission to the world—I could give you an equal story of feeling at peace among the stacks , or thrilled by discovery .
The single best memory I have of Kramers was the 50th anniversary @ @ @ @ @ @ @ & Writing Programs conference , when Graywolf Press , a non-profit publisher , hosted a party in the bookstore .
Which , for me , represented an unsettling reversal of social kismet .
Sure the store had an events space and hosted plenty of intimate gatherings and kitschy activities like paint and sip nights , but nothing on this scale , nothing with so many people I held in such high esteem .
I wandered through , enthralled by seeing my literary heroes laugh and toast cheers .
The store was packed and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ beside myself with joy , briefly happy just to be there in the midst of giants .
This is the one memory that ties a knot of nostalgia in my throat , making it hard to swallow the loss of the store as I remember it then in those moments : full of writers , rapturous .
There were other random encounters .
I once was lost in concentration looking for something obscure when I realized I was surrounded by plainclothes bodyguards .
Grasping for situational awareness I turned around to see Sasha @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ d expected , glowing with youth and happiness as she went through the shelves with a friend in cut off summer jean shorts .
I remember her smiling .
On another occasion I met a young member of the Explorers Club by the fountain in the circle as I was walking towards the bookstore where I had planned to meet a friend for dinner .
At the light , he declared this was love at first sight , how surely I was his future wife .
He was among friends as well @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the cafe where , as a group , we had drinks and told each other stories .
He and I walked around the city after , but I lost my nerve and got weird—paranoid for some indiscernible reason beyond the obvious fears of being with a stranger in the night , I was very young , very naive .
We parted ways , never to meet again .
Then , as the memoirs and hot dish expositions of palace intrigue and the inner workings of Trump ’ s White House began to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sometimes play , I attended almost all of the midnight releases Kramerbooks hosted .
Perhaps it was these events that began to turn away my tenderness for the establishment , the true start of a slow souring .
It was disheartening , pressing against the machinations of the publishing industry—contributing to the frenzied media attention dealt to books that amounted to no more than flotsam cast off by the administration .
They were marketing devices—the lowest tier of literary efforts , the most hollow and empty—yet we were helping them make the most @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I kept going back .
Countless nondescript errand trips for this or that new release .
Picking up the required reading with my sister for her high school English class .
Shooting headshots for friends in the front window light , the shelves falling out of focus behind them .
The Banned Books Week scavenger hunt hosted by the DC Public Library .
Buying Christmas presents and notebooks .
I even own stemless wine glasses with the Kramerbooks logo on them .
And the books .
How many books have I purchased from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fill me ?
Cookbooks , novels , biographies , art and poetry , endless non-fiction .
I have collected a full rainbow of their colored card-stock bookmarks , including one of glittering gold .
The store ’ s Afterwords Cafe was the site of unsuccessful dates , secrets , and passing flirtations .
Too many went poorly , amassing into a prickly backdrop of emotional defeat .
The problem with vulnerability and sharing your favorite place with others is you run the risk of them ruining it .
Responding to Kupfer , Deborah @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he sentimental individual takes pleasure in repeating her experiences of excessive , maudlin emotion.
” My attitude towards Kramers has for the majority of my life been defined by sentimental expectation .
My dependence on the store as a locus more or less proves her point .
So many brushes against the possible .
So many close encounters with happiness .
There seems to be a rim of light around these memories , but the light never fully enters the picture .
Kramers is one of the last places I visited before the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ how much I enmeshed my life to this place—a true third place—not by design , but by the frequency of habit , compulsion , hope .
But instead of retreating to sentiment , it ’ s better to mourn the loss while looking to the future .
For me , it ’ s an opportunity to look at my cyclical returning and repeated patterns of fear and avoidance .
For the community , it ’ s an opportunity to look at the ways we ask sites to be more than they are to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of totally fulfilling .
Change for the sake of growth can be liberating .
“ The bookstore is an empire of the spirit that has expanded laterally ” Paris bookshop Shakespeare & Company ’ s proprietor George Whitman , once said .
Bookstores are mythologized .
It is by no fault of Kramers that the store is a place I associate with longing , loneliness , and disillusionment .
Taking the good and bad in equal measure there is a certain sense that rejecting the nostalgia others are so acutely experiencing is akin @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not a chapel , holy or sacred .
Bookstores and books are not substitute for contact , for the real thing .

“I have heard that this pain can be converted, as it were, by accepting ‘the fundamental impermanence of all things.’ This acceptance bewilders me: sometimes it seems an act of will; at others, of surrender.”
― Maggie Nelson, Bluets
As the coronavirus reorganizes cities, the Washington Business Journal reports Steve Salis, the owner of Kramerbooks, is considering moving the bookstore from its Dupont Circle location in Washington, DC. For many this news is disappointing. There is a chorus of lamentations on Twitter. The emotional undercurrent on which many of the protestations ride is one of nostalgia and sentimentality.
In De Profundis, Oscar Wilde described sentimentality as wanting “to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it. We think we can have our emotions for nothing. We cannot.” The Washington Post has published a brief missive from Daniel Drezner expressing sorrow for the store’s potential departure. He writes that nostalgia has gotten a bad rap. The piece is a defense of the overwhelming sentimentality towards the bookstore.
“Regardless of the immediate object of our sentimental gaze, the self is also sentimentalized,” wrote Joseph Kupfer in his 1995 essay The Sentimental Self, “Sentimentality is a powerful vice because it is perspectival. It shapes, colors, and conditions what we see and how we see it.” Drezner recognizes the danger of letting nostalgia distort perspective. However, he argues that those who ignore emotional responses and reactions do so in peril. He makes a fair point, but there is a difference between ignoring emotion and indulging overly-rosy sentiment.
The specific nostalgia Kramerbooks inspires is dependent on its relationship to the city and the unusual transience of Washington D.C.’s middle class. New York is better acquainted with restaurants disappearing and the turnover of various storefronts. By contrast, the change in Washington is driven by the replacement of people.
Washington is a company town and the company is Politics. This means politicians come and go and as they transit, so do a constant stream of schedulers and interns and policy wonks.
Not to mention the tourists.
Podcast · August 15 2023 A.B. Stoddard: All the Ex-President’s Conspirators Donald Trump has been a low-rent mobster for his entire career, and now he’s getting…
The thing about company towns is the people who work for the company often can’t see the world that exists outside the company. The class of temporary residents and tourists who have a finite period of contact with the city fix it in their minds as a place that once belonged to them. While the people who actually live in the District separate from the world of Capitol Hill and the Cherry Blossoms are ignored.
“I only lived in Washington for a brief spell,” Drezner admits in his remembrance of Kramerbooks for the Post, “but in the decades since Kramerbooks was always my focal point for meeting friends and colleagues.”
The past is a foreign country, even when you remember it as an idyll.
One of the reasons people have been so distraught by the possible move of Kramers is because for decades, the book store stood apart from the carousel of turnover in the city. Its 44 year tenure might not seem as impressive compared to the Strand’s 92 years of prominence, but by Washington standards, it has been around long enough to be considered an epoch. For a sense of the bookstore’s youth, Ben’s Chili Bowl—a family-run restaurant, and probably the most iconic private business in Washington—has been around for 62 years and survived the race riots in the late ’60’s that took place almost a decade before Kramers was founded.
Washington has so few independent establishments that contribute to the city’s cultural identity apart from the monuments and museums that the potential loss of any seems like a tragedy.
Kramerbooks isn’t just another storefront—it is integral to an idea of what the city looks like. It gives a sense of permanence to a place in constant political flux.
Like so many, I have my own history with Kramerbooks. I grew up in northern Virginia and I lived in the Southeast quadrant of the District after college. I understand the outpouring of feeling and support for the store. But not the histrionic sentimentalism. This is not an effort at “hip cynical transcendence of sentiment” as David Foster Wallace put it, but a reckoning with my own habits of consumption and behavior.
“Sentimentality surreptitiously shrinks our world and concerns to the circumference of ourselves.” Kupfer concluded in his essay, “The self-absorption which feeds off our direct emotional focus makes sentimentality a deceptive, dangerous vice, not something to be brushed off as little more than a genteel foible.” Still, I understand the vice. It’s hard to avoid a glut of emotion when you’re thinking about a place of personal significance. By nature, I am not a sentimental person. But I was sentimentally attached to Kramers for a very long time.
Sentimentality is simple and self-reflexive. Actual mourning is complicated.
For me, Kramers was a site of quiet, private humiliations. It was also a site of refuge. And disappointment. As a place, Kramers has the same emotional weight in my life as a high school bathroom where I would go to hide rather than socialize in the cafeteria.
The most fitting example of Kramers’s definitional role in my life is the night of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in 2017. I was in my early 20s and getting started in journalism after a year of freelance meandering and humanitarian travel. I had a job at a doomed weekly magazine and I had just gotten out of a toxic relationship (a perennial hobby of mine). On that night a friend asked me to meet at one of the rooftop afterparties for Washington’s one night of rented glamour, “Nerd Prom.”
But, I was unable to get into the party early in the evening—my friend was held up at the dinner. Growing more and more anxious waiting and feeling ridiculous with my misplaced expectations, in an evening dress and heels, I walked a mile and a half to Kramerbooks.
Blistered and bleeding through my shoes when I arrived at the bookstore, I crouched down against the poetry shelf in a puddle of the dress’s sparkling translucent black fabric. I picked up Maggie Nelson’s Bluets and read and read until at last my friend texted to tell me to come back and rejoin the world. I picked up several other books and checked out. I then carried that bag of books around the party like a weighted blanket against my nearly insurmountable anxiety. Jostling through a crowd of new friends and old enemies I wondered what exactly I was hoping to gain from the experience.
Why hadn’t I just stayed at the bookstore?
In the catalog of liminal public spaces—gas stations and parking lots, libraries and parks, graveyards and churches, stadiums and movie theaters—restaurants and bookstores stand apart and inspire a unique emotional valence for every independent visitor.
As the years passed, this is what Kramerbooks became to me: Neutral ground on the threshold of social participation. Whether it was an event or a relationship, I was convinced Kramers was the best place to begin. The best place to linger and kill time, to find and be found.
For every occasion seeped in the pain and anticipation of waiting for a party—waiting to be granted admission to the world—I could give you an equal story of feeling at peace among the stacks, or thrilled by discovery. The single best memory I have of Kramers was the 50th anniversary of AWP, the Association of Writers & Writing Programs conference, when Graywolf Press, a non-profit publisher, hosted a party in the bookstore. Which, for me, represented an unsettling reversal of social kismet. Sure the store had an events space and hosted plenty of intimate gatherings and kitschy activities like paint and sip nights, but nothing on this scale, nothing with so many people I held in such high esteem.
I wandered through, enthralled by seeing my literary heroes laugh and toast cheers. The store was packed and you could barely move. I was beside myself with joy, briefly happy just to be there in the midst of giants. This is the one memory that ties a knot of nostalgia in my throat, making it hard to swallow the loss of the store as I remember it then in those moments: full of writers, rapturous.
There were other random encounters. I once was lost in concentration looking for something obscure when I realized I was surrounded by plainclothes bodyguards. Grasping for situational awareness I turned around to see Sasha Obama. She was taller than I’d expected, glowing with youth and happiness as she went through the shelves with a friend in cut off summer jean shorts. I remember her smiling.
On another occasion I met a young member of the Explorers Club by the fountain in the circle as I was walking towards the bookstore where I had planned to meet a friend for dinner. At the light, he declared this was love at first sight, how surely I was his future wife. He was among friends as well and laughing we all made our way to the cafe where, as a group, we had drinks and told each other stories. He and I walked around the city after, but I lost my nerve and got weird—paranoid for some indiscernible reason beyond the obvious fears of being with a stranger in the night, I was very young, very naive. We parted ways, never to meet again.
Then, as the memoirs and hot dish expositions of palace intrigue and the inner workings of Trump’s White House began to trickle out, for work and, sometimes play, I attended almost all of the midnight releases Kramerbooks hosted. Perhaps it was these events that began to turn away my tenderness for the establishment, the true start of a slow souring. It was disheartening, pressing against the machinations of the publishing industry—contributing to the frenzied media attention dealt to books that amounted to no more than flotsam cast off by the administration. They were marketing devices—the lowest tier of literary efforts, the most hollow and empty—yet we were helping them make the most noise.
But despite creeping trepidation, I kept going back. Countless nondescript errand trips for this or that new release. Picking up the required reading with my sister for her high school English class. Shooting headshots for friends in the front window light, the shelves falling out of focus behind them. The Banned Books Week scavenger hunt hosted by the DC Public Library. Buying Christmas presents and notebooks. I even own stemless wine glasses with the Kramerbooks logo on them.
And the books. How many books have I purchased from Kramers, hoping against hope they would fill me? Cookbooks, novels, biographies, art and poetry, endless non-fiction. I have collected a full rainbow of their colored card-stock bookmarks, including one of glittering gold.
View this post on Instagram A post shared by Kramerbooks & Afterwords Cafe (@kramerbooks) on Jan 29, 2020 at 10:18am PST
The store’s Afterwords Cafe was the site of unsuccessful dates, secrets, and passing flirtations. Too many went poorly, amassing into a prickly backdrop of emotional defeat. The problem with vulnerability and sharing your favorite place with others is you run the risk of them ruining it.
Responding to Kupfer, Deborah Knight writes: “[T]he sentimental individual takes pleasure in repeating her experiences of excessive, maudlin emotion.” My attitude towards Kramers has for the majority of my life been defined by sentimental expectation. My dependence on the store as a locus more or less proves her point.
So many brushes against the possible. So many close encounters with happiness. There seems to be a rim of light around these memories, but the light never fully enters the picture.
Kramers is one of the last places I visited before the lockdown. It is hard to convey how much I enmeshed my life to this place—a true third place—not by design, but by the frequency of habit, compulsion, hope.
But instead of retreating to sentiment, it’s better to mourn the loss while looking to the future. For me, it’s an opportunity to look at my cyclical returning and repeated patterns of fear and avoidance. For the community, it’s an opportunity to look at the ways we ask sites to be more than they are to meet cultural needs they have no way of totally fulfilling.
Change for the sake of growth can be liberating.
View this post on Instagram A post shared by Kramerbooks & Afterwords Cafe (@kramerbooks) on Mar 23, 2019 at 7:57am PDT
“The bookstore is an empire of the spirit that has expanded laterally” Paris bookshop Shakespeare & Company’s proprietor George Whitman, once said. Bookstores are mythologized. It is by no fault of Kramers that the store is a place I associate with longing, loneliness, and disillusionment. Taking the good and bad in equal measure there is a certain sense that rejecting the nostalgia others are so acutely experiencing is akin to apostasy. But a bookstore is not a chapel, holy or sacred.
Bookstores and books are not substitute for contact, for the real thing.


thebulwark--2020-05-24--Memorial Day 2020: Grieving Another COVID-19 Death Count Milestone

Memorial Day Weekend is upon us and there will be celebrations , but of what kind ?
We will remember those who died fighting for our country in years past , but with the freedoms they fought for in such disarray , how will we celebrate a holiday that marks the traditional beginning of summer while the virus is still at work among us ?
In our rush to reopen America in the midst of a plague , can we also take a moment to remember those who have died over the past 3 months ?
We are on the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ How should we remember the almost 100,000 Americans who have died from Coronavirus by Memorial Day ?
I know that disease is not the same as war .
We commemorate those who die in war .
We lay wreaths at their graves and we remember the heroes who have fallen .
But , President Trump said that he was acting as a “ war time president ” as he lead us in a war against an “ invisible enemy ” that will have taken nearly 100,000 American lives by the end of Memorial @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that Americans are warriors in our fight against the Coronavirus and to reopen the economy .
If this truly is , or was , a war , then what better time than Memorial Day Weekend to grieve the many who have died in this so-called battle thus far ?
I ’ ve been reading short biographies of some who have died from this virus .
I ’ ve read stories of pastors , fire fighters , businessmen , artists , singers , teachers , nurses , doctors , policemen , fathers , mothers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ every walk of life and from all over the country .
I read about a college student set to graduate .
He was 25 .
A musician in New Orleans .
A guitar player in Colorado .
A veteran of Desert Storm .
We hear story after story of people who were healthy and productive , who were loved by their families and friends , who had many more years in front of them .
Who among them thought in February that they would be dead by Memorial Day ?
Their lives , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ should not forget .
We should lament .
But , in some quarters , we ’ re experiencing different kinds of casualties–the death of empathy , and with it , the death of truth .
As our nation reels from the public health and economic effects of this virus–as we seek to navigate recovery–we also see the rise of a denial culture that provides little room for grieving .
With a new dawn of yet more conspiracy theories , false accusations , misdirection , and blame-shifting , the buck of responsibility is passed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ opponents .
Because of this , truth stumbles in the streets .
Isaiah 59:14 in the Bible comes to mind : “ So justice is driven back , and righteousness stands at a distance ; truth has stumbled in the streets , honesty can not enter.
“ If truth stumbles and our ability to grasp the reality of death is lost , how far is the fall for all of us ?
“ The gift of the Enlightenment , of modernity , was to place objective reality , truth , at the center @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Karen Swallow Prior told me last December .
“ For the past couple of decades , Christians have warned of the breakdown of objective reality that would—that has—come with post-modernity.
” Dr .
Prior is a cultural critic , evangelical author , and an English professor on faculty at Liberty University at the time ( she has recently moved to Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary ) .
I asked her for thoughts about the present concept of truth in America , especially amongst evangelicals .
I ’ m a Baptist pastor , so I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ evangelicals related to concepts of objective truth and justice in the current moment .
Will we lose our ability to come to a consensus on right and wrong and what is true and false in the public square if partisan loyalties trump transcendent truth claims ?
Dr .
Prior responded with a sobering perspective .
“ [ W ] hile Christians rightly feared the crumbling of moral absolutes postmodernity would bring , we did not account or prepare for our own conscription into this worldview in which power replaces truth.
” She continued @ @ @ @ @ @ @ only being subject to but even using postmodern means—seeking platforms , leveraging power , increasing polarization , and unwittingly sacrificing truth in the process–in order , paradoxically , to achieve our ‘ noble ’ end of preserving truth .
We have become the very thing we warned against , … Nietzsche was right : in the absence of truth , there is only power.
” Dr.
Prior ’ s words about power replacing truth came back to mind this week as I contemplated what the colossal loss of American life to a previously @ @ @ @ @ @ @ This weekend should provide us a perfect opportunity to mourn , grieve , and fully express the sorrow of what has happened in America over the past 3 months .
In doing so , we should reject conspiracy theories and falsehoods that cast doubt on how many have died out of political fear .
We should reject any inclination to foist such a tragedy over our political foes .
There is a difference between accountability and vengeance .
Rather , we should uphold the truth about what has happened and properly mourn those @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rebuild on our shared experience of grief and remember that these are real people who really matter .
Their lives have dignity , worth , and value and their deaths do not serve as pawns in a larger partisan game .
By upholding truth and endeavoring to mourn beyond political consequences or benefits , we affirm the humanity of those who have passed — as well as our own .
And , I have a deep sense that we will need this dignity and strengthened sense of humanity , truth , patience , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ difficult and uncertain days ahead , not as enemies across ideological divides with the forgotten dead behind us as we strive for power .
But , as countrymen who remember those we have lost together so we can rebuild again on the foundations of truth that remain .

Memorial Day Weekend is upon us and there will be celebrations, but of what kind? We will remember those who died fighting for our country in years past, but with the freedoms they fought for in such disarray, how will we celebrate a holiday that marks the traditional beginning of summer while the virus is still at work among us?
In our rush to reopen America in the midst of a plague, can we also take a moment to remember those who have died over the past 3 months? We are on the eve of another death count milestone. How should we remember the almost 100,000 Americans who have died from Coronavirus by Memorial Day?
I know that disease is not the same as war. We commemorate those who die in war. We lay wreaths at their graves and we remember the heroes who have fallen. But, President Trump said that he was acting as a “war time president” as he lead us in a war against an “invisible enemy” that will have taken nearly 100,000 American lives by the end of Memorial Day Weekend. He has also said that Americans are warriors in our fight against the Coronavirus and to reopen the economy. If this truly is, or was, a war, then what better time than Memorial Day Weekend to grieve the many who have died in this so-called battle thus far?
I’ve been reading short biographies of some who have died from this virus. I’ve read stories of pastors, fire fighters, businessmen, artists, singers, teachers, nurses, doctors, policemen, fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters … people from every walk of life and from all over the country. I read about a college student set to graduate. He was 25. A musician in New Orleans. A guitar player in Colorado. A veteran of Desert Storm. We hear story after story of people who were healthy and productive, who were loved by their families and friends, who had many more years in front of them. Who among them thought in February that they would be dead by Memorial Day? Their lives, their souls, all matter. We should not forget. We should lament.
But, in some quarters, we’re experiencing different kinds of casualties–the death of empathy, and with it, the death of truth. As our nation reels from the public health and economic effects of this virus–as we seek to navigate recovery–we also see the rise of a denial culture that provides little room for grieving. With a new dawn of yet more conspiracy theories, false accusations, misdirection, and blame-shifting, the buck of responsibility is passed around until it lands upon our ideological opponents. Because of this, truth stumbles in the streets.
Isaiah 59:14 in the Bible comes to mind: “So justice is driven back, and righteousness stands at a distance; truth has stumbled in the streets, honesty cannot enter.“ If truth stumbles and our ability to grasp the reality of death is lost, how far is the fall for all of us?
Podcast · August 15 2023 A.B. Stoddard: All the Ex-President’s Conspirators Donald Trump has been a low-rent mobster for his entire career, and now he’s getting…
“The gift of the Enlightenment, of modernity, was to place objective reality, truth, at the center of human understanding and experience” Dr. Karen Swallow Prior told me last December. “For the past couple of decades, Christians have warned of the breakdown of objective reality that would—that has—come with post-modernity.”
Dr. Prior is a cultural critic, evangelical author, and an English professor on faculty at Liberty University at the time (she has recently moved to Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary). I asked her for thoughts about the present concept of truth in America, especially amongst evangelicals. I’m a Baptist pastor, so I was particularly curious about how she thought evangelicals related to concepts of objective truth and justice in the current moment. Will we lose our ability to come to a consensus on right and wrong and what is true and false in the public square if partisan loyalties trump transcendent truth claims? Dr. Prior responded with a sobering perspective.
“[W]hile Christians rightly feared the crumbling of moral absolutes postmodernity would bring, we did not account or prepare for our own conscription into this worldview in which power replaces truth.” She continued. “We therefore find ourselves not only being subject to but even using postmodern means—seeking platforms, leveraging power, increasing polarization, and unwittingly sacrificing truth in the process–in order, paradoxically, to achieve our ‘noble’ end of preserving truth. We have become the very thing we warned against,… Nietzsche was right: in the absence of truth, there is only power.”
Dr. Prior’s words about power replacing truth came back to mind this week as I contemplated what the colossal loss of American life to a previously unforeseen virus means for our age. This weekend should provide us a perfect opportunity to mourn, grieve, and fully express the sorrow of what has happened in America over the past 3 months. In doing so, we should reject conspiracy theories and falsehoods that cast doubt on how many have died out of political fear.
We should reject any inclination to foist such a tragedy over our political foes. There is a difference between accountability and vengeance.
Rather, we should uphold the truth about what has happened and properly mourn those who have passed as a way to rebuild on our shared experience of grief and remember that these are real people who really matter. Their lives have dignity, worth, and value and their deaths do not serve as pawns in a larger partisan game. By upholding truth and endeavoring to mourn beyond political consequences or benefits, we affirm the humanity of those who have passed — as well as our own.
And, I have a deep sense that we will need this dignity and strengthened sense of humanity, truth, patience, creativity, and empathy to navigate the difficult and uncertain days ahead, not as enemies across ideological divides with the forgotten dead behind us as we strive for power. But, as countrymen who remember those we have lost together so we can rebuild again on the foundations of truth that remain.


thebulwark--2020-05-25--How to Think About the Pandemic’s Memorial Day

On May 30 , 1884 , Oliver Wendell Holmes , a 43-year-old Civil War veteran serving as a justice on the Massachusetts Supreme Court , gave a Memorial Day speech to a crowd assembled on a village common in Keene , New Hampshire .
His speech begins by addressing “ a young man ” who asked Holmes “ why people still kept Memorial Day.
” Holmes ’ answer to that young man who hadn ’ t seen the war : “ it celebrates and solemnly reaffirms from year to year a national act of enthusiasm and faith.
” For a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ served as a reminder that security is precarious , and fate might call any generation to a duty where “ you must be willing to commit yourself to a course , perhaps a long and hard one , without being able to foresee exactly where you will come out.
” Holmes then turned to the fellow veterans standing in front of him , those who 20 years earlier had witnessed and participated in the violence of committing themselves to a “ long and hard course.
” To these men , Holmes recalled that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ‘ round we are in the presence of the dead .
.
.
I see them now , more than I can number , as once I saw them on this earth.
” In stirring language , he went on to recount the lives and battlefield deaths of eight of his comrades .
Holmes used friendship— “ on this day , at least , we still meet and rejoice in the closest tie which is possible between men—a tie which suffering has made indissoluble for better , for worse ” —to shift his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can not live in associations with the past alone , and we admit that , if we would be worthy of the past , we must find new fields for action or thought , and make ourselves new careers.
” By the end , the speech pulls his various strands together—a nation increasingly comfortable in its peace , the fact of death and suffering , the reality of friendship , the possibility of something gained from deep tragedy—in a paragraph that eventually became the name of the address : Through our great good @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were touched with fire .
It was given to us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing .
While we are permitted to scorn nothing but indifference , and do not pretend to undervalue the worldly rewards of ambition , we have seen with our own eyes , beyond and above the gold fields , the snowy heights of honor , and it is for us to bear the report to those who come after us .
But , above all , we have learned that whether @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and will look downward and dig , or from Aspiration her axe and cord , and will scale the ice , the one and only success which it is his to command is to bring to his work a mighty heart .
I read this essay every Memorial Day , and it fills me both with melancholy for the friends I ’ ve lost to war but also gratitude for the new vitality that serving in a crisis offered me .
This Memorial Day , the mixed emotions are similar , but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Holmes ’ words make me grateful for our nation ’ s frontline healthcare workers , and at the same time worried for our nation .
Nothing is more important than ending this pandemic as quickly as possible .
But how we do it matters .
On our current path , the collective memory will be mostly pain , with very little pride .
It doesn ’ t have to be that way .
If men and women are given the chance to practice once-in-a-lifetime courage , societal emergencies can be ennobling for individuals @ @ @ @ @ @ @ might be remembered as one filled with horrible , deadly missteps , but one ultimately overcome by camaraderie , generosity , and hard work .
But the challenges of this pandemic are , for most of us , quiet ones , faced alone , without visible work to be proud of or sacred friends with whom to share that pride .
As a result , when we look back on this moment , many Americans will instead remember 2020 as only a big , avoidable mess , just another step down in a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Holmes ’ speech is an allegory about the possibilities on the other side of deep pain : What steps can we take now that might enable us to hold grief and pride side-by-side in our collective memory ?
First , politicians should use rhetoric that above all celebrates most Americans ’ selfless efforts .
Quarantining seems to have flattened the curve .
Grocery workers have kept people fed .
Neighbors are helping neighbors .
There can and should be a healthy debate about when and how to continue relaxing mitigation protocols .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ must stop using the reopening as a political cudgel , one that kills the hidden sense of togetherness buried deep inside a painful , but shared , experience .
Second , frontline workers should be given a context in which they can remember themselves as part of a greater whole , and one that is serving the country .
Holmes could only give his speech because there was a Memorial Day , and though he probably knew very few of the men listening to him , at the pivotal moment of their lives @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Parades , holidays , days of remembrance—even the simple act of thanking healthcare workers for their service—should be undertaken to help frontline workers know that they were part of a great , selfless , and worthwhile endeavor that saved lives under conditions of great danger .
Third , more people should have the chance to serve their country , as several bills currently in Congress are encouraging .
A common criticism of national service efforts is that few problems are big enough to require such a massive solution .
Well , we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
There are several roles—contact tracers , support workers for frontline staff , tutors , and others—where lightly-trained individuals can actively help get us out of the crisis .
While I ’ m certain that many of our healthcare workers—those who are currently “ carrying fortune ’ s spade ” —will , in time , transcend their pain and lead the nation in years to come , I worry what the nation as a whole will make of the pandemic .
Without a “ spade to dig ” or “ an axe and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ crisis leaves very little to be proud of .
Oliver Wendell Holmes spent about four years in the U.S. Army , almost died himself a few times during that short stint , and saw several friends killed violently in front of him .
He went on to serve on the United States Supreme Court from 1902 to 1932 , retiring at the age of 90 .
The first line of his epitaph reads : “ Captain and Brevit Colonel , 20th Mass .
Volunteer Infantry Civil War .
”

On May 30, 1884, Oliver Wendell Holmes, a 43-year-old Civil War veteran serving as a justice on the Massachusetts Supreme Court, gave a Memorial Day speech to a crowd assembled on a village common in Keene, New Hampshire.
His speech begins by addressing “a young man” who asked Holmes “why people still kept Memorial Day.” Holmes’ answer to that young man who hadn’t seen the war: “it celebrates and solemnly reaffirms from year to year a national act of enthusiasm and faith.” For a nation thankfully at peace, Memorial Day served as a reminder that security is precarious, and fate might call any generation to a duty where “you must be willing to commit yourself to a course, perhaps a long and hard one, without being able to foresee exactly where you will come out.”
Holmes then turned to the fellow veterans standing in front of him, those who 20 years earlier had witnessed and participated in the violence of committing themselves to a “long and hard course.”
To these men, Holmes recalled that “as surely as this day comes ‘round we are in the presence of the dead . . . I see them now, more than I can number, as once I saw them on this earth.” In stirring language, he went on to recount the lives and battlefield deaths of eight of his comrades.
Holmes used friendship—“on this day, at least, we still meet and rejoice in the closest tie which is possible between men—a tie which suffering has made indissoluble for better, for worse”—to shift his focus to the future. “We cannot live in associations with the past alone, and we admit that, if we would be worthy of the past, we must find new fields for action or thought, and make ourselves new careers.”
By the end, the speech pulls his various strands together—a nation increasingly comfortable in its peace, the fact of death and suffering, the reality of friendship, the possibility of something gained from deep tragedy—in a paragraph that eventually became the name of the address:
Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given to us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing. While we are permitted to scorn nothing but indifference, and do not pretend to undervalue the worldly rewards of ambition, we have seen with our own eyes, beyond and above the gold fields, the snowy heights of honor, and it is for us to bear the report to those who come after us. But, above all, we have learned that whether a man accepts from Fortune her spade, and will look downward and dig, or from Aspiration her axe and cord, and will scale the ice, the one and only success which it is his to command is to bring to his work a mighty heart.
I read this essay every Memorial Day, and it fills me both with melancholy for the friends I’ve lost to war but also gratitude for the new vitality that serving in a crisis offered me. This Memorial Day, the mixed emotions are similar, but on a different scale. This year Holmes’ words make me grateful for our nation’s frontline healthcare workers, and at the same time worried for our nation.
Podcast · August 15 2023 A.B. Stoddard: All the Ex-President’s Conspirators Donald Trump has been a low-rent mobster for his entire career, and now he’s getting…
Nothing is more important than ending this pandemic as quickly as possible. But how we do it matters. On our current path, the collective memory will be mostly pain, with very little pride. It doesn’t have to be that way.
If men and women are given the chance to practice once-in-a-lifetime courage, societal emergencies can be ennobling for individuals and unifying for nations. The crisis might be remembered as one filled with horrible, deadly missteps, but one ultimately overcome by camaraderie, generosity, and hard work.
But the challenges of this pandemic are, for most of us, quiet ones, faced alone, without visible work to be proud of or sacred friends with whom to share that pride. As a result, when we look back on this moment, many Americans will instead remember 2020 as only a big, avoidable mess, just another step down in a decades-long decline.
The last paragraph of Holmes’ speech is an allegory about the possibilities on the other side of deep pain:
But grief is not the end of all. I seem to hear the funeral march become a paean . . . amid the awful orchestra of seen and unseen powers and destinies of good and evil our trumpets sound once more a note of daring, hope, and will.
What steps can we take now that might enable us to hold grief and pride side-by-side in our collective memory?
First, politicians should use rhetoric that above all celebrates most Americans’ selfless efforts. Quarantining seems to have flattened the curve. Grocery workers have kept people fed. Neighbors are helping neighbors. There can and should be a healthy debate about when and how to continue relaxing mitigation protocols. But our leaders, especially the president, must stop using the reopening as a political cudgel, one that kills the hidden sense of togetherness buried deep inside a painful, but shared, experience.
Second, frontline workers should be given a context in which they can remember themselves as part of a greater whole, and one that is serving the country. Holmes could only give his speech because there was a Memorial Day, and though he probably knew very few of the men listening to him, at the pivotal moment of their lives they were all in the same uniform. Parades, holidays, days of remembrance—even the simple act of thanking healthcare workers for their service—should be undertaken to help frontline workers know that they were part of a great, selfless, and worthwhile endeavor that saved lives under conditions of great danger.
Third, more people should have the chance to serve their country, as several bills currently in Congress are encouraging. A common criticism of national service efforts is that few problems are big enough to require such a massive solution. Well, we’re currently facing a big challenge. There are several roles—contact tracers, support workers for frontline staff, tutors, and others—where lightly-trained individuals can actively help get us out of the crisis.
While I’m certain that many of our healthcare workers—those who are currently “carrying fortune’s spade”—will, in time, transcend their pain and lead the nation in years to come, I worry what the nation as a whole will make of the pandemic. Without a “spade to dig” or “an axe and cord to climb,” the current crisis leaves very little to be proud of.
Oliver Wendell Holmes spent about four years in the U.S. Army, almost died himself a few times during that short stint, and saw several friends killed violently in front of him. He went on to serve on the United States Supreme Court from 1902 to 1932, retiring at the age of 90. The first line of his epitaph reads: “Captain and Brevit Colonel, 20th Mass. Volunteer Infantry Civil War.”