theamericanconservative--2020-09-30--Getting Rid of the Myth of ‘Isolationism’

No one claims to be an isolationist , but foreign policy analysts keep imagining and fearing a “ resurgence ” of isolationism around every corner .
This fear was on display in a recent Atlanticarticle by Charles Kupchan , who tries to rehabilitate the label in order to oppose the substance of a policy of nonintervention and non-entanglement .
Kupchan allows that a policy of avoiding entangling alliances and staying out of European wars was important for the growth and prosperity of the United States , but then rehearses the same old and misleading story about the terrible “ isolationist @ @ @ @ @ @ @ countless times before .
This misrepresents the history of that period and compromises our ability to rethink our foreign policy today .
Kupchan ’ s article is not just an exercise in beating a dead horse , since he fears that the same thing that happened between the world wars is happening again : “ If the 19th century was isolationism ’ s finest hour , the interwar era was surely its darkest and most deluded .
The conditions that led to this misguided run for cover are making a comeback.
” Kupchan @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people he calls “ isolationists ” so that the U.S. will remain thoroughly ensnared in most of its global commitments .
At the same time that he warns that “ U.S .
statecraft has become divorced from popular will , ” he seems to want to keep it this way by rejecting what he calls the “ isolationist temptation.
” If “ a majority of the country favors either America First or global disengagement , ” as he says , the goal seems to be to ignore what the majority wants in favor @ @ @ @ @ @ @ same old strategy of U.S. primacy .
Those tweaks aren ’ t going to lessen popular support for a reduced U.S. role in the world , and they will likely make the public even more disillusioned with the remaining costs and demands of U.S. “ leadership.
” The key thing to remember in all this is that the U.S. has never been isolationist in its foreign relations .
The thing that Kupchan calls America ’ s “ default setting ” is not real .
Isolationism is the pejorative term that expansionists and interventionists @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ridicule and dismiss opposition to unnecessary wars .
Isolationism as U.S. policy in the 1920s and 1930s is a myth , and the myth is deployed whenever there has been a serious challenge to the status quo in post-1945 U.S. foreign policy .
Bear Braumoeller summed it up very well in his article , “ The Myth of American Isolationism , ” this way : “ the characterization of America as isolationist in the interwar period is simply wrong.
” We can ’ t learn from the past if we insist on distorting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it in The Tragedy of American Diplomacy , “ It not only deforms the history of the decade from 1919 to 1930 , but it also twists the story of American entry into World War II and warps the record of the cold war.
” Williams also remarked in a note that the use of the term isolationist “ has thus crippled American thought about foreign policy for 50 years.
” Today we can say that it has done so for a century .
Our government eschewed permanent alliances for most of its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sides in the European Great Power conflicts of the nineteenth century , but it never sought to cut itself from the world and could not have done that even if it had wished to do so .
The U.S. was a commercial republic from the start , and it cultivated economic and diplomatic ties with as many states as possible .
You can call the steady expansion of the U.S. across North America and into the Pacific and Caribbean “ isolationism , ” but that just shows how misleading and inaccurate the label @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a rising power and increasingly involved in the affairs of the world .
Its economic and diplomatic engagement with the world increased during these years .
If it wasn ’ t involved in the way that later internationalists would have liked , that didn ’ t make the U.S. isolationist .
Braumoeller makes this point explicitly : “ America was not isolationist in affairs relating to international security in Europe for the bulk of the period : in fact , it was perhaps more internationalist than it had ever been.
” The U.S. @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but one that strove to maintain its neutrality .
That was neither deluded nor disastrous , and we need to stop pretending that it was if we are ever going to be able to make the needed changes to our foreign policy today .
Kupchan acknowledges that there has to be an “ adjustment ” after the last several decades of overreach , but he casts this as a way of preventing more significant retrenchment : “ The paramount question is whether that adjustment takes the form of a judicious pullback or a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the desire for a responsible reduction in U.S. commitments , but one person ’ s “ judicious pullback ” will often be denounced as a “ dangerous retreat ” by others .
Just consider how many times we have been warned about a U.S. “ retreat ” from the Middle East over the last 11 years .
Even now , the U.S. is still taking part in multiple wars across the region , and the “ retreat ” we have been told has happened several times never seems to take place .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ isolationist comeback ” hardly makes it more likely that these withdrawals will ever happen .
He recommends that “ judicious retrenchment should entail shedding U.S. entanglements in the periphery , not in the strategic heartlands of Europe and Asia.
” Certainly , any reduction in unnecessary U.S. commitments is welcome , but a thorough rethinking of U.S. foreign policy has to include every region .
Kupchan is right to criticize slapdash , incompetent withdrawals , but one gets the impression that he thinks there shouldn ’ t be any withdrawals except from the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Chinese threats ” as the main reasons not to pull back at all in Europe or Asia , but this seems like an uncritical endorsement of the status quo .
It is in East Asia where the U.S. might be fighting a war against a major , nuclear-armed power in the future , and it is also there where the U.S. has some of the wealthiest and most capable allies .
If the U.S. can ’ t reduce its exposure to the risk of a major war where that risk is the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ when will it ever be able to do that ?
Reducing the U.S. military presence in East Asia will make it easier to manage U.S.-Chinese tensions , and it will give allies an additional incentive to assume more responsibility for their own security .
The U.S. has far more security commitments than it can afford and far more than can possibly be justified by our own security interests .
That includes , but is not limited to , our overcommitment to the Middle East .
Our foreign entanglements have been allowed to grow @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the last seventy-five years that modest pruning won ’ t be good enough to put U.S. foreign policy on a sound footing that will have reliable public support .
There needs to be a much more comprehensive review of all U.S. commitments to determine which ones are truly necessary for our security and which ones are not .
Ruling out the bulk of those commitments as untouchable in advance is a mistake .
There is broad public support for constructive international engagement , but there is remarkably little backing for preserving U.S. hegemony @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to have a more sustainable foreign policy , the U.S. needs to scale back its ambitions in most parts of the world , and it needs to shift more of the security burdens for different regions to the countries that have the most at stake .
That should be done deliberately and carefully , but it does need to happen if we are to realign our foreign policy with protecting the vital interests of the United States .

No one claims to be an isolationist, but foreign policy analysts keep imagining and fearing a “resurgence” of isolationism around every corner. This fear was on display in a recent Atlantic article by Charles Kupchan, who tries to rehabilitate the label in order to oppose the substance of a policy of nonintervention and non-entanglement. Kupchan allows that a policy of avoiding entangling alliances and staying out of European wars was important for the growth and prosperity of the United States, but then rehearses the same old and misleading story about the terrible “isolationist” interwar years that we have heard countless times before. This misrepresents the history of that period and compromises our ability to rethink our foreign policy today.
Kupchan’s article is not just an exercise in beating a dead horse, since he fears that the same thing that happened between the world wars is happening again: “If the 19th century was isolationism’s finest hour, the interwar era was surely its darkest and most deluded. The conditions that led to this misguided run for cover are making a comeback.” Kupchan wants to borrow a little from the people he calls “isolationists” so that the U.S. will remain thoroughly ensnared in most of its global commitments.
At the same time that he warns that “U.S. statecraft has become divorced from popular will,” he seems to want to keep it this way by rejecting what he calls the “isolationist temptation.” If “a majority of the country favors either America First or global disengagement,” as he says, the goal seems to be to ignore what the majority wants in favor of making a few tweaks to the same old strategy of U.S. primacy. Those tweaks aren’t going to lessen popular support for a reduced U.S. role in the world, and they will likely make the public even more disillusioned with the remaining costs and demands of U.S. “leadership.”
The key thing to remember in all this is that the U.S. has never been isolationist in its foreign relations. The thing that Kupchan calls America’s “default setting” is not real. Isolationism is the pejorative term that expansionists and interventionists have used over the last century to ridicule and dismiss opposition to unnecessary wars. Isolationism as U.S. policy in the 1920s and 1930s is a myth, and the myth is deployed whenever there has been a serious challenge to the status quo in post-1945 U.S. foreign policy. Bear Braumoeller summed it up very well in his article, “The Myth of American Isolationism,” this way: “the characterization of America as isolationist in the interwar period is simply wrong.” We can’t learn from the past if we insist on distorting it. As William Appleman Williams put it in The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, “It not only deforms the history of the decade from 1919 to 1930, but it also twists the story of American entry into World War II and warps the record of the cold war.” Williams also remarked in a note that the use of the term isolationist “has thus crippled American thought about foreign policy for 50 years.” Today we can say that it has done so for a century.
Our government eschewed permanent alliances for most of its history, and it refrained from taking sides in the European Great Power conflicts of the nineteenth century, but it never sought to cut itself from the world and could not have done that even if it had wished to do so. The U.S. was a commercial republic from the start, and it cultivated economic and diplomatic ties with as many states as possible. You can call the steady expansion of the U.S. across North America and into the Pacific and Caribbean “isolationism,” but that just shows how misleading and inaccurate the label has always been.
Post-WWI America was a rising power and increasingly involved in the affairs of the world. Its economic and diplomatic engagement with the world increased during these years. If it wasn’t involved in the way that later internationalists would have liked, that didn’t make the U.S. isolationist. Braumoeller makes this point explicitly: “America was not isolationist in affairs relating to international security in Europe for the bulk of the period: in fact, it was perhaps more internationalist than it had ever been.” The U.S. was behaving as a great power, but one that strove to maintain its neutrality. That was neither deluded nor disastrous, and we need to stop pretending that it was if we are ever going to be able to make the needed changes to our foreign policy today.
Kupchan acknowledges that there has to be an “adjustment” after the last several decades of overreach, but he casts this as a way of preventing more significant retrenchment: “The paramount question is whether that adjustment takes the form of a judicious pullback or a more dangerous retreat.” No one objects to the desire for a responsible reduction in U.S. commitments, but one person’s “judicious pullback” will often be denounced as a “dangerous retreat” by others. Just consider how many times we have been warned about a U.S. “retreat” from the Middle East over the last 11 years. Even now, the U.S. is still taking part in multiple wars across the region, and the “retreat” we have been told has happened several times never seems to take place. Warning about the perils of an “isolationist comeback” hardly makes it more likely that these withdrawals will ever happen.
He recommends that “judicious retrenchment should entail shedding U.S. entanglements in the periphery, not in the strategic heartlands of Europe and Asia.” Certainly, any reduction in unnecessary U.S. commitments is welcome, but a thorough rethinking of U.S. foreign policy has to include every region. Kupchan is right to criticize slapdash, incompetent withdrawals, but one gets the impression that he thinks there shouldn’t be any withdrawals except from the Middle East. He cites “Russian and Chinese threats” as the main reasons not to pull back at all in Europe or Asia, but this seems like an uncritical endorsement of the status quo.
It is in East Asia where the U.S. might be fighting a war against a major, nuclear-armed power in the future, and it is also there where the U.S. has some of the wealthiest and most capable allies. If the U.S. can’t reduce its exposure to the risk of a major war where that risk is the greatest and its allies are strongest, when will it ever be able to do that? Reducing the U.S. military presence in East Asia will make it easier to manage U.S.-Chinese tensions, and it will give allies an additional incentive to assume more responsibility for their own security.
The U.S. has far more security commitments than it can afford and far more than can possibly be justified by our own security interests. That includes, but is not limited to, our overcommitment to the Middle East. Our foreign entanglements have been allowed to grow and spread to such an extent over the last seventy-five years that modest pruning won’t be good enough to put U.S. foreign policy on a sound footing that will have reliable public support. There needs to be a much more comprehensive review of all U.S. commitments to determine which ones are truly necessary for our security and which ones are not. Ruling out the bulk of those commitments as untouchable in advance is a mistake.
There is broad public support for constructive international engagement, but there is remarkably little backing for preserving U.S. hegemony in its current form. In order to have a more sustainable foreign policy, the U.S. needs to scale back its ambitions in most parts of the world, and it needs to shift more of the security burdens for different regions to the countries that have the most at stake. That should be done deliberately and carefully, but it does need to happen if we are to realign our foreign policy with protecting the vital interests of the United States.


The Chernobyl Debate

This combination of pictures created on September 29 , 2020 shows Democratic Presidential candidate and former US Vice President Joe Biden ( L ) and US President Donald Trump speaking during the first presidential debate at the Case Western Reserve University and Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland , Ohio on September 29 , 2020 .
( Photo by JIM WATSON , SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images ) Last night , a Real Housewife squared off against a Turner Classic Movie , and the result was chaos in technicolor .
Sixty years after a black-and-white John F. Kennedy stepped onstage with Richard @ @ @ @ @ @ @ platform , the Biden/Trump contest saw the medium completely overwhelm the message .
This wasn ’ t a debate so much as a thermonuclear accident , and it ’ s difficult to think we won ’ t all be suffering complications for years to come .
Though you can ’ t really “ win ” an extravaganza of anger porn , surely the loser was the country as a whole .
“ How ya doin ’ , man ?
” said Joe Biden to Donald Trump as the candidates took their podiums .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ candidate would make for the next hour and a half .
Consider that Biden called Trump a “ liar , ” “ clown , ” and the “ worst president America has ever had , ” and he was by far the more measured of the two .
Trump , meanwhile , came off as a one-man infernal column , constantly interrupting the former vice president , questioning his intelligence , using his formidable rhetorical skills to draw Biden down rabbit holes .
By the end , moderator Chris Wallace was dumping Everclear @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hard on Wallace Tuesday night , as conservatives denounced him for seeming to prop up Biden and progressives grumbled that he didn ’ t do more to rein in Trump .
And certainly Wallace ’ s breakneck changes of topic sometimes felt like missed opportunities .
That was especially true when Biden refused to answer whether he would pack the Supreme Court , a subject worthy of interrogation , only for Wallace to veer off onto the coronavirus .
But in Wallace ’ s defense , I ’ m not sure how much @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is a harder job than it seems .
I find it incredibly difficult to interrupt a guest on our foreign policy podcast ; I can ’ t even imagine trying to corral a motor-mouthed TV specialist like Trump .
The shame of it all for Republicans is that Trump could have won this debate if he ’ d wanted to .
Repeatedly Biden gave him openings that a subtler and nimbler interlocutor might have exploited .
There was that refusal to answer on court packing , an extraordinarily arrogant and evasive moment given @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
There was Biden ’ s outrageous claim that Antifa was “ an idea , not an organization ” —he was quoting FBI Director Christopher Wray , but try telling that to shop owners in Portland who have seen their livelihoods smashed .
There was his failure to persuasively reconcile his 1994 crime bill with his sudden embrace of criminal justice reform .
There was his awkward shrugging-off of the left , repudiating the Green New Deal and boasting about his victory over Bernie Sanders .
Behind the fiery curtain of anti-Trump anger @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rather than draw attention to that , Trump seemed unable to get out of his own way .
He managed in the same 30-second span to both trash Biden ’ s support for the crime bill and accuse him of being against law and order .
He called out Biden over Antifa , yet committed an unforced error just before , telling the self-described “ Western chauvinist ” Proud Boys group to “ stand back and stand by.
” I tend to think Trump was being more flippant than sinister there , contra @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , but it still effectively spoiled what should have been a strong moment .
And then came the rambling about the election being a fraud , ballots turning up in creeks—his job was to affirm our democratic system and shut up .
Not that most viewers would have registered any of that .
Imagine you ’ re an undecided voter , someone who opts for the NFL pregame show over Meet the Press , someone who knows little about trade deficits or mail-in ballots—and you tune to the debate .
Instantly your attention @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but to the vitriol in which it was entombed .
It was impossible to learn anything about the candidates Tuesday night .
Anybody who tried came away disappointed and possibly experiencing flashbacks .
Apparently the website of Libertarian Party hopeful Jo Jorgensen crashed after receiving record traffic .
After watching that Triangle Shirtwaist-caliber dumpster fire , is it any wonder ?
That Biden didn ’ t come off better is an indictment on him ( though he may have benefitted by virtue of juxtaposition ) .
But it ’ s the Republicans who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ week .
I ’ m not always opposed to Fighting Trump ( it ’ s refreshing , for example , to think of him bringing that debate stage persona to bear against his generals , demanding to know why we ’ re still in Afghanistan ) .
But by refusing to acknowledge the moment and turn it down , Trump turned his temperament into the takeaway issue .
Cue Frank Luntz ’ s panel of undecided voters , which absolutely shredded the president ’ s performance—one respondent called him a crackhead .
Actually @ @ @ @ @ @ @ drug , televised conflict , and it ’ s past time we asked whether we ’ ve finally overdosed , whether we ’ re now willing to achieve some separation between politics and mass media spectacle .

Last night, a Real Housewife squared off against a Turner Classic Movie, and the result was chaos in technicolor. Sixty years after a black-and-white John F. Kennedy stepped onstage with Richard Nixon and television became a serious campaign platform, the Biden/Trump contest saw the medium completely overwhelm the message. This wasn’t a debate so much as a thermonuclear accident, and it’s difficult to think we won’t all be suffering complications for years to come. Though you can’t really “win” an extravaganza of anger porn, surely the loser was the country as a whole.
“How ya doin’, man?” said Joe Biden to Donald Trump as the candidates took their podiums. It was the last civil remark either candidate would make for the next hour and a half. Consider that Biden called Trump a “liar,” “clown,” and the “worst president America has ever had,” and he was by far the more measured of the two. Trump, meanwhile, came off as a one-man infernal column, constantly interrupting the former vice president, questioning his intelligence, using his formidable rhetorical skills to draw Biden down rabbit holes. By the end, moderator Chris Wallace was dumping Everclear into a funnel.
Twitter went in hard on Wallace Tuesday night, as conservatives denounced him for seeming to prop up Biden and progressives grumbled that he didn’t do more to rein in Trump. And certainly Wallace’s breakneck changes of topic sometimes felt like missed opportunities. That was especially true when Biden refused to answer whether he would pack the Supreme Court, a subject worthy of interrogation, only for Wallace to veer off onto the coronavirus. But in Wallace’s defense, I’m not sure how much more he could have done. Moderator is a harder job than it seems. I find it incredibly difficult to interrupt a guest on our foreign policy podcast; I can’t even imagine trying to corral a motor-mouthed TV specialist like Trump.
The shame of it all for Republicans is that Trump could have won this debate if he’d wanted to. Repeatedly Biden gave him openings that a subtler and nimbler interlocutor might have exploited. There was that refusal to answer on court packing, an extraordinarily arrogant and evasive moment given the importance of the institution at stake. There was Biden’s outrageous claim that Antifa was “an idea, not an organization”—he was quoting FBI Director Christopher Wray, but try telling that to shop owners in Portland who have seen their livelihoods smashed. There was his failure to persuasively reconcile his 1994 crime bill with his sudden embrace of criminal justice reform. There was his awkward shrugging-off of the left, repudiating the Green New Deal and boasting about his victory over Bernie Sanders.
Behind the fiery curtain of anti-Trump anger lies a frayed Democratic Party. Yet rather than draw attention to that, Trump seemed unable to get out of his own way. He managed in the same 30-second span to both trash Biden’s support for the crime bill and accuse him of being against law and order. He called out Biden over Antifa, yet committed an unforced error just before, telling the self-described “Western chauvinist” Proud Boys group to “stand back and stand by.” I tend to think Trump was being more flippant than sinister there, contra the dark speculation on cable news today, but it still effectively spoiled what should have been a strong moment. And then came the rambling about the election being a fraud, ballots turning up in creeks—his job was to affirm our democratic system and shut up.
Not that most viewers would have registered any of that. Imagine you’re an undecided voter, someone who opts for the NFL pregame show over Meet the Press, someone who knows little about trade deficits or mail-in ballots—and you tune to the debate. Instantly your attention would be drawn not to the substance but to the vitriol in which it was entombed. It was impossible to learn anything about the candidates Tuesday night. Anybody who tried came away disappointed and possibly experiencing flashbacks. Apparently the website of Libertarian Party hopeful Jo Jorgensen crashed after receiving record traffic. After watching that Triangle Shirtwaist-caliber dumpster fire, is it any wonder?
That Biden didn’t come off better is an indictment on him (though he may have benefitted by virtue of juxtaposition). But it’s the Republicans who have the tougher questions to answer this week. I’m not always opposed to Fighting Trump (it’s refreshing, for example, to think of him bringing that debate stage persona to bear against his generals, demanding to know why we’re still in Afghanistan). But by refusing to acknowledge the moment and turn it down, Trump turned his temperament into the takeaway issue. Cue Frank Luntz’s panel of undecided voters, which absolutely shredded the president’s performance—one respondent called him a crackhead. Actually the debate itself was another kind of drug, televised conflict, and it’s past time we asked whether we’ve finally overdosed, whether we’re now willing to achieve some separation between politics and mass media spectacle.


theamericanconservative--2020-10-01--America is on The Road to Revolution

America is on The Road to Revolution

We have more in common with pre-Nazi Germany and pre-Soviet Russia than we think .
In 1951 , six years after the end of World War II , the political philosopher Hannah Arendt published The Origins of Totalitarianism , in an attempt to understand how such radical ideologies of both left and right had seized the minds of so many in the 20th century .
Arendt ’ s book used to be a staple in college history and political theory courses .
With the end of the Cold War 30 years behind us , who today talks about totalitarianism ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ it ’ s about Nazism , not communism .
Unsurprisingly , young Americans suffer from profound ignorance of what communism was , and is .
The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation , a nonprofit educational and research organization established by the U.S. Congress , carries out an annual survey of Americans to determine their attitudes toward communism , socialism , and Marxism in general .
In 2019 , the survey found that a startling number of Americans of the post-Cold War generations have favorable views of left-wing radicalism , and only 57 percent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Independence offers a better guarantee of “ freedom and equality ” than The Communist Manifesto .
Some émigrés who grew up in Soviet-dominated societies are sounding the alarm about the West ’ s dangerous drift into conditions like they once escaped .
They feel it in their bones .
Reading Arendt in the shadow of the extraordinary rise of identity-politics leftism and the broader crisis of liberal democracy is to confront a deeply unsettling truth : that these refugees from communism may be right .
What does contemporary America have in common with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s analysis found a number of social , political , and cultural conditions that tilled the ground for those nations to welcome poisonous ideas .
Totalitarian movements , said Arendt , are “ mass organizations of atomized , isolated individuals.
” She continues : The political theorist wrote those words in the 1950s , a period we look back on as a golden age of community cohesion .
Today , loneliness is widely recognized by scientists as a critical social and even medical problem .
In the year 2000 , Harvard political @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an acclaimed study documenting the steep decline of civil society since midcentury and the resulting atomization of America .
Since Putnam ’ s book , we have experienced the rise of social media networks offering a facsimile of “ connection.
” Yet we grow ever lonelier and more isolated .
It is no coincidence that Millennials and members of Generation Z register much higher rates of loneliness than older Americans , as well as significantly greater support for socialism .
It ’ s as if they aspire to a politics that can replace @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Sooner or later , loneliness and isolation are bound to have political effects .
The masses supporting totalitarian movements , says Arendt , grew “ out of the fragments of a highly atomized society whose competitive structure and concomitant loneliness of the individual had been held in check only through membership in a class.
” A polity filled with alienated individuals who share little sense of community and purpose , and who lack civic trust , are prime targets for totalitarian ideologies and leaders who promise solidarity and meaning .
Surveying the political @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Arendt noted a “ terrifying negative solidarity ” among people from diverse classes , united in their belief that all political parties were populated by fools .
Likewise , in late imperial Russia , Marxist radicals finally gained traction with the middle class when the Tsarist government failed miserably to deal with a catastrophic 1891-92 famine .
Are we today really so different ?
According to Gallup , Americans ’ confidence in their institutions—political , media , religious , legal , medical , corporate—is at historic lows across the board .
Only the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ businesses retain the strong confidence of over 50 percent .
Democratic norms are under strain in many industrialized nations , with the support for mainstream parties of left and right in decline .
In Europe of the 1920s , says Arendt , the first indication of the coming totalitarianism was the failure of established parties to attract younger members , and the willingness of the passive masses to consider radical alternatives to discredited establishment parties .
A loss of faith in democratic politics is a sign of a deeper and broader instability .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ in our consumerist-driven culture , people have ceased to look outside themselves to religion or other traditional sources of authoritative meaning .
But this imposes a terrible psychological burden on the individual .
Many of them may seek deliverance as the alienated masses of pre-totalitarian Germany and Russia did : in the certainties and solidarity offered by totalitarian movements .
The Desire to Transgress and Destroy The post-World War I generation of writers and artists were marked by their embrace and celebration of anti-cultural philosophies and acts as a way of demonstrating contempt @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ways of thinking .
Arendt said of some writers who glorified the will to power , “ They read not Darwin but the Marquis de Sade.
” Her point was that these authors did not avail themselves of respectable intellectual theories to justify their transgressiveness .
They immersed themselves in what is basest in human nature and regarded doing so as acts of liberation .
Arendt ’ s judgment of the postwar elites who recklessly thumbed their noses at respectability could easily apply to those of our own day who shove aside liberal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , free speech , and free association as obstacles to equality .
Arendt wrote : The members of the elite did not object at all to paying a price , the destruction of civilization , for the fun of seeing how those who had been excluded unjustly in the past forced their way into it .
One thinks of the university presidents and news media executives of our time who have abandoned professional standards and old-fashioned liberal values to embrace “ antiracism ” and other trendy left-wing causes .
Some left-wing politicians and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ George Floyd race riots , or , like New York mayor Bill De Blasio , stood idly by as thuggish mobs looted and burned stores in the name of social justice .
Regarding transgressive sexuality as a social good was not an innovation of the sexual revolution .
Like the contemporary West , late imperial Russia was also awash in what historian James Billington called “ a preoccupation with sex that is quite without parallel in earlier Russian culture.
” Among the social and intellectual elite , sexual adventurism , celebrations of perversion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ common .
And not just among the elites : the laboring masses , alone in the city , with no church to bind their consciences with guilt , or village gossips to shame them , found comfort in sex .
The end of official censorship after the 1905 uprising opened the floodgates to erotic literature , a prefiguration of our century ’ s technology-driven pornographic revolution .
“ The sensualism of the age was in a very intimate sense demonic , ” Billington writes , detailing how the figure of Satan became a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ They admired the diabolic willingness to stop at nothing to satisfy one ’ s desires and to exercise one ’ s will .
Propaganda and the Willingness to Believe Useful Lies Heda Margolius Kovály , a disillusioned Czech communist whose husband was executed after a 1952 show trial , reflects on the willingness of people to turn their backs on the truth for the sake of an ideological cause .
It is not hard for a totalitarian regime to keep people ignorant .
Once you relinquish your freedom for the sake of “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , for conformity with the regime , for the greatness and glory of the Fatherland , or for any of the substitutes that are so convincingly offered , you cede your claim to the truth .
Slowly , drop by drop , your life begins to ooze away just as surely as if you had slashed your wrists ; you have voluntarily condemned yourself to helplessness .
You can surrender your moral responsibility to be honest out of misplaced idealism .
You can also surrender it by hating others more than you love @ @ @ @ @ @ @ writes , hating “ respectable society ” was so narcotic , that elites were willing to accept “ monstrous forgeries in historiography ” for the sake of striking back at those who , in their view , had “ excluded the underprivileged and oppressed from the memory of mankind.
” For example , many who didn ’ t really accept Marx ’ s revisionist take on history—that it is a manifestation of class struggle—were willing to affirm it because it was a useful tool to punish those they despised .
Consider the lavish @ @ @ @ @ @ @ New York Times ’ s “ 1619 Project , ” a vigorously revisionist attempt to make slavery the central fact of the American founding .
Despite the project ’ s core claim ( that the patriots fought the American Revolution to preserve slavery ) having been thoroughly debunked , journalism ’ s elite saw fit to award the project ’ s director a Pulitzer Prize for her contribution .
Along those lines , propaganda helps change the world by creating a false impression of the way the world is .
Writes Arendt , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ … lies in its ability to shut the masses off from the real world.
” In 2019 , Zach Goldberg , a political science PhD student at Georgia Tech , found that over a nine-year period , the rate of news stories using progressive jargon associated with left-wing critical theory and social justice concepts shot into the stratosphere .
The mainstream media is framing the general public ’ s understanding of news and events according to what was until very recently a radical ideology confined to left-wing intellectual elites .
Why are people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The desperation alienated people have for a story that helps them make sense of their lives and tells them what to do explains it .
For a man desperate to believe , totalitarian ideology is more precious than life itself .
“ He may even be willing to help in his own prosecution and frame his own death sentence if only his status as a member of the movement is not touched , ” Arendt wrote .
Indeed , the files of the 1930s Stalinist show trials are full of false confessions by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rather than admit that communism was a lie .
Similarly , under the guise of antiracism training , U.S. corporations , institutions , and even churches are frog-marching their employees through courses in which whites and other ideologically disfavored people are compelled to confess their “ privilege.
” Some do , eagerly .
One of contemporary progressivism ’ s commonly used phrases—the personal is political—captures the totalitarian spirit , which seeks to infuse all aspects of life with political consciousness .
Indeed , the Left today pushes its ideology ever deeper into the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ areas of daily life uncontested .
This , warned Arendt , is a sign that a society is ripening for totalitarianism , because that is what totalitarianism essentially is : the politicization of everything .
Early in the Stalin era , N. V. Krylenko , a Soviet commissar ( political officer ) , steamrolled over chess players who wanted to keep politics out of the game .
“ We must finish once and for all with the neutrality of chess , ” he said .
“ We must condemn once and for all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of chess , ’ like the formula ‘ art for art ’ s sake.
’ We must organize shockbrigades of chess-players , and begin immediate realization of a Five-Year Plan for chess.
” A Society That Values Loyalty More Than Expertise “ Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents , regardless of their sympathies , with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intellect and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty , ” wrote Arendt .
All politicians prize loyalty , but few would regard it as the most @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fewer would admit it .
But President Donald Trump is a rule-breaker in many ways .
He once said , “ I value loyalty above everything else—more than brains , more than drive , and more than energy.
” Trump ’ s exaltation of personal loyalty over expertise is discreditable and corrupting .
But how can liberals complain ?
Loyalty to the group or the tribe is at the core of leftist identity politics .
This is at the root of “ cancel culture , ” in which transgressors , however minor their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ darkness .
Beyond cancel culture , which is reactive , institutions are embedding within their systems ideological tests to weed out dissenters .
At universities within the University of California system , for example , teachers who want to apply for tenure-track positions have to affirm their commitment to “ equity , diversity , and inclusion ” —and to have demonstrated it , even if it has nothing to do with their field .
De facto loyalty tests to diversity ideology are common in corporate America , and have now found their way @ @ @ @ @ @ @ well as into medical science .
A Soviet-born U.S. physician told me—after I agreed not to use his name—that social justice ideology is forcing physicians like him to ignore their medical training and judgment when it comes to transgender health .
He said it is not permissible within his institution to advise gender dysphoric patients against treatments they desire , even when a physician believes it is not in that particular patient ’ s health interest .
In our populist era , politicians and talk-radio polemicists can rile up a crowd by denouncing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , intellectual and cultural elites determine its long-term direction .
“ [ T ] he key actor in history is not individual genius but rather the network and the new institutions that are created out of those networks , ” writes sociologist James Davison Hunter .
Though a revolutionary idea might emerge from the masses , says Hunter , “ it does not gain traction until it is embraced and propagated by elites ” working through their “ well-developed networks and powerful institutions.
” This is why it is critically important to keep @ @ @ @ @ @ @ warns that the twentieth-century totalitarian experience shows how a determined and skillful minority can come to rule over an indifferent and disengaged majority .
In our time , most people regard the politically correct insanity of campus radicals as not worthy of attention .
They mock them as “ snowflakes ” and “ social justice warriors.
” This is a serious mistake .
In radicalizing the broader class of elites , social justice warriors ( SJWs ) are playing a similar historic role to the Bolsheviks in prerevolutionary Russia .
SJW ranks are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ young people wracked by guilt and anxiety over their own privilege , alienated from their own traditions , and desperate to identify with something , or someone , to give them a sense of wholeness and purpose .
For them , the ideology of social justice—as defined not by church teaching but by critical theorists in the academy—functions as a pseudo-religion .
Far from being confined to campuses and dry intellectual journals , SJW ideals are transforming elite institutions and networks of power and influence .
They are marching through the institutions of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ using them to transform the world .
For example , when the LGBT cause was adopted by corporate America , its ultimate victory was assured .
To be sure , none of this means that totalitarianism is inevitable .
But they do signify that the weaknesses in contemporary American society are consonant with a pre-totalitarian state .
Like the imperial Russians , we Americans may well be living in a fog of self-deception about our own country ’ s stability .
It only takes a catalyst like war , economic depression , plague @ @ @ @ @ @ @ crisis that brings the legitimacy of the liberal democratic order into question .
As Arendt warned more than half a century ago : If totalitarianism comes , it will almost certainly not be Stalinism 2.0 , with gulags , secret police , and an all-powerful central state .
That would not be necessary .
The power of surveillance technology , woke capitalism , and fear of losing bourgeois comfort and status will probably be enough to compel conformity by most .
At least at first , it will be a soft totalitarianism , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ than the Nineteen Eighty-Four one—but totalitarianism all the same .
A Czech immigrant to the U.S. who works in academia told me that this “ is not supposed to be happening here ” —but it is .
“ Any time I try to explain current events and their meaning to my friends or acquaintances , I am met with blank stares or downright nonsense , ” he says .
His own young adult children , born in America and indoctrinated into identity-politics ideology by public schooling , think their father is an alarmist @ @ @ @ @ @ @ like this for concluding that Americans are going to have to learn about the evils of totalitarianism the hard way ?
From the book LIVE NOT BY LIES by Rod Dreher , to be published on September 29 , 2020 by Sentinel , an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group , a division of Penguin Random House LLC .
Copyright © 2020 by Rod Dreher .

In 1951, six years after the end of World War II, the political philosopher Hannah Arendt published The Origins of Totalitarianism, in an attempt to understand how such radical ideologies of both left and right had seized the minds of so many in the 20th century. Arendt’s book used to be a staple in college history and political theory courses. With the end of the Cold War 30 years behind us, who today talks about totalitarianism? Almost no one—and if they do, it’s about Nazism, not communism.
Unsurprisingly, young Americans suffer from profound ignorance of what communism was, and is. The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, a nonprofit educational and research organization established by the U.S. Congress, carries out an annual survey of Americans to determine their attitudes toward communism, socialism, and Marxism in general. In 2019, the survey found that a startling number of Americans of the post-Cold War generations have favorable views of left-wing radicalism, and only 57 percent of Millennials believe that the Declaration of Independence offers a better guarantee of “freedom and equality” than The Communist Manifesto.
Some émigrés who grew up in Soviet-dominated societies are sounding the alarm about the West’s dangerous drift into conditions like they once escaped. They feel it in their bones. Reading Arendt in the shadow of the extraordinary rise of identity-politics leftism and the broader crisis of liberal democracy is to confront a deeply unsettling truth: that these refugees from communism may be right.
What does contemporary America have in common with pre-Nazi Germany and pre-Soviet Russia? Arendt’s analysis found a number of social, political, and cultural conditions that tilled the ground for those nations to welcome poisonous ideas.
Loneliness and Social Atomization
Totalitarian movements, said Arendt, are “mass organizations of atomized, isolated individuals.” She continues:
What prepares men for totalitarian domination in the non-totalitarian world, is the fact that loneliness, once a borderline experience usually suffered in certain marginal social conditions like old age, has become an everyday experience of the ever-growing masses of our century.
The political theorist wrote those words in the 1950s, a period we look back on as a golden age of community cohesion. Today, loneliness is widely recognized by scientists as a critical social and even medical problem. In the year 2000, Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam published Bowling Alone, an acclaimed study documenting the steep decline of civil society since midcentury and the resulting atomization of America.
Since Putnam’s book, we have experienced the rise of social media networks offering a facsimile of “connection.” Yet we grow ever lonelier and more isolated. It is no coincidence that Millennials and members of Generation Z register much higher rates of loneliness than older Americans, as well as significantly greater support for socialism. It’s as if they aspire to a politics that can replace the community they wish they had.
Sooner or later, loneliness and isolation are bound to have political effects. The masses supporting totalitarian movements, says Arendt, grew “out of the fragments of a highly atomized society whose competitive structure and concomitant loneliness of the individual had been held in check only through membership in a class.”
A polity filled with alienated individuals who share little sense of community and purpose, and who lack civic trust, are prime targets for totalitarian ideologies and leaders who promise solidarity and meaning.
Losing Faith in Hierarchies and Institutions
Surveying the political scene in Germany during the 1920s, Arendt noted a “terrifying negative solidarity” among people from diverse classes, united in their belief that all political parties were populated by fools. Likewise, in late imperial Russia, Marxist radicals finally gained traction with the middle class when the Tsarist government failed miserably to deal with a catastrophic 1891-92 famine.
Are we today really so different? According to Gallup, Americans’ confidence in their institutions—political, media, religious, legal, medical, corporate—is at historic lows across the board. Only the military, the police, and small businesses retain the strong confidence of over 50 percent. Democratic norms are under strain in many industrialized nations, with the support for mainstream parties of left and right in decline.
In Europe of the 1920s, says Arendt, the first indication of the coming totalitarianism was the failure of established parties to attract younger members, and the willingness of the passive masses to consider radical alternatives to discredited establishment parties.
A loss of faith in democratic politics is a sign of a deeper and broader instability. As radical individualism has become more pervasive in our consumerist-driven culture, people have ceased to look outside themselves to religion or other traditional sources of authoritative meaning.
But this imposes a terrible psychological burden on the individual. Many of them may seek deliverance as the alienated masses of pre-totalitarian Germany and Russia did: in the certainties and solidarity offered by totalitarian movements.
The Desire to Transgress and Destroy
The post-World War I generation of writers and artists were marked by their embrace and celebration of anti-cultural philosophies and acts as a way of demonstrating contempt for established hierarchies, institutions, and ways of thinking. Arendt said of some writers who glorified the will to power, “They read not Darwin but the Marquis de Sade.”
Her point was that these authors did not avail themselves of respectable intellectual theories to justify their transgressiveness. They immersed themselves in what is basest in human nature and regarded doing so as acts of liberation. Arendt’s judgment of the postwar elites who recklessly thumbed their noses at respectability could easily apply to those of our own day who shove aside liberal principles like fair play, race neutrality, free speech, and free association as obstacles to equality. Arendt wrote:
The members of the elite did not object at all to paying a price, the destruction of civilization, for the fun of seeing how those who had been excluded unjustly in the past forced their way into it.
One thinks of the university presidents and news media executives of our time who have abandoned professional standards and old-fashioned liberal values to embrace “antiracism” and other trendy left-wing causes. Some left-wing politicians and other progressive elites either cheered for the George Floyd race riots, or, like New York mayor Bill De Blasio, stood idly by as thuggish mobs looted and burned stores in the name of social justice.
Regarding transgressive sexuality as a social good was not an innovation of the sexual revolution. Like the contemporary West, late imperial Russia was also awash in what historian James Billington called “a preoccupation with sex that is quite without parallel in earlier Russian culture.” Among the social and intellectual elite, sexual adventurism, celebrations of perversion, and all manner of sensuality was common. And not just among the elites: the laboring masses, alone in the city, with no church to bind their consciences with guilt, or village gossips to shame them, found comfort in sex.
The end of official censorship after the 1905 uprising opened the floodgates to erotic literature, a prefiguration of our century’s technology-driven pornographic revolution. “The sensualism of the age was in a very intimate sense demonic,” Billington writes, detailing how the figure of Satan became a Romantic hero for artists and musicians. They admired the diabolic willingness to stop at nothing to satisfy one’s desires and to exercise one’s will.
Propaganda and the Willingness to Believe Useful Lies
Heda Margolius Kovály, a disillusioned Czech communist whose husband was executed after a 1952 show trial, reflects on the willingness of people to turn their backs on the truth for the sake of an ideological cause.
It is not hard for a totalitarian regime to keep people ignorant. Once you relinquish your freedom for the sake of “understood necessity,” for Party discipline, for conformity with the regime, for the greatness and glory of the Fatherland, or for any of the substitutes that are so convincingly offered, you cede your claim to the truth. Slowly, drop by drop, your life begins to ooze away just as surely as if you had slashed your wrists; you have voluntarily condemned yourself to helplessness.
You can surrender your moral responsibility to be honest out of misplaced idealism. You can also surrender it by hating others more than you love truth. In pre-totalitarian states, Arendt writes, hating “respectable society” was so narcotic, that elites were willing to accept “monstrous forgeries in historiography” for the sake of striking back at those who, in their view, had “excluded the underprivileged and oppressed from the memory of mankind.”
For example, many who didn’t really accept Marx’s revisionist take on history—that it is a manifestation of class struggle—were willing to affirm it because it was a useful tool to punish those they despised. Consider the lavish praise with which elites have welcomed The New York Times’s “1619 Project,” a vigorously revisionist attempt to make slavery the central fact of the American founding.
Despite the project’s core claim (that the patriots fought the American Revolution to preserve slavery) having been thoroughly debunked, journalism’s elite saw fit to award the project’s director a Pulitzer Prize for her contribution.
Along those lines, propaganda helps change the world by creating a false impression of the way the world is. Writes Arendt, “The force possessed by totalitarian propaganda … lies in its ability to shut the masses off from the real world.”
In 2019, Zach Goldberg, a political science PhD student at Georgia Tech, found that over a nine-year period, the rate of news stories using progressive jargon associated with left-wing critical theory and social justice concepts shot into the stratosphere. The mainstream media is framing the general public’s understanding of news and events according to what was until very recently a radical ideology confined to left-wing intellectual elites.
A Mania for Ideology
Why are people so willing to believe demonstrable lies? The desperation alienated people have for a story that helps them make sense of their lives and tells them what to do explains it. For a man desperate to believe, totalitarian ideology is more precious than life itself.
“He may even be willing to help in his own prosecution and frame his own death sentence if only his status as a member of the movement is not touched,” Arendt wrote. Indeed, the files of the 1930s Stalinist show trials are full of false confessions by devout communists who were prepared to die rather than admit that communism was a lie.
Similarly, under the guise of antiracism training, U.S. corporations, institutions, and even churches are frog-marching their employees through courses in which whites and other ideologically disfavored people are compelled to confess their “privilege.” Some do, eagerly.
One of contemporary progressivism’s commonly used phrases—the personal is political—captures the totalitarian spirit, which seeks to infuse all aspects of life with political consciousness. Indeed, the Left today pushes its ideology ever deeper into the private realm, leaving fewer and fewer areas of daily life uncontested. This, warned Arendt, is a sign that a society is ripening for totalitarianism, because that is what totalitarianism essentially is: the politicization of everything.
Early in the Stalin era, N. V. Krylenko, a Soviet commissar (political officer), steamrolled over chess players who wanted to keep politics out of the game.
“We must finish once and for all with the neutrality of chess,” he said. “We must condemn once and for all the formula ‘chess for the sake of chess,’ like the formula ‘art for art’s sake.’ We must organize shockbrigades of chess-players, and begin immediate realization of a Five-Year Plan for chess.”
A Society That Values Loyalty More Than Expertise
“Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intellect and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty,” wrote Arendt.
All politicians prize loyalty, but few would regard it as the most important quality in government, and even fewer would admit it. But President Donald Trump is a rule-breaker in many ways. He once said, “I value loyalty above everything else—more than brains, more than drive, and more than energy.”
Trump’s exaltation of personal loyalty over expertise is discreditable and corrupting. But how can liberals complain? Loyalty to the group or the tribe is at the core of leftist identity politics. This is at the root of “cancel culture,” in which transgressors, however minor their infractions, find themselves cast into outer darkness.
Beyond cancel culture, which is reactive, institutions are embedding within their systems ideological tests to weed out dissenters. At universities within the University of California system, for example, teachers who want to apply for tenure-track positions have to affirm their commitment to “equity, diversity, and inclusion”—and to have demonstrated it, even if it has nothing to do with their field.
De facto loyalty tests to diversity ideology are common in corporate America, and have now found their way into STEM faculties and publications, as well as into medical science.
A Soviet-born U.S. physician told me—after I agreed not to use his name—that social justice ideology is forcing physicians like him to ignore their medical training and judgment when it comes to transgender health. He said it is not permissible within his institution to advise gender dysphoric patients against treatments they desire, even when a physician believes it is not in that particular patient’s health interest.
Intellectuals Are the Revolutionary Class
In our populist era, politicians and talk-radio polemicists can rile up a crowd by denouncing elites. Nevertheless, in most societies, intellectual and cultural elites determine its long-term direction.
“[T]he key actor in history is not individual genius but rather the network and the new institutions that are created out of those networks,” writes sociologist James Davison Hunter. Though a revolutionary idea might emerge from the masses, says Hunter, “it does not gain traction until it is embraced and propagated by elites” working through their “well-developed networks and powerful institutions.”
This is why it is critically important to keep an eye on intellectual discourse. Arendt warns that the twentieth-century totalitarian experience shows how a determined and skillful minority can come to rule over an indifferent and disengaged majority. In our time, most people regard the politically correct insanity of campus radicals as not worthy of attention. They mock them as “snowflakes” and “social justice warriors.”
This is a serious mistake. In radicalizing the broader class of elites, social justice warriors (SJWs) are playing a similar historic role to the Bolsheviks in prerevolutionary Russia. SJW ranks are full of middle-class, secular, educated young people wracked by guilt and anxiety over their own privilege, alienated from their own traditions, and desperate to identify with something, or someone, to give them a sense of wholeness and purpose.
For them, the ideology of social justice—as defined not by church teaching but by critical theorists in the academy—functions as a pseudo-religion. Far from being confined to campuses and dry intellectual journals, SJW ideals are transforming elite institutions and networks of power and influence. They are marching through the institutions of bourgeois society, conquering them, and using them to transform the world. For example, when the LGBT cause was adopted by corporate America, its ultimate victory was assured.
Futuristic Fatalism
To be sure, none of this means that totalitarianism is inevitable. But they do signify that the weaknesses in contemporary American society are consonant with a pre-totalitarian state. Like the imperial Russians, we Americans may well be living in a fog of self-deception about our own country’s stability. It only takes a catalyst like war, economic depression, plague, or some other severe and prolonged crisis that brings the legitimacy of the liberal democratic order into question.
As Arendt warned more than half a century ago:
There is a great temptation to explain away the intrinsically incredible by means of liberal rationalizations. In each one of us, there lurks such a liberal, wheedling us with the voice of common sense. The road to totalitarian domination leads through many intermediate stages for which we can find numerous analogues and precedents. . . . What common sense and “normal people” refuse to believe is that everything is possible.
If totalitarianism comes, it will almost certainly not be Stalinism 2.0, with gulags, secret police, and an all-powerful central state. That would not be necessary. The power of surveillance technology, woke capitalism, and fear of losing bourgeois comfort and status will probably be enough to compel conformity by most. At least at first, it will be a soft totalitarianism, more on the Brave New World model than the Nineteen Eighty-Four one—but totalitarianism all the same.
A Czech immigrant to the U.S. who works in academia told me that this “is not supposed to be happening here”—but it is.
“Any time I try to explain current events and their meaning to my friends or acquaintances, I am met with blank stares or downright nonsense,” he says. His own young adult children, born in America and indoctrinated into identity-politics ideology by public schooling, think their father is an alarmist kook. Can anyone blame a man like this for concluding that Americans are going to have to learn about the evils of totalitarianism the hard way?
From the book LIVE NOT BY LIES by Rod Dreher, to be published on September 29, 2020 by Sentinel, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2020 by Rod Dreher.


theamericanconservative--2020-10-01--First Debate Full of Missed Opportunities for Biden

Strangely , Biden failed to land any punches on the Trump administration 's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic .
US President Donald Trump and Democratic Presidential candidate and former US Vice President Joe Biden exchange arguments during the first presidential debate on September 29 , 2020 .
( Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images ) The first debate between President Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden was an abominable 90 minute shout-fest that was more distasteful and dissatisfying than toddlers throwing a tantrum .
Trump was even more pugnacious , overbearing and dismissive towards Biden than he was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ President constantly interrupted both the moderator Chris Wallace and Biden .
He shouted , spoke out of turn , and lobbed insults .
True to form , Trump argued with Wallace .
Biden returned fire , calling Trump a “ clown , ” a “ racist , ” and telling him to “ shush ” and “ shut up.
” As repulsive as the display was to many , it probably didn ’ t dismay Trump ’ s supporters , being very on-brand and not dissimilar from the President ’ s Twitter rants @ @ @ @ @ @ @ expect that behavior from Trump , a debate where two people are behaving like this represents a sad state of affairs for the country .
The debate was also chock full of missed opportunities for Biden .
Right out of the gate , Biden promised “ the first thing I would do as president is eliminate the president ’ s tax cut.
” It was a strange way to begin .
Were there really people watching at home that think raising taxes is a good idea in the middle of a pandemic ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ been a sure-loser for the past four decades , this seemed a gratuitous self-inflicted wound .
“ Why didn ’ t you change the tax code the last 47 years ?
” Trump shot back , a not particularly effective riposte referring to Biden ’ s many years holding public office .
Things only got worse from there .
Biden ’ s many missed opportunities were most glaring on the subject of the COVID-19 pandemic currently crippling the nation .
Trump criticized Biden for the Obama administration ’ s handling of H1N1 “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” said Trump , handing Biden a golden opportunity .
Biden could have said that they briefed the incoming Trump administration on the possibility of a pandemic and even gave the Trump administration a playbook , which reportedly they threw out .
Obama ’ s national security adviser Susan Rice has said that , “ We prepared the administration with a pandemic for dummies playbook [ on pandemics . ]
And a table-top exercise .
And so many other briefings.
” Biden could also have pointed out that Trump ’ s national security @ @ @ @ @ @ @ National Security Council ’ s ( NSC ) office overseeing responses to pandemics , a decision which surely cost lives .
But Biden didn ’ t mention any of these things .
He instead responded by citing the numbers : “ 14,000 people died , not 200,000 .
There was no economic recession… we didn ’ t shut down the economy .
This is his economy .
He shut down.
” The answer highlights a Trump strength—the booming economy pre-Covid—and doesn ’ t effectively portray the extent to which the Trump administration bungled @ @ @ @ @ @ @ administration would do differently .
Another missed opportunity came when Trump boasted that no one has been hurt by attending his rallies .
Biden could have very effectively responded that Herman Cain died from contracting COVID-19 after he ’ d attended an indoor Trump rally in Tulsa without a mask .
Trump might have responded that no one really knows where Cain contracted the virus , but then Biden could have highlighted that we don ’ t know because the Trump administration hasn ’ t instituted even rudimentary contact tracing .
Biden also @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he meant when he claimed “ so many Democratic governors said I did a tremendous job with COVID , ” or brought up that many governors said he demanded praise in exchange for needed medical supplies , but Biden lost that opportunity too .
Strikingly , Biden then got into an argument with moderator Chris Wallace about whether his vice presidential running mate , Kamala Harris , had told people not to trust vaccine scientists .
Biden appeared caught off guard when Trump slammed his history of supporting legislation that incarcerated black men @ @ @ @ @ @ @ m letting people out of jail now , ” Trump said to Biden .
“ You ’ ve treated the black community as bad as anyone in the country .
You called them superpredators and you ’ ve called them worse than that.
” As Reasonpoints out , “ Biden has said a lot of regrettable things about criminal justice , but this remark was actually Hillary Clinton ’ s , ” not that you would know it from watching the debate .
Quite early in the debate , Trump was able to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his own party , as well as the “ Green New Deal.
” Biden didn ’ t elicit any similar disavowal of the right-wing from Trump .
It was the moderator who asked Trump to condemn white supremacists and right-wing militias , or tell them to stand back , to which Trump responded , “ stand back and stand by.
” He then launched into another attack on Biden , this time about antifa and “ law and order.
” Neither candidate agreed that systemic racism exists within the police or the criminal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Biden ’ s standing with the Black Lives Matter movement .
Wallace asked Biden , “ What does reimagining policing mean ?
” Biden responded evasively : “ What I support is police having the opportunity to deal with the problems they face.
” Biden said that there are a couple of bad apples among cops , and then he curiously recommended that “ a psychologist or psychiatrist ” be sent out on 911 calls along with the police .
This mix of confusion , utter lack of policy proposals , insults , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Instead of specifics , Biden waffled and sometimes appeared confused .
During those moments , he resorted to looking at the camera and saying a variation of , “ Look , no one trusts Trump.
” That may be true , but it certainly didn ’ t leave the viewer with the impression that Biden has a handle on the facts , or even has plans for dealing with the very dire state the country is in .

The first debate between President Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden was an abominable 90 minute shout-fest that was more distasteful and dissatisfying than toddlers throwing a tantrum.
Trump was even more pugnacious, overbearing and dismissive towards Biden than he was in 2016 with Hillary Clinton. The President constantly interrupted both the moderator Chris Wallace and Biden. He shouted, spoke out of turn, and lobbed insults. True to form, Trump argued with Wallace. Biden returned fire, calling Trump a “clown,” a “racist,” and telling him to “shush” and “shut up.”
As repulsive as the display was to many, it probably didn’t dismay Trump’s supporters, being very on-brand and not dissimilar from the President’s Twitter rants. While we’ve come to expect that behavior from Trump, a debate where two people are behaving like this represents a sad state of affairs for the country.
The debate was also chock full of missed opportunities for Biden.
Right out of the gate, Biden promised “the first thing I would do as president is eliminate the president’s tax cut.” It was a strange way to begin. Were there really people watching at home that think raising taxes is a good idea in the middle of a pandemic?
Given that guaranteeing voters more taxes has been a sure-loser for the past four decades, this seemed a gratuitous self-inflicted wound.
“Why didn’t you change the tax code the last 47 years?” Trump shot back, a not particularly effective riposte referring to Biden’s many years holding public office.
Things only got worse from there. Biden’s many missed opportunities were most glaring on the subject of the COVID-19 pandemic currently crippling the nation. Trump criticized Biden for the Obama administration’s handling of H1N1
“H1n1. You were a disaster,” said Trump, handing Biden a golden opportunity.
Biden could have said that they briefed the incoming Trump administration on the possibility of a pandemic and even gave the Trump administration a playbook, which reportedly they threw out.
Obama’s national security adviser Susan Rice has said that, “We prepared the administration with a pandemic for dummies playbook [on pandemics.] And a table-top exercise. And so many other briefings.”
Biden could also have pointed out that Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, disbanded the National Security Council’s (NSC) office overseeing responses to pandemics, a decision which surely cost lives.
But Biden didn’t mention any of these things. He instead responded by citing the numbers: “14,000 people died, not 200,000. There was no economic recession… we didn’t shut down the economy. This is his economy. He shut down.”
The answer highlights a Trump strength—the booming economy pre-Covid—and doesn’t effectively portray the extent to which the Trump administration bungled the pandemic response or what a Biden administration would do differently.
Another missed opportunity came when Trump boasted that no one has been hurt by attending his rallies.
Biden could have very effectively responded that Herman Cain died from contracting COVID-19 after he’d attended an indoor Trump rally in Tulsa without a mask.
Trump might have responded that no one really knows where Cain contracted the virus, but then Biden could have highlighted that we don’t know because the Trump administration hasn’t instituted even rudimentary contact tracing.
Biden also could have asked Trump to specify what he meant when he claimed “so many Democratic governors said I did a tremendous job with COVID,” or brought up that many governors said he demanded praise in exchange for needed medical supplies, but Biden lost that opportunity too.
Strikingly, Biden then got into an argument with moderator Chris Wallace about whether his vice presidential running mate, Kamala Harris, had told people not to trust vaccine scientists.
Biden appeared caught off guard when Trump slammed his history of supporting legislation that incarcerated black men at record rates.
“I’m letting people out of jail now,” Trump said to Biden. “You’ve treated the black community as bad as anyone in the country. You called them superpredators and you’ve called them worse than that.”
As Reason points out, “Biden has said a lot of regrettable things about criminal justice, but this remark was actually Hillary Clinton’s,” not that you would know it from watching the debate.
Quite early in the debate, Trump was able to get Biden to denounce the left-wing of his own party, as well as the “Green New Deal.” Biden didn’t elicit any similar disavowal of the right-wing from Trump.
It was the moderator who asked Trump to condemn white supremacists and right-wing militias, or tell them to stand back, to which Trump responded, “stand back and stand by.” He then launched into another attack on Biden, this time about antifa and “law and order.”
Neither candidate agreed that systemic racism exists within the police or the criminal justice system, which will probably hurt Biden’s standing with the Black Lives Matter movement.
Wallace asked Biden, “What does reimagining policing mean?” Biden responded evasively: “What I support is police having the opportunity to deal with the problems they face.”
Biden said that there are a couple of bad apples among cops, and then he curiously recommended that “a psychologist or psychiatrist” be sent out on 911 calls along with the police.
This mix of confusion, utter lack of policy proposals, insults, falsehoods and shouting continued throughout the night. Instead of specifics, Biden waffled and sometimes appeared confused. During those moments, he resorted to looking at the camera and saying a variation of, “Look, no one trusts Trump.”
That may be true, but it certainly didn’t leave the viewer with the impression that Biden has a handle on the facts, or even has plans for dealing with the very dire state the country is in.


theamericanconservative--2020-10-01--What Pennsylvanians Think About Trump

What Pennsylvanians Think About Trump

If the word for 2016 flyover voters was “ angry ” in 2020 it ’ s “ tired.
” Anger put Trump in the White House , but it is unclear if tired will work for Biden .
The Democrats ’ strategy—our candidate isn ’ t Trump—may leave too many voters staying home .
With the election only about a month away , I spent a couple of days in Pennsylvania talking to people , as it may be the keystone of the swing states , the one to decide the election .
It ’ s a strange place politically @ @ @ @ @ @ @ East , Pittsburgh in the West , and Alabama in between.
” I visited in between , the people I chatted with consisting of those who would talk with me .
Sometimes a few words , sometimes a couple of Yuenglings .
But before dismissing any conclusions , consider in the current climate just how inaccurate polling is .
I found folks slow to discuss what they were thinking , testing to see if I was going to bite them for not wearing a mask , or rant off about America being great @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Which candidate do you support ?
” to learn much .
In the mostly small towns I visited , there were three types of people .
Those who ’ d left a long time ago , those thinking about leaving , and those stuck there .
The endless stream of Trump atrocities talked about on TV is not what voters are talking about .
What neither candidate seems to address , or even be more than vaguely aware of , is how much on-the-ground economics matters to the people left in these places @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , old brick buildings that used to make… what ?
Sometimes there are clues , a mini-mall with far more vape shops than one place needs in a broken industrial cavern with the words American Ribbon still visible on the facade .
Other times it ’ s an unused smokestack filled with echoes of small manufacturing .
Look around and you can find the old train depot near main street ( it ’ s either abandoned or a too-cute coffee shop ) .
The tracks themselves are buried like some ancient river .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ life they remember is coming back , but they are desperate for a bone .
Trump promised in 2016 to do something about the local economy and never really tried .
Biden says he will revive things , but leaves hanging the question of why he didn ’ t do that during his eight years in the White House .
Running on Obama ’ s record means just that .
People cringe when they hear Biden defend Obamacare .
Unlike journos who tweet about it while on company-sponsored Blue Cross , these people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ care instead of just insurance out of the plan .
Trump didn ’ t fix it , but he isn ’ t Joe telling people it ’ s all they ’ re ever gon na get , either .
People remember it was the Democrats who voted for NAFTA and crushed out their last wind ( Biden voted for NAFTA ) and while Biden claimed in 2008 it should be renegotiated during the Obama years , it wasn ’ t .
It was Trump who renegotiated the agreement , and while that didn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is seen as better than nothing .
People like Trump ’ s trade battles .
Nobody is naive enough to think they will change much , but they like to see the pain spread around .
“ F*ck the Chinese ” was heard more than once .
It is hard to overstate how deeply these Americans despise Obama ’ s response to the 2008 financial crisis .
Many saw the values of their homes dramatically decrease .
They don ’ t own much stock outside of flaccid IRAs , and so they benefited @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his own best work for Wall Street , but home prices have risen over the last few years , with even an odd twist : much of the area is within an hour or two of New York City , and city people fleeing COVID have driven up sale prices .
There are truths here .
SSI , Medicaid , the Earned Income Credit , and housing assistance are a way of life now .
One can accept food stamps but still think handouts are for the lazy .
People can feel cheated @ @ @ @ @ @ @ full of junk made overseas without being anti-immigrant .
Legitimate anger doesn ’ t make you a racist .
Trump understands all this better than the Democrats now speaking for their party , and that makes his voters ignore a lot of the things that drive progressives into derangement .
Biden meanwhile stumbles to gain relevance , frequently mentioning his roots in Scranton , Pennsylvania .
People smile , Midwest-polite , knowing he hasn ’ t lived there since age 11 , 1953 , when the place was thriving .
The Democratic strategy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fluke .
Instead , Trump stumbled onto something hidden in plain sight .
Large numbers of Americans , mostly white and formerly middle class , were angry ( whites without bachelor ’ s degrees make up 55 percent of Pennsylvania ’ s population 25 or older ) .
They could not find decent jobs and they wanted someone , if not to fix it , to tell them who to blame .
The Democrats tell them to blame themselves for being racist and uneducated—learn to code !
Trump tells them it is not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Obama , it was the Chinese , it was the Democrats , immigrants .
Neither narrative is complete but which one will find residuals of that anger to drive turnout ?
Hint : The area went for Trump in 2016 .
Prior to his victory , Pennsylvania voted Democrat in six straight presidential elections .
Based on new registrations , Democrats lost more Pennsylvania voters in the last four years than they gained .
More Democrats abandoned their party to become Independents compared to Republicans .
People worry Biden is a Trojan Horse @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a Biden signature policy initiative .
They worry Democrats who don ’ t understand them will really be in charge .
To some it seems men , old people , straight people , entire regions of the country , are being excluded .
It isn ’ t status anxiety but a sense that what used to be a difference of political opinion now makes someone illegitimate as a person .
They hear those who may soon be running the government call them haters just because they are poor and white .
While Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mean Obama without the gravitas , or he could mean a Pelosi regency , or a progressive charge of night riders led by Harris .
Like Biden , Trump is old and sick , but if not Trump you get Pence , not the deluge .
When people are excluded from the most important decisions affecting their lives , they lose faith .
That bitter lived experience fueled distrust and an ideological drift that manifested itself in electing Trump in 2016 ( it could have just as easily elected Bernie over Trump then @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t dissipated enough for many to vote Democrat , even if they won ’ t vote Trump .
Many of the people of color I met felt the same way as their white neighbors .
Having started at the same place in the factories and fallen together into poverty , they ended up in the same dismal state as whites .
A big difference , however , is that black frustration often shows up as low voter turnout , while whites vote Republican .
Who wins Pennsylvania seems a battle of enthusiasm .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ important role of conservative talk radio in these areas .
People spend a fair amount of time in their vehicles , and they listen to regional and local talk radio sometimes for hours .
Nobody in New York pays much attention to these very conservative hosts , many mixing religious and political themes .
They are skillful in using listener call-ins to make it seem an agenda is organic when it is driven .
The idiots who draw conclusions from Twitter have no idea how powerful a force this may be in driving @ @ @ @ @ @ @ For example , a lot of talk radio focuses on sports .
Sports are a big deal out here , high school , college , and the pros .
Nobody is happy to see games canceled because of COVID , and few seemed happy about the massive political tumor growing on sports , even if they supported the general ideas of BLM .
“ Save it for off the field , ” was what most said .
Extreme loyalty toward a team has replaced a lot of other loyalties—country , government , religion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and should not be messed with lightly .
It looks like just an affinity for the Yankees or the Nittany Lions , but there is deeper water underneath .
Trump ’ s role in getting the Big Ten teams back on the field was not overlooked .
Meanwhile , with a Democratic Governor , there ’ s no homecoming , no trick-or-treat , not much to do but hang at Walmart .
If many of the yellowed issues the MSM cares about come up a wash between Trump and Biden , don ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
For an exhausted electorate , tired now of being tired , that might just be enough .
Peter Van Buren , a 24-year State Department veteran , is the author of We Meant Well : How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People , Hooper ’ s War : A Novel of WWII Japan , and Ghosts of Tom Joad : A Story of the 99 Percent .

If the word for 2016 flyover voters was “angry” in 2020 it’s “tired.” Anger put Trump in the White House, but it is unclear if tired will work for Biden. The Democrats’ strategy—our candidate isn’t Trump—may leave too many voters staying home.
With the election only about a month away, I spent a couple of days in Pennsylvania talking to people, as it may be the keystone of the swing states, the one to decide the election. It’s a strange place politically, described as “Philly in the East, Pittsburgh in the West, and Alabama in between.” I visited in between, the people I chatted with consisting of those who would talk with me. Sometimes a few words, sometimes a couple of Yuenglings. But before dismissing any conclusions, consider in the current climate just how inaccurate polling is. I found folks slow to discuss what they were thinking, testing to see if I was going to bite them for not wearing a mask, or rant off about America being great again. It took more than “Which candidate do you support?” to learn much.
In the mostly small towns I visited, there were three types of people. Those who’d left a long time ago, those thinking about leaving, and those stuck there. The endless stream of Trump atrocities talked about on TV is not what voters are talking about. What neither candidate seems to address, or even be more than vaguely aware of, is how much on-the-ground economics matters to the people left in these places.
Each town is an archaeological site, old brick buildings that used to make… what? Sometimes there are clues, a mini-mall with far more vape shops than one place needs in a broken industrial cavern with the words American Ribbon still visible on the facade. Other times it’s an unused smokestack filled with echoes of small manufacturing. Look around and you can find the old train depot near main street (it’s either abandoned or a too-cute coffee shop). The tracks themselves are buried like some ancient river.
Nobody really believes the blue-collar, middle-class life they remember is coming back, but they are desperate for a bone. Trump promised in 2016 to do something about the local economy and never really tried. Biden says he will revive things, but leaves hanging the question of why he didn’t do that during his eight years in the White House.
Running on Obama’s record means just that. People cringe when they hear Biden defend Obamacare. Unlike journos who tweet about it while on company-sponsored Blue Cross, these people tried and failed to get good health care instead of just insurance out of the plan. Trump didn’t fix it, but he isn’t Joe telling people it’s all they’re ever gonna get, either.
People remember it was the Democrats who voted for NAFTA and crushed out their last wind (Biden voted for NAFTA) and while Biden claimed in 2008 it should be renegotiated during the Obama years, it wasn’t. It was Trump who renegotiated the agreement, and while that didn’t really help much here it is seen as better than nothing. People like Trump’s trade battles. Nobody is naive enough to think they will change much, but they like to see the pain spread around. “F*ck the Chinese” was heard more than once.
It is hard to overstate how deeply these Americans despise Obama’s response to the 2008 financial crisis. Many saw the values of their homes dramatically decrease. They don’t own much stock outside of flaccid IRAs, and so they benefited little from recovery. Trump certainly did his own best work for Wall Street, but home prices have risen over the last few years, with even an odd twist: much of the area is within an hour or two of New York City, and city people fleeing COVID have driven up sale prices.
There are truths here. SSI, Medicaid, the Earned Income Credit, and housing assistance are a way of life now. One can accept food stamps but still think handouts are for the lazy. People can feel cheated working for minimum wage at a Walmart full of junk made overseas without being anti-immigrant. Legitimate anger doesn’t make you a racist. Trump understands all this better than the Democrats now speaking for their party, and that makes his voters ignore a lot of the things that drive progressives into derangement. Biden meanwhile stumbles to gain relevance, frequently mentioning his roots in Scranton, Pennsylvania. People smile, Midwest-polite, knowing he hasn’t lived there since age 11, 1953, when the place was thriving.
The Democratic strategy misunderstands Trump’s election as a fluke. Instead, Trump stumbled onto something hidden in plain sight. Large numbers of Americans, mostly white and formerly middle class, were angry (whites without bachelor’s degrees make up 55 percent of Pennsylvania’s population 25 or older). They could not find decent jobs and they wanted someone, if not to fix it, to tell them who to blame.
The Democrats tell them to blame themselves for being racist and uneducated—learn to code! Trump tells them it is not their fault. It was because of Obama, it was the Chinese, it was the Democrats, immigrants. Neither narrative is complete but which one will find residuals of that anger to drive turnout? Hint: The area went for Trump in 2016. Prior to his victory, Pennsylvania voted Democrat in six straight presidential elections. Based on new registrations, Democrats lost more Pennsylvania voters in the last four years than they gained. More Democrats abandoned their party to become Independents compared to Republicans.
People worry Biden is a Trojan Horse; not a single person could name a Biden signature policy initiative. They worry Democrats who don’t understand them will really be in charge. To some it seems men, old people, straight people, entire regions of the country, are being excluded. It isn’t status anxiety but a sense that what used to be a difference of political opinion now makes someone illegitimate as a person. They hear those who may soon be running the government call them haters just because they are poor and white. While Trump is a known element, Biden could mean Obama without the gravitas, or he could mean a Pelosi regency, or a progressive charge of night riders led by Harris. Like Biden, Trump is old and sick, but if not Trump you get Pence, not the deluge.
When people are excluded from the most important decisions affecting their lives, they lose faith. That bitter lived experience fueled distrust and an ideological drift that manifested itself in electing Trump in 2016 (it could have just as easily elected Bernie over Trump then). And that distrust hasn’t dissipated enough for many to vote Democrat, even if they won’t vote Trump. Many of the people of color I met felt the same way as their white neighbors. Having started at the same place in the factories and fallen together into poverty, they ended up in the same dismal state as whites. A big difference, however, is that black frustration often shows up as low voter turnout, while whites vote Republican.
Who wins Pennsylvania seems a battle of enthusiasm. Little-understood by the coastal MSM is the important role of conservative talk radio in these areas. People spend a fair amount of time in their vehicles, and they listen to regional and local talk radio sometimes for hours. Nobody in New York pays much attention to these very conservative hosts, many mixing religious and political themes. They are skillful in using listener call-ins to make it seem an agenda is organic when it is driven. The idiots who draw conclusions from Twitter have no idea how powerful a force this may be in driving a turnout which will favor Trump.
For example, a lot of talk radio focuses on sports. Sports are a big deal out here, high school, college, and the pros. Nobody is happy to see games canceled because of COVID, and few seemed happy about the massive political tumor growing on sports, even if they supported the general ideas of BLM. “Save it for off the field,” was what most said. Extreme loyalty toward a team has replaced a lot of other loyalties—country, government, religion, party—in these people’s lives and should not be messed with lightly. It looks like just an affinity for the Yankees or the Nittany Lions, but there is deeper water underneath. Trump’s role in getting the Big Ten teams back on the field was not overlooked. Meanwhile, with a Democratic Governor, there’s no homecoming, no trick-or-treat, not much to do but hang at Walmart.
If many of the yellowed issues the MSM cares about come up a wash between Trump and Biden, don’t underestimate this kind of small-but-it-matters-to-me thing. For an exhausted electorate, tired now of being tired, that might just be enough.
Peter Van Buren, a 24-year State Department veteran, is the author of We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People, Hooper’s War: A Novel of WWII Japan, and Ghosts of Tom Joad: A Story of the 99 Percent.