Deconstructing TICFTI:WTWNS, Part 2: White Nationalist Boogaloo
Curiouser and Curiouser
Click here for Part 1
Click here for Part 3
When last we parted, I was flipping over a table and you were spraying down your browser window with a jet of liquid fire as a form of cleansing punishment. Now that our tear ducts are replenished, let’s resume this futile exercise and finally learn (maybe?) just what is so intellectual about the case for Donald Trump.
The First Part of the Intellectual Case for Donald Trump
However, convincing as I do think these arguments are
I feel I made pretty short work of that.
there is a conspicuous absence of a third case, which one usually sees being made for presumptive GOP nominees (and whatever the denialists say, yes, Trump is the presumptive GOP nominee now) at this point in their run — i.e., to my knowledge, no one has yet made an intellectual case for Trump.
Doesn’t it strike you as rather odd that no one has made this case? Doesn’t it seem just a mite fishy that you, Unnamed Author of No Renown, are the first man to set foot on this continent and claim it as your territory? No? Not even the tiniest bit?
There’s a reason no one has done this successfully, and that’s because, as we’re about to find out, it’s the political equivalent of making an intellectual case that a wind-up monkey smashing two cymbals together is a cure for chronic depression.
No one has marshaled philosophical, practical, and principled arguments in defense of the idea that thinking people who care about such things should, without any compromise of their own critical faculties, decide that Trump is the man to lead America.
I’ve read this sentence probably twenty times now and still cannot confidently infer its intended meaning enough to fairly dissect the thing. I began an attempt to diagram it as a humorous demonstration of a subject-predicate war crime, but found it to be a level of self-debasement to which even I will not stoop. (If you’d like to diagram it for me, please reach out on Twitter!)
Make no mistake, it is not an easy case to make, not because there are no arguments for it, but because you can’t meaningfully separate Trump from the numerous other cultural and historical phenomena that gave rise to his candidacy, many of which are far from obvious without being exposited.
This reads like an author’s note that accidentally got left in the final text.
However, at its most basic, that case will advance three arguments:
Please observe that we’re still only introducing the grounds of the argument. I can only assume at this point the argument itself will be found someplace after the Battle of Borodino, perhaps in book XI or XII.
1. That Trump, alone among the candidates, is forcing conservatives to defend the people left behind by liberalism, however unfashionable they may be, and however culturally alien they may have once been to our movement.
The “people left behind by liberalism” — who are we talking about here? I’m beginning to get a bad feeling for some reason. Surely, you cannot be using this term as a euphemism to avoid using “white nationalists”.
2. That Trump’s candidacy is about more than one man becoming president: it is symbolic of a national cultural Zeitgeist, and speaks to the modern political moment, in ways that no other candidate has been willing or able to do.
The cause of “national cultural Zeitgeist” is the very literal antithesis of intellectualism. This belongs nowhere near your stated case. Next.
3. That Trump’s candidacy is the only tonic that can cure the conservative movement of its many ills, by forcing it to reckon both with the many ways in which the country has left it behind, and with the damning ways in which it has betrayed itself: in short, that Trump is chemotherapy for the soul of the Right.
Um. <drums fingers, reads again, drums fingers> I’ll just leave this here.
Now, the reader can probably tell
Wait, wasn’t I calling you a caricature just a few paragraphs ago? Now I’m sharp enough to deduce the next stop on this drunken magic carpet ride?
that this isn’t so much a hard case to make as a big one.
“It’s actually pretty easy. I’ll just type 39,000 words and assume no one could possibly read the whole thing”.
When it comes to the first prong, I speak not merely from dusty Ivory Tower pontification, but from actual real-world experience with my subject matter.
Right, the time you fused Oscar Meyer with George Bush’s fencepost for a senior project, or something.
When I say “the people left behind by liberalism,” I’m not speaking of some abstract demographic category. I’m speaking of actual people whom I really knew, including some of the very people whose attraction to Trump most frightens his critics.
So you promise me they won’t be some abstract demographic category?
For this reason, and also because (being a Trump supporter) I’m not exactly above a little sensationalism, I’m going to start this piece
Seriously, if you think we’re still at the start of this piece, I’m not sure what to tell you.
by answering a very uncomfortable question: Why do white nationalists support Trump, if he isn’t one himself?
You PROMISED me this mystery group wasn’t going to be some abstract demographic category. I’m disappointed in you, sir.
Additionally, you consider this an uncomfortable question? Who is this an uncomfortable question for? Why would this be an uncomfortable question for a Trump opponent to ask? If anything, it would be a very relevant & piercing question, one whose answer we’ve already puzzled out for ourselves. Are you sure this question is directed at the reader, and not, in fact, yourself or fellow Trump aficionados?
Finally, it seems you were indeed using “people left behind by liberalism” as an algebraic substitution for “white nationalists”. By this logic, every major city is populated by white nationalists, but of the sort who happen to be black.
Without even realizing you did it, you’ve accidentally formulated yourself into writing that white nationalism is the opposite side of the BLM coin.
I’m no white nationalist (in fact, being Jewish, I’m pretty sure I’m disqualified),
Good news, you’re not! The money quote there, for those who understandably don’t want to click a Stormfront link: “If you do honest work and bring your share, a small number of Jews would be acceptable”! I should add that they go on to stipulate that you’ll have to disown your culture, but for some reason I doubt that’ll be a showstopper for you. Yes, it turns out white nationalists really do seem as tolerant as I have a sinking suspicion you’re about to tell us.
and I regard the ideology with just as much disgust as I do every other form of radical identity politics.
That’s a weaselly little sentence, isn’t it? I’ve read every painful paragraph in this thing and don’t recall you mentioning a disgust for radical identity politics.
That being said, I do have a fairly unique ability to answer this question, and with apologies to Lloyd Bentsen, it can be summed up this way: I know white nationalism. A white nationalist was a friend of mine. Trump is no white nationalist.
I suspect this disastrous MadLibs concoction is just a gimmick you became particularly enamored of, and the editor, understandably comatose by this point of the story, lacked the physical consciousness to strike it from the article. However, it’s more than mildly interesting that you chose to replace “Jack Kennedy” with “white nationalist” in the Lloyd Bentsen quote, considering Jack Kennedy was the object of praise in the initial utterance.
If he’s president, there might well be fewer of them. Why? Well, if you’ll indulge me in just a little more autobiographical navel-gazing, you’ll find out.
How about a kidney instead? No?
Both kidneys?
The Girl in the Brown Skirt
“Oh God! To hear the Insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust.” — “A Christmas Carol,” Stave 3: The Second of the Three Spirits
It’s Dickens. I don’t have a cross word to say about Dickens. Well done!
I once met a young woman whom I will call Sylvia, after her favorite poet, Sylvia Plath.
Ok. <rubs temples> I should warn you, it feels like we’re going someplace bad here, even for the low standards I’m getting acclimated to.
At the time, Sylvia had been raised as a member of an infamous white nationalist organization. And I do mean “infamous.” These weren’t the comparatively well-mannered sorts that attend conferences led by Richard Spencer. These were the sorts of people who probably get raided by the FBI.
The sort of people who “probably” get raided by the FBI? Do they, or don’t they? You’re an author, or at least you’re pretending to be. Google this. Declare this a fact, or don’t declare it at all. We’re pulling on a very weird, very stupid thread here to begin with, and I’m frankly losing patience with what’s beginning to appear to be very deliberate word mincing.
Where I met her was probably the last place you might expect to find white nationalists, closeted or otherwise.
A private screening of Diary of a Mad Black Woman?
Now since I am, as already established, Jewish, this obviously made me initially regard the girl with something less than charity. I was almost afraid to speak to her.
How did you know she was a white nationalist? Did an always-thoughtful Tyler Perry set up a “white nationalists only” section at the private screening? As I understand it, we’re not quite yet to the point where they’re wearing armbands out in open society.
That is, until I actually did speak to her, in the company of another friend, who had made it his personal mission to deconvert her from her ideology, a task with which I agreed to help, mostly out of morbid intellectual curiosity.
Well, we’ve all been there. You’re trying to get dinner in the crockpot and deprogram your brainwashed Nazi friend, you look around and think “Hey, you know what I’m missing here? A JEW!”
When we first spoke to her, Sylvia was fairly careful with her words, and obviously seemed to realize she wasn’t among company who’d take kindly to open admiration of Adolf Hitler.
Always crafty and deceptive with their words, those white nationalists. You never know who they might be.
She was, however, more than happy to enthuse about Pat Buchanan, VDare, and restricting immigration.
So you’re telling me white nationalists openly enthuse about Pat Buchanan, VDare, and restricting immigration? Okay. I’m going to make a note of that. I have a feeling it will come in handy later.
Now, at the time, I was fresh off having argued for the Gang of Eight bill until I was proverbially blue in the face, so when Sylvia started talking about immigration, I obviously pounced on this as a first opportunity to break down her worldview.
Whoa. That’s a bold introductory play, pal. I myself would’ve tossed an icebreaker out there, maybe something like “Can you still enjoy Indiana Jones movies, because, well, you know, the bad guys…”
I’m fairly certain that all I managed to do was scare her,
This is why you always go with the icebreaker first!
though she did actually put up a far better fight than any white nationalist has a right to, probably because, despite her sheltered upbringing, she was off-the-charts brilliant.
Wait a second — white nationalists don’t have a right to put up a fight? Is that why you’re here, to do it for them?
This instantly registered with me, and was later confirmed when she later revealed she’d learned a new language in only two weeks.
ಠ_ಠ
Do I have to point this out? Am I derelict in my duties if I just leave it at the look of disapproval? <sigh> Fine.
She revealed to you that she had learned a new language in two weeks. And not only did this strike you as entirely believable, you found it so entirely believable that you inserted it without reservation or qualification into this story as a credibility building device.
We have now formally left the realm of bemused plausibility and entered Manti Te’o Land. Buckle up, Lennay.
I need to recharge my gullibility batteries, and you need a drink or nine for making it to the end of another installment. What is the matter with you, by the way? To be continued in Deconstructing TICFTI:WTWNS, Part 3: Revenge of the Plath.
