It seems of late that all the major conservative pundits I've admired over the years have turned into a tribe of audience hating grumps that make the Muppet's sarcastic duo of Statler and Waldorf look like a supportive therapy team. David French, Claire Berlinski, Jonah Goldberg, and Jay Nordlinger among others want to un-elect the American people, especially most American conservatives and replace them with, hell, I don't know, a bunch of French grammar lovers, Canadian opera-goers, a team of former Reagan speechwriters? I'm not really sure. There is no sense in anything they say of late about our political landscape and daily life that seem to reflect the reality of American politics and social reality, and nothing but contempt from them with those who thoughtfully disagree with them. Is there plenty of room for criticism of the American right these days, sure, and there is perhaps more ugliness and racism lurking on the right than many of supposed (as revealed in the Age of Trump), however, I think some of it has been hyped and exaggerated, by those on the right who find it a convenient way to define their opposition to this moment in our history; but were not talking about condemning that, which would both be facile, easy, and justifiable. No, there is just an incomprehension of what has happened and an inability to grasp it, let alone understand it. The result is their ideas and insights have become strangely flat, circular, and uninteresting. It saddens me personally, because all of them them helped me grow intellectually in my early 20's to early 30's, but a decade on, I find them increasingly dull, infuriating, insufferable, or just plain whiny. At least when talking shop, when Jay talks about dissidents or music, or Claire about life in France, or French discusses legal issues there is still the old sparkle and insight, but beyond that and it is a few steps away from either crazy-town (Berlinski), boredom (French/Goldberg), or petulance (Nordlinger). Now, I know that they still have their acolytes, and they still are finding people who agree with them and are trying to build that into a new audience, but that is something profound in itself, no?
I write this because it saddens me and angers me, and confounds me. Is it all part of the Alice in Wonderland topsy-turviness of our new national discourse, or just the moving on of punditry. The failure of these good guys and girls to help the nation I think is a tragedy, but maybe we have limited insights and not much to offer. Part of it is the right has been shaken by several earth-quakes since 2000 and in these 20's no new consensus has emerged as we adapt to the hellscape before us. As Jonah's NRO column today posited, if things are so good, why are we so unhappy as a nation? Indeed, that is the question. In part, the right is unsettled, and there is no consensus, and we crave that sense of unity and marching together, as much as people always have, right, left, or center, or whatever more three dimensional model we should all now embrace. Everyone changes, pundits, society, and readers, so perhaps it should be no surprise, but when the whole tribe of Abu-ben-Adem goes one way and the readership goes another, well, maybe there is something to ponder?
Perhaps the ideas they unleashed had a life of their own, and like all teachers, they are astonished to discover that many of their pupils took away the wrong lessons from the material they put in front of them. You can't control how people take your ideas and combine them with their own and their experiences to make new meanings and make decisions from that synthesis. Pupils often look at their teachers with fondness, not because we learned what they wanted us to learn, but because they gave us the tools to see the world and make sense of it for ourselves. Strange times, when people working together in thinking about something critically find themselves estranged even as we still mostly agree about core principals, but here I think is the interesting thing, that needs pondered a new. What core principals were really at work, and that needs to be returned to because now I'm starting to ramble.
I write this because it saddens me and angers me, and confounds me. Is it all part of the Alice in Wonderland topsy-turviness of our new national discourse, or just the moving on of punditry. The failure of these good guys and girls to help the nation I think is a tragedy, but maybe we have limited insights and not much to offer. Part of it is the right has been shaken by several earth-quakes since 2000 and in these 20's no new consensus has emerged as we adapt to the hellscape before us. As Jonah's NRO column today posited, if things are so good, why are we so unhappy as a nation? Indeed, that is the question. In part, the right is unsettled, and there is no consensus, and we crave that sense of unity and marching together, as much as people always have, right, left, or center, or whatever more three dimensional model we should all now embrace. Everyone changes, pundits, society, and readers, so perhaps it should be no surprise, but when the whole tribe of Abu-ben-Adem goes one way and the readership goes another, well, maybe there is something to ponder?
Perhaps the ideas they unleashed had a life of their own, and like all teachers, they are astonished to discover that many of their pupils took away the wrong lessons from the material they put in front of them. You can't control how people take your ideas and combine them with their own and their experiences to make new meanings and make decisions from that synthesis. Pupils often look at their teachers with fondness, not because we learned what they wanted us to learn, but because they gave us the tools to see the world and make sense of it for ourselves. Strange times, when people working together in thinking about something critically find themselves estranged even as we still mostly agree about core principals, but here I think is the interesting thing, that needs pondered a new. What core principals were really at work, and that needs to be returned to because now I'm starting to ramble.
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