After the massive belly-flop that was the poorly thought out, very-poorly executed and way-late “Against Trump” diatribe last week, “National Review” is apparently still so bitter that on Monday morning another fatal decision was made — to attack everyday Americans as stupid homophobes.
With conservatives like these, who needs leftists, or the mainstream media?
The National Review Online (NRO) lead piece was written by Thurston Howell III Kevin Williamson, titled “Our Post-Literate Politics” (the title changed later in the day), and puts forth the theory that Donald Trump is winning because the everyday Americans who support the billionaire businessman do not or cannot read.
[T]he candidacy of Donald Trump is something that could not happen in a nation that could read.
This is the full flower of post-literate politics.
Trump supporters are also bigots:
Thomas Aquinas cautioned against “homo unius libri,” a warning that would not get very far with the typical Trump voter stuck sniggering over “homo.” (They’d snigger over “snigger,” too, for similar reasons.)
The word “insalubrious” is then used, which I had to look up:
Donald Trump is the face of that insalubrious relationship, a lifelong crony capitalist who brags about buying political favors. But his enthusiasts, devoid as they are of a literate politics capable of thinking about all three sides of a triangle at the same time[.]
You have to read the whole thing to believe it. Had this published word-for-word at Salon, no one would blink an eye. In other words, anyone who believed NRO would be circumspect in the face of last week’s backlash was sorely mistaken.
NRO itself has become the very caricature it paints of Trump. All the once-necessary publication has is insults as opposed to ideas — as though pomposity itself is argument enough. Don’t you understand, if the rubes could quote Thomas Aquinas like us snobs, the rubes would know what is best for them!
Apparently it is unforgivable that the hoi polloi are simply too busy going about the business of keeping our world turning to have the time to read “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”; too busy fighting our wars, unplugging our toilets, fixing our cars, processing our food, delivering our heating oil, and working three part-time jobs.
The Unwashed have, however, read enough to know that Democrats never do this — never attack their own voters like NRO and the rest of the Establishment have this year.
But maybe — just maybe — because they spend all their time in the Real World and not hiding inside NRO’s erudite reading list, the Unwashed also intuitively understand that what NRO and the Establishment have been peddling for five presidential cycles is pure undiluted, self-serving bull shit.
The Unwashed might not have read Shakespeare, but they can read a paycheck.
The Unwashed might not have read “Capitalism and Freedom,” but they have read a pink slip as their job went overseas or to an exploited illegal immigrant.
The Unwashed might not have consumed the same library of Greek and Roman classics (in the original or in translation) but they have consumed years of “Dial 1 for English,” Common Core math problems, terror attacks committed by immigrants, and an Establishment so removed Jeb Bush is being sold as a winner because … he speaks Spanish.
The Unwashed might not read a publication that still pines for a Real Conservative, no less than the architect of ObamaCare who has already lost a nationwide presidential election, but they can read a country slipping away into a morass of political correctness, identity politics, and a Republican Party more concerned with the trough that comes with treating illegal immigrants better than America’s working class.
NRO simply can’t believe Americans are stupid enough to fall for a slogan like “Make America Great Again.”
Maybe NRO should read more.
NRO appears to have been caught off guard by an electorate that isn’t falling for The Establishment’s snake oil this year.
Maybe NRO should step out of the Velvet Bubble now and again.
The publication that once served up a cup that runneth over with ideas is now reduced to lashing out with ad hominem — not against the Powerful (like Trump), but against the everyday Americans found in William F. Buckley’s fabled phone book.
Things really have changed at NRO.
Impotent rage is a helluva drug.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC
My link says Buckley used the “Manhattan” phone book in his famous quote. Twitter is telling me it was “Boston.” The piece has been edited to avoid an insalubrious battle.
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