…and Trump Derangement Syndrome rages on!
National Review—a money losing, elite conservative circle jerk welfare program masquerading as a magazine—has been standing athwart history yelling BLERGH at this whole Trump phenomenon. They’ve been dedicating lengthy article after length article trying to convince you, true conservative, that Donald Trump doesn’t represent your values. With those efforts failing, it makes sense to take a second look at the primary voters who keep bolstering this clown. Upon review of the electorate, NR columnist Kevin Williamson could not hold back his contempt:
If you spend time in hardscrabble, white upstate New York, or eastern Kentucky, or my own native West Texas, and you take an honest look at the welfare dependency, the drug and alcohol addiction, the family anarchy — which is to say, the whelping of human children with all the respect and wisdom of a stray dog — you will come to an awful realization. It wasn’t Beijing. It wasn’t even Washington, as bad as Washington can be. It wasn’t immigrants from Mexico, excessive and problematic as our current immigration levels are. It wasn’t any of that.
Nothing happened to them. There wasn’t some awful disaster. There wasn’t a war or a famine or a plague or a foreign occupation. Even the economic changes of the past few decades do very little to explain the dysfunction and negligence — and the incomprehensible malice — of poor white America. So the gypsum business in Garbutt ain’t what it used to be. There is more to life in the 21st century than wallboard and cheap sentimentality about how the Man closed the factories down.
The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs. Forget your goddamned gypsum, and, if he has a problem with that, forget Ed Burke, too. The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin.
Such eloquent, open seething has got to be like an enema for the soul. While its refreshing to see them reveal they hate all poor, not just minority-poor, it is breathtaking to describe your side’s primary voters in a primary season in such hated terms. I always figured the conservative elites loathe their base but this is gross. Firstly, these towns aren’t “negative assets”, Jesus. It’s not a fucking balance sheet at Goldman Sachs, these are people. Racist and horribly misled people, yes, but they are still people. Secondly, it’s uniquely terrible because publications, such as NATIONAL REVIEW, advocate policies that cause these rural white towns to become dysfunctional. It’s the same story everywhere. Lack of school funding, destroyed unions, outsourced jobs, regressive taxes, restrictive reproductive access, an underfunded retirement system, lack of universal healthcare… All multiplied by 24/7 media apparatus that happily sells them bootstrapism and reverse mortgages while scapegoating their dismal 401(k) returns on the illegal alien gay abortion doctors eating welfare steaks.
In short, the endearing legacy of 20th century conservative policy as advocated by the National Review is in full swing here. We’re just experiencing the fallout.
H/T to LGMBlog. Kevin’s column is here, behind a paywall.