Maybe the rest of you are ahead of me on this, but it’s only been in the last month or so that I’ve felt that my fears about what was happening have been confirmed. We’ve crossed the Rubicon, and there’s no going back. And so it’s interesting to me that Trump intellectual apologists are emerging now making their case in the Liberal media. That was the point of Hazony appearing on Klein’s podcast last month and of Oren Cass’s op-ed this week in the NY Times.
Both Cass and Hazony are Trump optimists. I think they are both sincere, and not just Goebbels-like propagandists. That’s the role Fox News plays. They both hate the current Order and see Trump as the Moses figure who is leading us out of Egypt toward the Promised Land. I suspect they both see Vance as the Joshua figure who will take over for him and lead the chosen people through the final stages of their occupation of Canaan.
I’m sure neither has any illusions about Trump the human being, but they see him as a necessary blunt instrument to clear out everything that’s rotten and dysfunctional in the current system to make way for something new. Cass says as much in this passage—
From MAGA enthusiasts to No Kings protesters, whether one sees outdated shibboleths justly demolished or a precious inheritance tragically wasted, everyone agrees on the astounding scope of the changes wrought: the global economic order upended, the border secure and deportations underway, foreign aid programs gutted and entire agencies shuttered, Ivy League universities brought to heel. But what now?
Each of these actions was a necessary first step toward the kind of reform championed by the administration’s officials and supporters. New trading relationships cannot take form until partners accept that the old arrangements are over. Employers will not begin thinking about how to create jobs that Americans will do until they lose easy access to a supply of illegal and easily exploited workers who will take jobs that Americans won’t. Universities have shown for a decade that enough money on the line will send them scurrying to develop a new campus in Qatar, but no amount of criticizing and cajoling would move them one inch closer to the cultural mores or economic priorities of the nation on which they depend.
Watching the demolition was thrilling for those fed up with the old and eager for the new.
So Cass, like Hazony, is fine with all the destruction, the question is whether Trump and his administration can—
… move past the demolition, clear the debris and, well, build back better? The pain imposed thus far has been intentional, is proving tolerable and will be well worth the cost if it helps to move the economy and various national institutions onto a stronger long-term trajectory. But without follow-through the nation will see the pain without much gain. Does he have the will to pursue his promise of a new golden age for American workers and their families?
It’s not just whether Trump has the will, but whether he and those around him have the competence. There is no reason whatsoever to believe that this administration has either. It’s easy to tear something down, it’s extremely difficult to build something new.
This same misplaced optimism was displayed by Hazony in his interview with Ezra Klein last month:
YH: … I don’t want to promise anything about what’s going to be in 50 years. I don’t know the answer, and I don’t think anybody does. But let me just say, as I’m eyeballing it, that if Trump and Vance and Rubio and Pete Hegseth and their 30 closest allies and advisers, if they were in charge of America for the next 12 years, then I think that they would, in the end, succeed in convincing a lot of people — I don’t know if you, but maybe you — not that all their values are correct, but that they are people who look for tolerance, they’re capable of it, they want to build an America that’s tolerant and that not everybody has to accept —
EK: The way they’re acting now, to you, is evidence of tolerance?
YH: No. The way they’re acting now, to me, is the evidence of the opposite. It’s the evidence of an extreme resentment and horror at a Republican Party that had become politically inactive and inert over an entire generation.
EK: So they have to use the power of the state in what I would call an intolerant way to rebuild the center, in order to rebuild the national strength, such that we can be tolerant again?
YH: That’s what they think they’re doing, yes. They are thinking: If you take aggressive actions to halt immigration and decrease the size of the illegal immigrant population; if you take aggressive actions to halt the hemorrhaging of American industry to other countries and reverse it through aggressive trade negotiations; if you take aggressive action to to withdraw primary American responsibility for security arrangements in Europe, the Middle East, South Asia, and put other people who are allies of ours in charge — those three things. I hope one day you’ll get to interview President Trump yourself, but my guess is that he would tell you if we can do these three things, then we’ll be so much stronger, and then we’ll be able to get to other things.
And he would say that then a beautiful America would be in range.
“A golden age for American workers and their families.” “A beautiful America.” I think they truly believe that Trump is leading us into such an American future, and so, understandably this justifies their support for him, and to overlook his many personal failings.
Trump is a world-historical figure, not some petty, careerist, process-oriented bureaucrat. Nobody less could have achieved what he has. He’s a figure like Washington or Lincoln, a new founder for a new century. Yes, you Liberals are worried about intolerance and the flouting of laws and norms, but as in ancient Rome, the nation sometimes needs a temporary dictator, but like Cincinnatus, he will step back when the crisis is over.
Sure he will. You have to give them credit for their boldness. But they are Jacobins, and Jacobin projects never end well.
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