Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Thomas F Davis's avatar

"My friend, who is white, also told me about his son, in college, and how right-wing the kid is. This is the second friend my age who has recently reported that his college-age son and their friends are all-out right-wing. The details they shared indicated that these guys have just had it — Had. It. — with being told by the overculture, and the overculture’s institutions, that they are pieces of crap because they are white and male, and because normal manifestations of masculinity are signs of their unworthiness, even wickedness. So they don’t care."

My son is exactly the same way - and he's not white! He lives with his elderly grandmother and ensures she is properly cared for, doing much of the work himself, which shows he is not atomized. We brought him into the country as a baby, as a legal immigrant, and he is loving the ICE actions against the illegal immigrants. His views on crime carry a strong vigilante flavor. He must be getting this from his peers (who collectively include EVERY non-white category), because they go far beyond the rather mild law-and-order views I gave him.

Expand full comment
Derek Leaberry's avatar

"If you don't like the religious, right, wait until you see the post-religious right." Douthat

Douthat's readers are eighty percent people on the left. He was warning his readers a few years back about the future of conservatism. Christianity is receding as is Christian politics. In Trump's Republican Party, the Christians get judicial appointments that all conservatives of all stripes would wish and nothing more. Trump doesn't even care that two prominent men in his administration are homosexual. Christians can't and won't object.

Trump's people are the anti-woke, normal people who the left hates. He's the owner of the town auto repair shop who watches stock car(I refuse to call it NASCAR) races, loves his grilled steak and hunts deer every November. She's the home-schooling mom with five children who gave up her $80,000 a year job to raise her children in a sane environment. He's the construction worker who works outdoors in fifteen degree cold and resents taxes and hates an establishment who hates him. She's a divorced waitress with three children who doesn't report her tips and doesn't like what the anti-American teachers at her children's school teach her children about how evil George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Robert E. Lee were. These people puzzle at why Bud Light would have a transgender sissy as a spokesperson, why the Washington Redskins would change its name even though ninety percent of Indians support the monicker Redskins, why state governments would help a confused child of eleven to cut off his male genitals and be given female genitals, why Aunt Jemima pancake mix would be flushed down the memory hole and why Uncle Ben's rice would lose the honorable title of uncle.

The woke left earned the current blowback. Sadly, I don't know how much of the institutional left will be incinerated by the blowback. I wish it was burned to cinders but that is unlikely. And I don't think the institutional left plans to change its ways. They still have overwhelming institutional power. Harvard and Yale aren't changing. Hollywood isn't going to change. Look at some of the films up for the Oscars. Money-losing celebrations of perversions. The governments of California, Oregon, Washington, Hawaii, Illinois, New York, Vermont, Connecticut and Massachusetts aren't changing. They'll double-down as Gavin Newsom and JB Pritzker are doing. The Democrats aren't changing. They'll lick their wounds, double-down on their celebration of deviancy, and re-take Congress and eventually the presidency. After all, they won 48.5 % of the vote in 2024 with a lousy candidate. Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos aren't changing.

What is great about the new Trump conservatism is that it is willing to fight and wants to fight.

Expand full comment
338 more comments...

No posts