In The Nation’s final issue before the results desks across electronic media univocally confirmed the reality of The Once and Not Future King’s electoral ouster, Eric Alterman assessed the danger represented by the man’s epic dishonesty and the press’s broad inability to call it what it was. Mr. Alterman was on the money and an unpublished letter said so. A perusal of Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent would do the press corps a world of good.
Eric Alterman, “The Plot Against America,” The Nation, 16-23 November 2020 (www.thenation.com/article/politics/the-plot-against-america/).
Eric Alterman’s critique of the press’s coverage of the Trump administration was fully on point. Authoritarian wannabes will vie for Mr. Trump’s mantle and base; they likely will be more strategically and less pathologically mendacious than the departing president and consequently will pose a continuing threat to democratic governance. Hiding behind the evasion of “only reporting” will neither inform the citizenry nor hold officeholders to account nor ensure the fourth estate’s long-term health. “Truth will out” only when public exposure of dishonesty and malfeasance is swift and assured.
Victor Davis Hanson was doubtless displeased with the election’s outcome. Though still not quite conceding the loss, Mr. Hanson applied himself to a new task: a frantic airbrushing of the Trump regime. Who knew that President Quarter Pounder with Cheese was so misunderstood and that the animus toward him sprang not from his actions but was merely a quibble over style? Mr. Hanson surpassed himself on this one. My response was printed by The Richmond Times-Dispatch.
Victor Davis Hanson, “Will Trump Ride Off into the Sunset?” The Richmond Times-Dispatch, 13 November 2020, A15; “Will Donald Trump Ride Off into the Sunset, Another Tragic Hero?” The Chicago Tribune, 11 November 2020 (www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-opinion-trump-legacy-victor-davis-hanson-20201111-t6aqm2ofb5cy5archlpuw5zo3a-story.html). If The Richmond Times-Dispatch posted an online version of this article, its search engine is unable to locate it. The link above leads to the version in The Chicago Tribune.
“Hanson’s Defense of Trump Rides Off on Wrong Trail,” The Richmond Times-Dispatch, 17 November 2020, A14 (https://richmond.com/opinion/letters/letter-to-the-editor-nov-17-2020-hansons-defense-of-trump-rides-off-on-wrong/article_a9607437-092c-5b20-af96-0b94582b4d39.html).
To observe the length policy, the letter’s final paragraph was dropped before submission. Here it is:
Hanson likes cinematic references. Here is one for him: Harry Potter’s Professor Dumbledore and his Pensieve, a receptacle for storing memories for later reference and sharing with others. Hanson’s Pensieve, however, consigns his memories to oblivion. De rigueur for Hanson’s right-wing coterie is magical thinking followed by a deep drink from the River Lethe. The classical allusion should not be lost on Hanson. Then again, perhaps he has forgotten it.
Televised political conventions are inherently propagandistic; however, the backdrop of the coronavirus, The Benighted One’s exploitation of the Executive Mansion as a prop, and the hyperbolic expressions of fealty to His Sublimity, along with shaky production values, placed the 2020 Republican National Convention in its own subgenre. The unpublished letter below was written in response to The Washington Post’s account of the event.
Toluse Olorunnipa, “In Prime Time An Alternate Reality That Bolsters a Flagging Campaign,” The Washington Post, 28 August 2020, A1, A17 (www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-convention-falsehoods/2020/08/27/41a07f5a-e888-11ea-970a-64c73a1c2392_story.html).
And so the Republican National Convention has mercifully concluded. Toluse Olorunnipa ably exposes the convention’s dishonesty and the political desperation driving it. Beyond this, perhaps the convention’s most disturbing quality is how unsurprising it was.
Is anyone shocked that the clownish enablers who have flocked to Mr. Trump’s campaign would subject the nation to a bloated, low-rent analogue to Leni Riefenstahl’s The Triumph of the Will? Ms. Riefenstahl, whatever her defects, was a talented filmmaker able to impart a cinematic sheen to appalling totalitarian dreck. Even this dubious achievement evaded the Republican National Committee. It should be remembered that Ms. Riefenstahl, despite her considerable moviemaking skill, could not disguise the profound smallness of her subject and she indeed, regardless of her intentions, made apparent the banality of evil. The ham-fisted, reality-television-addled doyens of Trumplandia could not help but do the same. It is to be hoped that voters will not be deceived by Mr. Trump’s deluded medicine show.
Why would any Democrat accept strategic advice from Victor Davis Hanson, a commentator whose political proclivities are no secret? His lionizing of The Cryptofascist in Chief has been unflagging and he in no wise wishes the left well. Perhaps his motive, should his favored result not materialize, is to mitigate the damage by pushing the Democratic ticket rightward. It’s political advice worthy of a Never Trumper, which Mr. Hanson is not. It’s also an absurdity. The Richmond Times-Dispatch didn’t print my response.
Victor Davis Hanson, “As in 1944, the Democratic Running Mate Seems Pivotal,” The Richmond Times-Dispatch, 1 May 2020, A15 (https://richmond.com/opinion/columnists/victor-davis-hanson-column-as-in-1944-democratic-running-mate-selection-seems-pivotal/article_d169b479-9ee6-594f-920e-3d591b694eef.html).
Victor Davis Hanson’s feigning of concern for the impact of Joe Biden’s vice-presidential pick upon his electoral prospects conceals neither Hanson’s defective drawing of historical analogies nor his continuing demonization any politician a scintilla left of center. No rational Democrat should accept political counsel from an apologist for President Trump. A far better historical parallel for the current moment is not the 1944 election, when Henry Wallace gave way to Harry Truman as FDR’s running mate, but the 1932 election that brought Roosevelt to power.
Mired in the Great Depression, a disillusioned electorate faced a stark choice: A GOP candidate, whatever his virtues, who subscribed to an outmoded philosophy of governance providing the people no succor and who implied that putting on a happy face would somehow dissipate the crisis, versus an empathetic Roosevelt, who pledged to move the levers of power to alleviate misery.
Hanson, moreover, breeds confusion through misleading political labeling. He has long equated “social democracy” with “socialism” and “socialism” in turn with “communism,” despite their manifest differences. He now tosses “progressivism” into his nomenclature cauldron to concoct a verbal witches’ brew intended to frighten political naifs.
What concerns fuel Hanson’s historical and political misapprehensions? Has the coronavirus too tellingly stripped bare fissures in the American social compact and vindicated the progressive social critique? Is the so-called Overton window – the spectrum of acceptable political discourse – opening too widely to be readily slammed shut again? Might a progressive running mate prove the Democratic Party the big tent it purports itself to be and further endanger the president’s electoral fortunes? Could it be the that the voters will not recoil from a progressive but embrace one? Hanson’s motives aside, the anointing of a milquetoast centrist will serve neither the Democratic Party’s nor the nation’s interest at this juncture.
My fondness for the writing of Thomas Frank is nearly boundless. He’s an insightful spokesman for progressive populism and his diagnoses of the country’s political dysfunction have had the considerable merit of being largely correct. He warned of the potential of a sideways electoral result in 2016, and in 2018 in Harper’s Magazine he sounded the klaxon again regarding a credible possibility of a second term for President Golden Arches. The coronavirus of course made prognostication for the 2020 election a dicey proposition; despite this, Mr. Frank’s reading of the ways in which the Democratic Party has strayed from its values remains valid. A laudatory note was sent to the magazine.
Thomas Frank, “Four More Years: the Trump Reelection Nightmare and How We Can Stop It,” Harper’s Magazine, April 2018, 23-31 (https://harpers.org/archive/2018/04/four-more-years-2/).
“Fool Me Once,” Harper’s Magazine, June 2018, 2 (https://harpers.org/archive/2018/06/letters-869/).