In spring 2021, The New York Times ran an editorial by Samuel Goldman in which he defended the disproportionate influence exerted by the “elite” – effectively an American aristocracy – on the nation’s governance. The gist of it seemed to be that the betters of society should not hide their privilege and excellence under a bushel and we poor hoi polloi clods should submit to their deserved rule. Yuck. This could not be allowed to pass without comment. The New York Times took a pass.
Samuel Goldman, “America Has a Ruling Class,” The New York Times, 4 April 2021, SR5 (www.nytimes.com/2021/03/30/opinion/america-politics-elites.html).
Samuel Goldman’s call for the acknowledgement of a quasi-aristocratic ruling class is larded with disquieting a priori assumptions. He believes there is a properly functioning “meritocracy” despite all contrary evidence. Is he unaware of the concept’s origin, Michael Young’s satire lampooning a dystopia forged meritocratically? Thumbing through Chris Hayes’ Twilight of the Elites would profit him.
For him, this ruling class is a reality to tolerate, not something inherently problematic in a pluralistic democracy. Do the “best” – the original Greek meaning of aristoi – inevitably rise to the top in a society riven by bigotry, sexism, and income inequality? He assumes a smoke-filled room crammed with the “best” is where governance is transacted, a rejection of transparency. Is he oblivious to the scorched-earth politics practiced since Mr. Obama’s election in 2008?
His quasi-Nietzschean emphasis on the “great man” spurs his cajoling of the “ruling class” to proclaim its pedigree yet be judged solely by its actions. Radical honesty from the “best” instead might often look like this: “I’m the scion of an aristocratic family whose influence removed every sharp edge, stunted me in empathy, and elevated me to a sinecure for which I’m unfit by temperament, experience, and ability.”
I have never been well disposed toward George Will. I have regard for his knowledge of and reverence for baseball but his politics are appalling. A chasm separates his experience from that of most Americans and he seems unperturbed by this void in knowledge.
My distaste for his political commentary, both print and broadcast, is of long vintage. An anecdote from the way-back machine explains why. Sam Donaldson, the former ABC News correspondent, was skillful at exposing Mr. Will’s absurdities. During the Iran-Contra imbroglio, Mr. Will undertook the task of defending the indefensible Oliver North. He suggested that Mr. North had merely engaged in a justified act of civil disobedience and the left’s umbrage at the colonel’s conduct was hypocritical when considered alongside its tolerance toward acts of civil disobedience by sixties radicals. Ever the culture warrior, our Mr. Will. Mr. Donaldson made an obvious yet devastating point rhetorical point: The core principle of civil disobedience is acceptance of legal consequences for breaking the law the civilly disobedient has deemed unjust, in effect having the courage of one’s convictions. Mr. North was cravenly determined to evade responsibility for his actions; his doe-eyed presentation of himself as a cruelly victimized patriot was Oscar worthy. Mr. Will was rendered speechless, a delicious rarity. Despite his Brahmin mien, his education apparently had been a bit light on Henry David Thoreau. Sometimes the mask slips.
It was likely inevitable that Mr. Will would join the great migration of the Never Trump conservative punditocracy in the months following the 2016 election. Once Fox News made the pivot to become what Chris Hayes calls “Trump TV,” it was no longer welcoming for those of Mr. Will’s ilk. There was a stampede to secure spots at centrist or left-leaning outlets. MSNBC assembled a stable of these types: Steve Schmidt, Charlie Sykes, William Kristol, Rick Wilson, Jennifer Rubin, Bret Stephens, David Frum, Mr. Will, others.
Mr. Will was among the least successful of these commentators. There was an unmistakable tension inherent in his commentary. He had a tough circle to square. He simultaneously felt compelled to register his contempt for President Bone Spur while his ideology fueled his undisguised disdain for anyone not subscribing to his narrow brand of movement conservatism, effectively an attack on his new audience.
So Mr. Will in a column exhorted people to vote against the GOP – note, not to vote for anything – in the 2018 midterm elections in order to thwart Mr. Trump. That was all well and good. That’s what the voters should have done and by and large did. However, the efficacy of the message is undercut by the Never Trumpers’ lack of a constituency, as Sam Seder points out. Had the Never Trumpers been significant numerically, The King of Queens would never have been elected president and pundits like Mr. Will would still be opining at right-wing outlets. At least Mr. Will had the courtesy to make his plea general. Other Never Trumper pundits had the gall to define type of candidates the Democratic Party would need to put on offer to garner their votes, a tacit threat either to vote Republican or to sit out the election. In their view, beggar was by right chooser. Never Trumpism is clearly weak tea.
The Richmond Times-Dispatch routinely runs Mr. Will’s columns, which afforded an opportunity to unload on him. I did. The paper passed on it. “I can’t imagine why,” the Bourbon Progressive repeats ironically.
George Will, “This November, Cast Your Vote Against the GOP,” The Richmond Times-Dispatch, 24 June 2018, E3 (https://richmond.com/opinion/columnists/george-will-column-this-november-cast-your-vote-against-the-gop/article_8ec57b8d-843d-599c-80ce-c4d4054327c7.html).
George Will’s call to reject the GOP in the 2018 midterm and thwart President Trump’s quasi-authoritarian antics is welcome. He also properly chastises the Republican Party for fecklessness. No one, however, should harbor illusions about Mr. Will’s brand of “never Trumpism.”
Mr. Will affects high dudgeon at the ugliness Mr. Trump has exposed, yet one wonders whether the wellspring of his disaffection with his onetime party is found more in the ascendancy of a chief executive who offends his priggish sensibilities, who, as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell quipped in 2016, refuses to “stick to the script.” [1]
The selfsame George Will has penned apologias for the race-baiting, segregationist presidential campaigns of George Wallace and Strom Thurmond, [2] has insinuated that President Obama’s race inoculated him from criticism, [3] and then has had the effrontery to accuse liberals of suffering from “Tourette’s syndrome” in matters of race. [4] Can we believe that Mr. Will was taken unawares when Mr. Trump incited intolerance and rallied broad support by substituting a bullhorn for the dog whistle used by the GOP since President Nixon’s hatching of the “Southern Strategy,” a political modus operandi in which Mr. Will’s complicity is more than tacit? Mr. Will suffers either from singular absence of self-awareness or impressive intellectual dishonesty. He is talented. Perhaps he manages both.
Should 2020 or 2024 offer Mr. Will a Republican president he admires, one wonders whether he will forgive all and scurry to a sinecure in the Conservative Punditocracy Industrial Complex. He labels a 2019 House potentially controlled by Democrats – a party operating in good faith – as a “basket of deplorables.” The Right Wing Noise Machine beckons with a “basket” in which he himself can rest companionably. If George Will’s politicized maundering represents the acme of “conservative intellectualism,” how can it not be deemed an oxymoron?
[1] Jordain Carney, “McConnell on Trump: ‘I’m Not a Fan of the Daily Tweets,’” The Hill, 17 February 2017 (www.thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/senate/320114-mcconnell-on-trump-im-not-a-fan-of-the-daily-tweets).
[2] George Will, “Robert Sarvis, Virginia’s Other Choice for Governor,” The Washington Post, 23 October 2013 (www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-f-will-robert-sarvis-virginias-other-choice-for-governor/2013/10/23/1544f8d6-3b5c-11e3-b6a9-da62c264f40e_story.html?utm_term=.300984fb5eac&wprss=rss_homepage); Oliver Willis, “George Will Whitewashes Racism from Pro-Segregationist Presidential Campaigns,” Media Matters 24 October 2013 (www.mediamatters.org/blog/2013/10/24/george-will-whitewashes-racism-from-pro-segrega/196578).
[3] Elspeth Reeve, “Actually George Will Has Been Obsessed with Race for a Long time,” The Atlantic, 2 October 2012 (www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/10/actually-george-wills-been-obsessed-race-long-time/322988/).
[4] Ian Schwartz, “George Will: Liberals Have ‘Tourette’s Syndrome’ When It Comes to Racism,” Real Clear Politics, 13 April 2014 (www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2014/04/13/george_will_liberals_have_tourettes_syndrome_when_it_comes_to_racism.html).
An open question during the first days of the Trump administration began to be answered early on. The fallout from the exile of FBI Director James Comey was clarifying. Hard on the heels of Mr. Comey’s dismissal it emerged that The Dear Leader possibly divulged classified material from Israeli sources to Russia’s US Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavarov. The public then learned of His Eminence’s alleged buttonholing of Mr. Comey to press for quashing the FBI probe of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s contacts with the Russians. Would the national Republican Party, those rock-ribbed paragons of civic rectitude, check President Golf Cart’s authoritarian and self-dealing inclinations or would they submit to and become tacitly complicit in his antics? Would a rump of old school GOPers survive or would the Party of Trump devour the GOP tout entier?
The latter seemed more likely with each passing day. Some critical statements came from the usual Republican suspects – Senators Bob Corker, John McCain, Lindsey Graham (as a ventriloquist’s doll), and Ben Sasse and Representative Jason Chaffetz. From these, Mr. McCain belongs to the ages, Mr. Corker is retired, and Mr. Chaffetz fled Congress to become a Trumpy talking head on Fox News. And there is Mr. Graham, whose spine has proven detachable. The GOP leadership otherwise seemed determined to ignore The Fabulist in Chief’s behavior. A Patches O’Houlihan strategy was adopted to cope with a pesky press corps: “Dodge, duck, dip, dive, dodge.” The letter addresses the Party of Benghazi’s hesitancy to look at these matters.
Elise Viebeck, Sean Sullivan, and Mike DeBonis, “Controversies Rattle Hill Republicans,” The Washington Post, 17 May 2017, A7 (www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/lawmakers-to-trump-turn-over-transcript-of-meeting-with-russians/2017/05/16/e9b6deb6-3a3d-11e7-9e48-c4f199710b69_story.html).
It is understandable that the GOP’s congressional wing is “rattled” by President Trump’s grave missteps; however, mumbling, noncommittal responses, temporizing, and inaction are no longer acceptable.
Strong statements made by some GOP senators – Messrs. Corker, McCain, Graham, Sasse, et al. – have been welcome but these sentiments must now be translated into concrete action. It is noteworthy that the lone GOP committee chair thus far to demand Mr. Comey’s memoranda, Mr. Chaffetz, is not seeking reelection. Is resignation the GOP’s precondition for political courage?
The near silence of the GOP’s congressional leadership speaks loudly. Majority Leader McConnell should for a moment cease to be the “Bluegrass Machiavelli” and Speaker Ryan should endeavor not to live down to Charlie Pierce’s recent characterization of him as an “intellectual invertebrate” (Chris Hayes, “All In,” MSNBC, May 16, 2017). They should jointly support the call for an independent investigation of the Russian affair and for open public testimony by Mr. Comey before the appropriate committees. The calculus of political advantage must yield to the national interest and the people’s right to know.
And so we have reached the content, the stuff that My Heart thinks should be preserved electronically for posterity. It’s fitting to start with a “miss” rather than a “hit.” Misses justify the project; hits are already out there in the ether or on pulp or both. A Babe Ruth factoid offers consolation: While hitting many home runs, he struck out prodigiously. If nothing else, this unpublished letter to the editor, composed within a fortnight of the election, shows how the imperative to do something, anything, to act however possible, possessed me and so many others.
Aiming this virgin effort toward The New York Times arose from sublimely balanced hubris and naïveté, just arrogant enough to think that the letters column would be an easy target, just ignorant enough to be unaware of the flood of correspondence received by the Grey Lady. This submission initiated a learning process. Every publication has preferences and guidelines to decipher and negotiate. My tendency is to respond to editorials rather than directly to news events, a proclivity that doesn’t fit comfortably with The New York Times’ constraints on letters. At least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Whatever the reality, The New York Times is a high hurdle to clear. This neither discouraged nor deterred me and for that I’m just a little pleased with myself. Another Babe Ruth aphorism applies: “Never let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game.” The Beloved One sees me through different eyes and takes each “failure to launch” personally, which leaves me with the warm fuzzies.
It is appropriate that the first whack at this involved J. D. Vance. This is a good place to address my rising, now absolute, disenchantment with Mr. Vance. I read his Hillbilly Elegy in the months before the election and was predisposed to view him more favorably than I should have. Mea culpa, maxima mea culpa.
Parallels between Mr. Vance’s personal story and mine partly account for this. We both experienced the demographic current flowing between Kentucky and Ohio. While our senses of place ultimately diverged – I became more bound to the Bluegrass, he apparently to the Buckeye state – Dwight Yoakam’s “Readin’, Rightin’, Rt. 23” resonates with both of us. Our formative years unfolded in a similar social stratum and he addressed matters familiar to me. Poverty and social dysfunction are not alien to my experience. His narrative of an intermittently harrowing upbringing imparted to me a sense of gazing “through a glass darkly” at what might have been had I not been exposed to a measure of human concern and decency. Extended family, grandparents especially, profoundly influenced the people we eventually became. We both attended the Ohio State University, though at different times and for disparate reasons.
Beyond this personal affinity for Mr. Vance, elements of his characterization of the Kentucky-Appalachian experience rang true to me. This comported with my desire for the bicoastal elite – that group on whose fringes I skulk by dint of education – to be exposed to an unfamiliar circumstance, a different pattern of life. I’ve heard enough sneering comments about “the flyover” to deem a corrective worthwhile.
The Bluegrass part of “the flyover” is often perceived by outsiders, if it crosses their minds at all, through stereotypes. There is a raft of them. Is a Kentuckian a McCoyish blood-feuder? Or a striking coal miner as in the documentary Harlan County USA? Or a character in Justified, either Federal Marshal Raylan Givens or his frenemy Boyd Crowder? Or a reclusive, combative moonshiner? Or a bourbon distiller? Or a Daniel Boone-like frontiersman? Or a tobacco farmer? Or a riverboat gambler? Or a Bluegrass strummer? Or an elegantly dissipated, decadent horsey aristocrat wearing a seersucker suit and sipping a mint julep while watching the Derby? Or a fried chicken magnate? Or a denizen of the “abyss of inbred hicks,” as a droll satirical Pinterest map has it? And, since the Commonwealth was a border state during the Civil War, is a Kentuckian a Union or Confederate battle reenactor on the weekends, a Southerner or a Midwesterner? Or is a Kentuckian something else or perhaps many other things? Mr. Vance’s and my backgrounds overlapped, yet there were fundamental differences in them. Kentucky is poor and receives many more federal dollars than it pays; however, its poverty has a regional quality. Mr. Vance contended with the straitened living of the Commonwealth’s mountainous coal-producing region whereas my upbringing was in rural, agricultural central Kentucky. My hope was that Hillbilly Elegy would expose a rich vein of the Kentucky experience unfiltered through popular culture, raise awareness of the challenges endured by its people, and foster empathy among those for whom the country’s vast middle remains mysterious.
Yet there were abundant red flags in Hillbilly Elegy, among them the shoutouts to the vile Charles Murray and the problematic Amy Chua, the self-styled “Tiger Mom.” I hoped that Mr. Vance hadn’t bought their nonsense wholesale, that his work’s merit would outweigh its defects, and that he was misguided, not actively and cooperatively malevolent. I wanted him to be better than he is.
When I wrote the letter to The New York Times, I already had reservations about Hillbilly Elegy. Mr. Vance’s statements about race were sometimes obtuse, chief among them that his “people” harbored no racial animus toward Barack Obama. He asserted that the bile spewed at The Undramatic One was a reaction to the president’s ethereal, suave eliteness, not bigotry. Personal experience told me this was jabberwocky. My concerns appear in an earlier post, one about a friend living abroad during the 2016 election. (See “The Heart of the Matter: the 2016 Election”).
My initial attitude toward Mr. Vance was too kind, almost unforgivably so. For whatever it’s worth, I was far from the only person snookered in by him. He was the political and cultural “it boy,” especially following the election. He made the rounds of cable news and opinion shows across the political spectrum. He even appeared on Chris Hayes’ All In, the most left-leaning primetime cable opinion show. Mr. Vance assumed a Pied Piper quality. The book was a runaway bestseller and has received a Hollywood treatment from Ron Howard.
Mr. Vance seems to suffer from a common foible, the desire to be the hero of his own story. For those lacking in self-awareness, this self-as-hero proclivity fosters a sense that the planets will align for anyone with the hero’s pluck, courage, and stick-to-it-iveness. Those failing to achieve the same outcome must be fundamentally flawed. Cleaving to his own narrative blinds him to structural impediments, stumbling blocks largely beyond the individual’s control. Then again, perhaps it’s a chicken-or-egg matter in which obliviousness to structural barriers creates the space for expansive self-regard.
The genesis of Mr. Vance’s void in understanding may be even simpler: He has imbibed Professor Murray’s Kool-Aid and ideology has rendered him impervious to others’ lived reality. He is loath to acknowledge that, no matter how challenging his childhood was, he still benefited from privilege. Absolving his “people” of racism and perhaps subscribing to Charles Murray’s noxious racial pseudoscience liberates him from recognizing that his diagnosis of society’s ills has no universal validity and also from seeing that his remedy is no panacea. His maundering about “social capital” is a case in point. In his self-congratulations for plugging himself into a rarefied good-ol’-boys network, he betrays not a scintilla of cognizance that such “social capital” is not the solution but the problem. And there can only be so many good ol’ boys.
In any case, the mask is off for Mr. Vance. He is contemplating a run for a vacant US Senate seat in Ohio in 2022. Rumor has it that his campaign will be “Trumpian.” Wonderful. Ohio is welcome to him.
Mr. Vance’s editorial in The New York Times addresses a fissure he perceived in how Republicans and Democrats relate to the military and how this affected voting in 2016. Like many editorials, it’s more noteworthy for what is granted short shrift than for what is said. I did engage in a small rhetorical feint by complimenting Mr. Vance and establishing our shared experience before making a critique. One must be kind to be cruel.
J. D. Vance, “How Trump Won the Troops,” The New York Times, 25 November 2016 (www.nytimes.com/2016/11/25/opinion/how-trump-won-the-troops.html).
I admire J. D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy but feel that he pushed his analysis beyond sustainability in his recent editorial (“Why Trump Won the Troops,” November 25, 2016). As a fellow son of Kentucky whose father and stepfather served in the military, I remind Mr. Vance that many conservatives blithely accepted the besmirching in 2004 of Senator John Kerry’s distinguished record of military service while they returned to office the administration that had led the nation into Iraq, a conflict responsible for the much of the worry and loss Mr. Vance underscores. Mr. Vance, who has done so much to dispel misconceptions about his and my people, should not paint so broadly with his stereotype brush when characterizing those outside his tribe. He should also explain why Mr. Trump, who did not serve and evinces little or no understanding of the military, would inspire empathy among military voters and their families. His case in this instance falls short of prima facie. The American public’s nearly universal support for the military is neither so simple nor so transactional nor so easily reduced to hoary liberal vs. conservative topoi as Mr. Vance suggests.
Thanks to Mr. Vance, I spent an evening in October 2017 as an anthropological exhibit. Book recommendations can have consequences. I had passed my copy of Hillbilly Elegy to a friend in Manhattan, a wonderful lady who has treated The Better Half and me to gracious hospitality and good conversation for decades. She read the book, she and I discussed it, and she nominated it as a selection for a book club she was hosting.
As it turned out, it was the senior women’s book club for Wellesley College alumnae in Manhattan. I was invited to attend, tantamount to being granted entrée to the sanctum sanctorum. Men as a rule aren’t allowed. I may have been the first. My plural connections to Wellesley College women – Light of My Life, mother-in-law, sister-in-law, niece by marriage – cleared the path for this.
It was a pleasant event. The ladies were friendly, polite, and, as readers, discerning. The consensus was that the book was interesting but not great literature. That’s a fair assessment. The sensibilities of some of the ladies were offended by the book’s coarser elements, especially the language. That’s understandable. It’s also probably generational. I refrained from telling the ladies that the language used by some of their younger sister alumnae would strip the paint from the walls.
So, the Bourbon Progressive is tipping back the Hound’s Tooth flask in honor of the Manhattan chapter the Wellesley Senior Women’s Book Club.