“Our Sort, Our Turf”

     A substantial part of the motivation for political identification arises from the desire to be accepted by a particular group of persons. Individuals form affinity groups because of shared tastes more often than for any other reason. Such tastes are expressed in dress, grooming, deportment, and preferences in entertainment and environment. Thus, if Smith wants to be accepted by group X, he’ll need to adopt the dominant tastes of that group, and to express them in his own appearance and conduct.

     Political positions tend to be subordinated to these questions of taste. This phenomenon was made manifest by the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump and what has followed his inauguration.

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     In commenting on the ever more extreme statements of NeverTrump “conservatives” in the major media, Mike Hendrix deposeth and sayeth:

     What’s happening is the clarifying and hardening of ideological differences, with those who have long straddled the fence and misrepresented themselves caught in a trap of their own devising. A natural, inevitable clash of incompatible ideals is on the horizon, and people are being forced into thinking very hard about just who they are and what kind of government they believe a free people ought to arrange for themselves.

     This is only semi-correct. What’s been made garishly obvious by the George Wills, Max Boots, and Jennifer Rubins of the Punditocracy is that they prioritize their tastes above their politics. To support and approve of Donald Trump, a Queens businessman of rough-hewn manners, is unthinkable because:

• Trump is brash and brusque, an offense against the manners they exalt;
• Trump is willing to fight the establishment Left a outrance, without any pretense of civility in the face of the Left’s viciousness;
• Therefore Trump does not qualify for inclusion in “our sort,” and they don’t want anyone not of “our sort” to track his grime onto “our turf:” the corridors of power and plateaus of influence where they’ve maintained a decorous detente with the Left since the Eisenhower Administration.

     Mike continues in a more compatible vein:

     More effete, timid types like Will, Boot, and Rubin, however, prefer to think of themselves as above such a dirty, uncouth fray, as is appropriate for self-proclaimed elites. In truth, they’re deathly afraid of any conflict more unruly and fraught with hazard than the blowhard bait-and-switch displayed on the Sunday morning liberal-network chat shows, where their Proggy masters allow them to pointlessly preen and pontificate as the housebroken token-neuters they always were.

     Note in this connection the Left’s use of “cat’s paws” from whom its more identifiable luminaries maintain a carefully calibrated distance. AntiFa and Black Lives Matter thugs assault attendees at conservative and patriotic assemblies; the Left’s talking heads deplore the “violence,” but never explicitly condemn their violent affiliates or their tactics. The dirty work of suppressing conservative and patriotic sentiment gets done, but without soiling the hands of those who must remain “above the fray.” That comforts the NeverTrumpers; it reassures them that whatever their differences on policy, they mingle with others of “our sort.”

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     There’s also a modicum of professional self-protection in the NeverTrumper talking heads. As the overwhelmingly Leftward-slanted media strive to maintain a pretense of evenhandedness for reasons of circulation, they must include a few “conservatives” among their op-ed lineups. But those “conservatives” must be of the right kind: that is, they must be willing to accept subordination. Mike quotes Jonah Goldberg to that effect:

     [Here’s] a short rule of thumb for how to tell who is a “respectable” conservative in the eyes of liberals: any conservative out of power or not seen as supportive of those in power. An even shorter rule of thumb would be: conservatives are respectable if they are useful to liberals.

     Such “respectable conservatives” must prize inclusion more highly than fidelity to their espoused positions...and much more highly than electoral or legislative victory.

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     On November 8, 2016 the electorate spoke unambiguously. Since then, the economy has roared back to life, unemployment is dramatically down, energetic fuels are plentiful, the regulatory Leviathan is being tamed, would-be illegal immigrants are facing new resolve from our border patrol, America’s world stature has risen sharply, our allies and our adversaries are both listening when we talk, and private citizens are much more optimistic about the future. Anyone who broadly approves of the developments listed here should be well pleased. Of course, the Left is tearing its figurative hair out.

     The NeverTrumpers aren’t any happier than their Leftist colleagues. A flamboyant real-estate developer married to a glamorous former model has upstaged them and made them look like impotent fools. No one likes being made to look like a fool...especially if he is one and knows it.

     So they attack Trump on an ever more trivial basis. They criticize his manner while ignoring his triumphs and the great pleasure John Q. Public has taken in them. He’s not “our sort” and he never will be. He doesn’t belong on “our turf,” and he never will. And to add insult to injury, he’s winning: he’s making sizable gains for the very policies the NeverTrumpers have advocated for decades without achieving the smallest advances toward any of them. President Donald J. Trump, the forty-fifth to hold that office, keeps on plowing forward, and the earth stubbornly refuses to swallow him up.

     May it continue to be so for another six and a half years, please God!