An hour and thirteen minutes of non-stop hirsute osculation at the Grey Lady at Eighth and Forty First!
In case you don’t follow this stuff all that closely, after eighteen opinionatin’ years at the New York Times, Latin Mass Catholic Ross Douthat is taking his “thinking man’s conservative” act to CBS News to star as one of the lead reporters on the network’s legendary “60 Minutes” broadcast and to send him on his way, fellow Timesman interviewer/opinionator Ezra Klein takes him for a long chat indeed, which I read in its entirety without yawning, for which, I think, I ought to be compensated handsomely, though I doubt that that will happen.
I am a big fan, most of the time, of what I might call the “new” Ezra Klein, the 2023 “No Everything Bagel, Please” Ezra Klein, though a slightly earlier incarnation of Ezra—what I might call “Paleo-Lib” Ezra, circa 2022—provoked a seriously impolite explosion on my part, Ezra Klein is an idiot! And so is his wife! Occasionally!, taking off on a “really stupid” column by Ezra, Why a Middle-Class Lifestyle Remains Out of Reach for So Many, which, in turn, quoted heavily from another “really stupid” article, by Ezra’s wife, Annie Lowrey, in the Atlantic, The Great Affordability Crisis Breaking America.
As for Ross Douthat, well, words have not failed me in my efforts to express my contempt for Ross, even though I have occasionally (usually when I’m drunk) had a kind word for him. He can write an honest column when he wants to. But usually he doesn’t want to.
Fortunately for Ross, Ezra did not see fit to hold his feet to the fire, choosing instead to whip up a large batch of tasty s’mores, reminiscing about the good old days when blogging was young and so were they (this goes on for quite a while) and then how a Latin Mass Catholic like Ross has learned how to “argue” with liberals—by not, perhaps, reminding them that, sadly, Anne Frank went to Hell for her shocking lack of obedience in spiritual matters to the magisterium (the Pope and the Bishops), a tactic that I, as an atheist more or less from birth1 regard as a smart move.
No does Ezra ask Ross about his infamous “There Will Be No Trump Coup” post delivered on Oct. 10, 2020—“A final pre-election case for understanding the president as a noisy weakling, not a budding autocrat.” And let it be said that Ross is still working to normalize, or at least demonsterize Trump. In his final column, where he did show considerable honest frustration and even embarrassment over the way the world had refused to comply with his preconceptions—Who Are the Good Guys and the Bad Guys? I’m No Longer Sure., Ross came up with this summation:
For many liberal readers, these sins [of Trump II] make populism the maximum danger, the singular emergency. But as Trumpism has flailed and failed, it hasn’t consolidated the kind of authoritarian power anticipated by its most alarmed opponents. At the moment, Trump 2.0 has no great popularity, no legislative capacity, no policy legacy that a Democratic successor can’t easily roll back. The president himself might still be a dangerous figure, there might be darker forces waiting in the wings — but I don’t think that justifies making anti-populism the measure of all things.
This is, one might say, “pure Ross”, dismissing Trump as mere sound and fury, signifying nothing—“Trumpism has flailed and failed, it hasn’t consolidated the kind of authoritarian power anticipated by its most alarmed opponents.” Notice the trick qualifier—“hasn’t consolidated the kind of authoritarian power anticipated by its most alarmed opponents.” But that doesn’t mean that Trumpism hasn’t consolidated the kind of authoritarian power anticipated by its most perceptive opponents. Yes, you can always find someone who will insist that Trump is an out and out Jew-hating Nazi. But you don’t have to be a Jew-hating Nazi to be a monster who has permanently wrecked our constitutional order. And Trump is a monster who has done just that.
I have bitched about this sort of smarmy manipulation before, a lot, and most recently in, yes, another piece bitching about something I read in, yes, the New York Times, Okay, is THIS the stoopidist story the New York Times has ever published? Probably not., complaining about a piece by Ivy League law professors Jack Goldsmith and Samuel Moyn, claiming that, despite all his sound and fury, Trump lacked the strong, continuous political support necessary to effect lasting, “transformational” change in the legendary manner of FDR. I replied as follows (with some omissions):
This is, sadly, called missing the boat entirely. Trump has been a transformational president like no other, in many ways, all of them ugly. He has completed the moral ruin of the Republican Party, something I’ve screamed about a lot, perhaps most dramatically here, and he has deeply corrupted the federal judiciary, filling both the district and appellate courts with judges/Trumpian ditto-heads who feel their job is to do whatever they feel is “right”—that is to say, whatever Donnie wants. In a recent Supreme Court decision, Murthy v. Missouri, overturning lower court rulings that the Biden Administration’s pressure on social media platforms violated the First Amendment, which I discussed here, Justice Amy Comey Barrett remarked that “The Fifth Circuit [Court of Appeals] relied on the District Court’s factual findings, many of which unfortunately appear to be clearly erroneous,” which is a Supreme Court justice’s way of saying “the district court judge was a lying sack of shit, and the appellate court judges who swallowed his shit were even worse.”
Of course, Amy, and the rest of the “Shameless Six” conservatives on the Supreme Court had already beshitted themselves beyond repair (yes, this is getting pretty gross) in voting “right” (that is to say, wrong) on the most important, and worst, Supreme Court decision in American history, Trump v. United States, in which Amy not only voted with the other five forces of Satan but then tried to explain away her vote with a ponderous flurry of legalistic hand-waving … .
…
It’s my opinion, explained in the link I gave for Trump v. United States, that in that case, along with an earlier one, Trump v. Anderson, the Court’s obeisance to Trump’s will destroyed our Constitution. How we will get a new one remains to be seen, but we are going to have to do it. Because we have no choice. And I call that pretty goddamn “transformational”.
If only that were all. But it isn’t. Trump has also “transformed” the standing of the United States vis-à-vis the rest of the world. We are now understood, and understood correctly, as a gangster state. Trump lies constantly, endlessly, makes international policy on the basis of pique, threatens anyone he perceives as weaker than himself without the slightest hesitation, displays no respect for anyone unless he fears them. He has effectively done to Venezuela what he endlessly argued what the Bush Administration should have done to Iraq—seize their oil. The Venezuelan oil industry, which has claim of some of the largest reserves on the planet, is becoming an extension, not of the United States—that would be bad enough—but Trump, Inc. Donald Trump is converting the United States of America, once supposedly the “leader of the Free World”, into a Trump family asset. And this is the final transformation. If only Jack Goldsmith and Sam Moyn—and several million others—had the courage to see it.
And if only Ross Douthat had the courage to see it as well. And if only Ezra Klein had the nerve to ask Ross about it as well.
Afterwords
For more “background” on what Trump is doing to Venezuela, check out a deeply disappointed neocon, Elliott Abrams, over at the National Review, or Patrick Boyle’s take on YouTube. For more on how Donald Trump is destroying America’s ability to influence the world order—because, thanks to Trump, no one has any reason to trust anything any American has to say—read Fareed Zakaria in the Washington Post. And let me add a shout out to frequent AV punching bag Dan Dresner, who sicced me onto Ross’s last attempt to massage Donnie’s image into something resembling that of an actual human being.
Ross, to get back to him, is of course taking his act to 60 Minutes at the behest of CBS News Honcho Bari Weiss, whose commitment to hard-hitting journalism can be measured by her hilarious, cream-puff interview with junior miss fancyin’ Woody Allen. The cream of the jest, however, lies in the fact that Bari was hired at CBS due to the many machinations of Larry Ellison, one of the most passionate Likudists on the face of the earth, with the obvious goal of making the world safe for Netanyahu’s Israel. But since Bari got the job, support for an AIPAC-determined Middle East policy has collapsed within the Democratic Party and is collapsing on the MAGA right as well. Bari and Ross might land a few well-aimed blows on the scourge of wokeism, and I wish them well on that (most of the time), but I think the shelf life on the old-fashioned blind support of Israel that was de rigueur in DC as recently as the close of the Biden administration has expired. Sorry, Bari!
1. “Everyone at camp is just like us,” one of my cousins told her parents after returning from a “progressive” camp in the Adirondacks. “They don’t believe in God and put brown sugar on their cereal.” I’ve never been to the Adirondacks, but if I did go I’d fit right in.
