The real problem with the New York Times op-ed page: it’s not honest about US conservatism
"A Battle for the Soul of Conservatism Plays Out in Australia"
It wants to challenge its readers, but not with the ugly truth.
By David Roberts@drvoxdavid@vox.com Mar 15, 2018, 9:30am EDT
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The New York Times carries some conservatives, but it does not reflect conservative politics
The NYT always had its own, generally liberal editorials, but the opinion page was established in 1970 to provide a venue for a wider range of opinions. “Points of view in disagreement with the editorial position of The Times,” said publisher Arthur Sulzberger, “will be particularly welcomed.” And still today, Bennet wrote to Splinter, “we’re looking to challenge our own and our readers’ assumptions.”
Recently, that concern has taken on a new edge. The traumatic and unexpected 2016 victory of Donald Trump convinced a great many people in elite political circles that they are hopelessly out of touch, there is a whole parallel country of which they are only dimly aware, and they urgently need to understand the perspectives of the people who rallied behind Trump.
But it’s a different dilemma for the opinion page. Bennet clearly believes liberals live in a bubble. He wants to challenge them. It still hasn’t occurred to him to challenge them from the left, so he goes out looking for more conservatives.
But what kind of conservatives are on offer at NYT?
Consider, oh, David Brooks. His conservatism, of Sam’s Club affectation, fiscal conservatism, tepid social liberalism, and genial trolling of center-leftists at Davos — whom does it speak for in today’s politics, beyond Brooks?
Or Ross Douthat. He is sporadically interesting, often infuriating, but above all, pretty idiosyncratic. His socially conservative “reformicon” thing — whom does it speak for in today’s politics, beyond Douthat?
Bret Stephens and Bari Weiss are a familiar type of glib contrarian. Their opposition to Trump has given them undue credibility among Washington lefties, whom they relentlessly (and boringly) troll. But whom are they speaking for? What has the Never Trump movement amounted to?
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Conservatism is now Trumpism
The signal feature of the 2016 election is that it settled the question of whether US conservatism — the actual movement, I mean, not the people in Washington think tanks who claim to be its spokespeople — is animated by a set of shared ideals and policies. It is not.
For many years, many people have convinced themselves otherwise. A lot of people believe to this day that the Tea Party uprising and the subsequent eight years of hysterical, unremitting, norm-violating opposition to Barack Obama was about small-government philosophy and a devotion to low taxes and less regulation, and had nothing to do with social backlash against a black, cosmopolitan, urban law professor and his diverse, rising coalition.
But that kind of credulity can only stretch so far, and Donald Trump has stretched it to the snapping point. He abandoned the Very Serious conservative script entirely and the right ate it up. He pledged not to cut Social Security or Medicare, condemned free trade, and insulted the military and intelligence services, and they ate it up. He is a thrice divorced, self-admitted sexual predator wallowing in the kind of material ostentation that gives David Brooks nightmares, and they ate it up.
Trumpist conservatism is motivated not by ideas, but by resentments
So what motivates this swell of right-wing support for Trump? At this point, though many people on all sides still refuse to acknowledge it, the evidence is overwhelming: It was cultural backlash, against immigrants, minorities, uppity women, liberals, and all the other forces seen as dislodging traditional white men from their centrality in American culture.
The New York Times cannot host true conservatism because true conservatism does not share its standards
As I said, the conservatives who care about conservatism as an intellectual tradition and a governing philosophy have mostly jumped ship. If the Times wants to find authentic expressions of the sentiments animating Trump supporters, it will have to look beyond the confines of the elite establishment, to Breitbart, TownHall, Infowars, or one of the avowedly right-wing outlets where conservatives cluster .. https://cyber.harvard.edu/publications/2017/08/mediacloud .
The people who support Trump have been embedded in a hermetically sealed right-wing media bubble .. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/3/22/14762030/donald-trump-tribal-epistemology .. for so long that they only know liberals as horrific caricatures and only experience politics as a war to save white Christian culture from its sworn enemies. They are exposed to endless lies and conspiracy theories designed to keep them in a frenzy, convinced that antifa is around the corner and Sharia law is imminent.
If the New York Times wanted to expose its readers to the motive force of contemporary conservatism, that’s the kind of stuff it would run.
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It’s true that NYT readers have been insulated from contemporary conservatism
Here is the scary truth that NYT editors and readers alike resist: US politics today is not a contest of ideas or governing philosophies. We are witnessing a massive revanchist upheaval — against bourgeois morality and standards of conduct, against changing demographics and economies, against assumptions about governance and respect for norms, against the status quo — by a culture that is stagnating even as the country changes around it, which it experiences as a loss of dignity and prestige .. https://www.vox.com/2018/3/13/17053886/trump-rural-america-populism-racial-resentment .
Not everyone involved is driven by tribal resentment, not every Trump voter indulges in misogyny or racism, but every member of the current conservative coalition has decided that those things are acceptable, or at the very least, not disqualifying — less important than lower taxes or immigration crackdowns.
Even if they do not share Trump’s ignorant, hateful impulses, even if they do not endorse his careening, incompetent governance, even if they do not countenance the grotesque corruption of his family and his administration, they support the coalition that enables those things. They are supporting a tribe with a strongman leader, not a set of ideas.
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Do NYT readers — who mostly read mainstream sources, mostly live in cities, mostly are not exposed to right-wing media — understand that the most active voices on the American right today are filled with paranoid rage, hopped up on lies and conspiracy theories, unmoved by reason, and devoted to their total destruction? Do they understand that the values and norms they assume safe and sacrosanct are in fact under heavy siege? Do they know that American democracy is in danger of coming apart?
I’m not sure they do; I think they still imagine Republican moderates gathered in a cave somewhere, ready to swoop in and take charge again at the sight of the David Brooks bat signal.
If the NYT wants to challenge their assumptions, it should challenge those.
Freaky that so many voted for the white-fear nativist's motion. There is back-lash.
OK. Just heard the leader of government business in the Senate admit he made an error in allowing the motion to get up. That feels better, yet the members still voted for it, didn't they.
Scott Morrison, in fear of losing a next weekend by-election in Malcolm Turnbull's old seat of Wentworth, is portraying the Liberal coalition as being even more far-right than it was when they booted the 'too-liberal for us' Turnbull from the leadership, so from the PM position.
Australian embassy in Israel may be moved to Jerusalem
Prime minister says idea is a ‘sensible’ proposal and that pursuing a two-state solution ‘hasn’t been going that well’
Michael McGowan, and Oliver Holmes in Jerusalem Mon 15 Oct 2018 19.06 EDT Last modified on Mon 15 Oct 2018 19.55 EDT
Australia’s PM said the idea of an embassy in Jerusalem was put forward by byelection candidate and former ambassador Dave Sharma. Photograph: Michael Jacobs/Art in All of Us/Corbis via Getty Images
Australia may follow US president Donald Trump’s lead and move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv.
Scott Morrison, Australia’s new prime minister, said on Tuesday he was “open to” following the move, describing it as a “sensible” proposal.
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