I read Michael Anton's (in)famous essay ("The Flight 93 Election") shortly after it appeared and was struck by two things: (1)-the utter hyperbole throughout (implying that a potential Hilary Clinton presidential win would be tantamount to the world coming to an end) and (2)-the gall of analogizing his discontents with the Democrats with the desperate and heroic acts of the passengers of the real Flight 93 in combatting the plans of the 911 terrorists. Even though I am a Leftie--I can appreciate a reasonable argument coming from Republicans or Conservatives. This was not a reasonable argument. It actually proposes to cure what Anton identifies as an illness by killing the patient with the medicine. It did not put Anton in a sympathetic or respectable light with me. And now--reading Anton's latest statement in American Greatness that view is reinforced. I am struck again, this time by something very ad hominem-ish about his outburst which I read with some incredulity--because even if any of it is true--(or he thinks it is true)--it is not about ideas at all, but a rather puerile listing of the presumed mean or maneuvering actions of others, as if he, Anton, were a snot-nosed kid in the 5th grade bent on tattling to the teacher about the mischievousness of the other boys in the school yard--all rather reminiscent of the way Trump talks about things and "elaborates" them with his usual ad hominems and slurs, beyond any grain of truth that might be in any story. I almost felt embarrassed reading it. It would seem there must be more grown-up ways of getting points across.
Moving from style to substance, as far as any emergencies before us: I recently heard some comments by Right-wing writer and pundit, Ann Coulter (which may be old comments) in which she was defending the position of Americans who supported Trump's (never-built) wall at the southern border. I don't remember her exact words, but the point was that these Trump supporters were ordinary Americans, not terrible people, who happen to love their country and its culture, and don't want to see any of that compromised by masses of incomers who might change everything. The implication here is that those in opposition to Trump supporters, in some way, do not love their country and its culture. But--if Ann Coulter and the Trump supporters (of whom Michael Anton is one) love their country and their culture--why would they support a man who is hell bent on flouting and even subverting the Constitution, and the entire system it supports--and who was engaged in destroying the whole set-up of checks-and-balances which has been such a fundamental feature of the American system from the very start of this republic? And how can they see people, who are very disturbed by the subversion of this absolutely fundamental feature of our country, as being "anti-American"?
However Anton might try to square that circle, I will conclude by saying that since I discovered Damon Linker's writings in The Week, I always found them interesting, thought-provoking and--most importantly--flexible; not doctrinaire. I appreciate that sort of flexibility which I think is necessary in these troubled times, even where one may come down on one side or the other in the voting booth.
LGbrooklyn used the perfect word to describe Anton’s latest: puerile. It looked like a private list of peeves that he formed into an essay.
I have now read a considerable amount of writing from Kristol, Sykes, Last, and of course, our own Mr. Linker. They are all men of strong character. They’d have to be to recognize and own their mistakes and grown through them. None of them ever devolved into such distasteful pettiness. And even if they were to write this kind of -- I hesitate to use the word--essay, it would have been much, much better written; with the right amount of self-deprecating humor and with concise and polished sentences.
Having never met Damon and only "knowing" him for about 5 years by way of his writing and podcast appearances, absolutely nothing about him strikes me as the type who would undertake a multi-year plot intended to expose/attack/whatever the American Political Right. Having read around a dozen of Anton's pieces and finding his general disposition to be one of self-serving hyperbole, I find his claims about Damon absurd. I'm glad we're getting these two pieces to counter the nonsense from Anton. Tedious though it may be for people like Damon to address this kind of stuff, at times, I believe it's necessary.
Those who firmly believe that they are literally or figuratively doing the LORD's work are prone to the occupational hazard of believing that anyone disagreeing with them were, literally or figuratively, doing Satan's.
That being so, they believe that there were no lower bound to the moral depths their opposition readily will plumb, nor any upper to the complexity and fiendishness with which they will advance the plans of their Master.
I think both of you are right. While your version of personal events sounds more plausible to me and you may have been unfairly lumped in with the others, Anton is correct in how so many "conservatives" lost their minds over Trump. There is no reasonable other explanation for Kristol's sudden fondness for abortion, Wokism & identity politics.
I don't think Kristol's ever changed his opinion on abortion; he evidently wrote the following in a 1992 "Wall Street Journal":
'It is one thing to deplore abortion, or to believe there is something wrong, even sinful, about it, but it is quite another thing to demand that the secular authorities enforce a theologically defined "right to life" policy.'
This fits with the pattern that anyone who spends too much time flying close to Donald Trump develops a flawed relationship with the truth.
I read Michael Anton's (in)famous essay ("The Flight 93 Election") shortly after it appeared and was struck by two things: (1)-the utter hyperbole throughout (implying that a potential Hilary Clinton presidential win would be tantamount to the world coming to an end) and (2)-the gall of analogizing his discontents with the Democrats with the desperate and heroic acts of the passengers of the real Flight 93 in combatting the plans of the 911 terrorists. Even though I am a Leftie--I can appreciate a reasonable argument coming from Republicans or Conservatives. This was not a reasonable argument. It actually proposes to cure what Anton identifies as an illness by killing the patient with the medicine. It did not put Anton in a sympathetic or respectable light with me. And now--reading Anton's latest statement in American Greatness that view is reinforced. I am struck again, this time by something very ad hominem-ish about his outburst which I read with some incredulity--because even if any of it is true--(or he thinks it is true)--it is not about ideas at all, but a rather puerile listing of the presumed mean or maneuvering actions of others, as if he, Anton, were a snot-nosed kid in the 5th grade bent on tattling to the teacher about the mischievousness of the other boys in the school yard--all rather reminiscent of the way Trump talks about things and "elaborates" them with his usual ad hominems and slurs, beyond any grain of truth that might be in any story. I almost felt embarrassed reading it. It would seem there must be more grown-up ways of getting points across.
Moving from style to substance, as far as any emergencies before us: I recently heard some comments by Right-wing writer and pundit, Ann Coulter (which may be old comments) in which she was defending the position of Americans who supported Trump's (never-built) wall at the southern border. I don't remember her exact words, but the point was that these Trump supporters were ordinary Americans, not terrible people, who happen to love their country and its culture, and don't want to see any of that compromised by masses of incomers who might change everything. The implication here is that those in opposition to Trump supporters, in some way, do not love their country and its culture. But--if Ann Coulter and the Trump supporters (of whom Michael Anton is one) love their country and their culture--why would they support a man who is hell bent on flouting and even subverting the Constitution, and the entire system it supports--and who was engaged in destroying the whole set-up of checks-and-balances which has been such a fundamental feature of the American system from the very start of this republic? And how can they see people, who are very disturbed by the subversion of this absolutely fundamental feature of our country, as being "anti-American"?
However Anton might try to square that circle, I will conclude by saying that since I discovered Damon Linker's writings in The Week, I always found them interesting, thought-provoking and--most importantly--flexible; not doctrinaire. I appreciate that sort of flexibility which I think is necessary in these troubled times, even where one may come down on one side or the other in the voting booth.
LGbrooklyn used the perfect word to describe Anton’s latest: puerile. It looked like a private list of peeves that he formed into an essay.
I have now read a considerable amount of writing from Kristol, Sykes, Last, and of course, our own Mr. Linker. They are all men of strong character. They’d have to be to recognize and own their mistakes and grown through them. None of them ever devolved into such distasteful pettiness. And even if they were to write this kind of -- I hesitate to use the word--essay, it would have been much, much better written; with the right amount of self-deprecating humor and with concise and polished sentences.
Having never met Damon and only "knowing" him for about 5 years by way of his writing and podcast appearances, absolutely nothing about him strikes me as the type who would undertake a multi-year plot intended to expose/attack/whatever the American Political Right. Having read around a dozen of Anton's pieces and finding his general disposition to be one of self-serving hyperbole, I find his claims about Damon absurd. I'm glad we're getting these two pieces to counter the nonsense from Anton. Tedious though it may be for people like Damon to address this kind of stuff, at times, I believe it's necessary.
Those who firmly believe that they are literally or figuratively doing the LORD's work are prone to the occupational hazard of believing that anyone disagreeing with them were, literally or figuratively, doing Satan's.
That being so, they believe that there were no lower bound to the moral depths their opposition readily will plumb, nor any upper to the complexity and fiendishness with which they will advance the plans of their Master.
I think both of you are right. While your version of personal events sounds more plausible to me and you may have been unfairly lumped in with the others, Anton is correct in how so many "conservatives" lost their minds over Trump. There is no reasonable other explanation for Kristol's sudden fondness for abortion, Wokism & identity politics.
I don't think Kristol's ever changed his opinion on abortion; he evidently wrote the following in a 1992 "Wall Street Journal":
'It is one thing to deplore abortion, or to believe there is something wrong, even sinful, about it, but it is quite another thing to demand that the secular authorities enforce a theologically defined "right to life" policy.'