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LGbrooklyn's avatar

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.

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Lex and Zonnie  Breckinridge's avatar

This fits with the pattern that anyone who spends too much time flying close to Donald Trump develops a flawed relationship with the truth.

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