Claremont Hot Takes

Last Tuesday night President Trump told Congress and the country, “As a candidate for President, I pledged a new approach. Great nations do not fight endless wars.” He’s dead right. Even the winners do not come out of long wars well. Ask our British cousins what winning both world wars – much longer wars for them than for us – got them. Regardless of how cheap our fruitless campaigns to reform the Greater Middle East appear to be, they are chipping away at American power, virtue, and solvency.

Trump might have added that “War is the health of the state,” as the Progressive essayist Randolph Bourne wrote in the midst of World War I (Progressives get things right on occasion). Looking around today’s Long War America, its surveillance state never stronger, its police departments boasting hand-me-down armored vehicles, and its Department of Defense the largest provider of childcare in the land, it is safe to say that Bourne understated the case.

One can and should question Trump’s commitment to restraint, retrenchment, and realism. We still have troops in Syria and Afghanistan, and the President’s foreign policy team keeps adding more votaries of the disastrous Bush agenda. Trump asks the right questions, questions that Washington’s foreign policy echo chamber invariably seeks to ignore or de-legitimize. But thus far he has provided few satisfactory answers.

And yet, Trump can confidently ask the majority of Americans who are sick of foolish foreign wars: where else are you going to go? To a Democratic Party that, in sync with its media cheerleaders, is embracing Sisyphean Forever War and flaying heretics like Tulsi Gabbard? Almost overnight, the Democrats have become the War Party. Polling, or a few minutes with CNN, confirms this. As erratic a foreign policy president as Trump has been, his opponents appear ready to allow him to ask that hoary political question with a straight face.

In his State of the Union President Trump seized the moral high ground in the on-going argument over the crisis, indeed, the national emergency, on our southern border.  The key moment in his powerful speech came when the President directly addressed the border crisis by declaring:

“This is a moral issue. The lawless state of our southern border is a threat to the safety, security, and financial wellbeing of all America. We have a moral duty to create an immigration system that protects the lives and jobs of our people.”

These words are a full-throated articulation of American constitutional morality. The sacred duty of our elected officials is to ensure that the safety and well-being of Americans comes before any other considerations. In Federalist No 3, Publius stated: “Among the many objects to which a wise and free people find it necessary to direct their attention, that of providing for their Safety seems to be the first.”

Turning the tables on the hypocritical open-borders “moralists” in Congress and in the donor class, President Trump explains how “tolerance for illegal immigration” is “not compassionate” but “very cruel” because it hurts vulnerable American workers. In other words, it hurts the least among us. While his opponents seek to cripple our brave border patrol agents, the President asks Congress to defend America’s national border “out of love and devotion to our fellow citizens and our country.” Masterful, Mr. President.

In some ways, President Trump’s State of the Union was a speech divided against itself.

On the one hand, the President extolled the virtues of “groundbreaking criminal justice reform;” ad-libbed a commitment to welcoming legal immigrants “in the largest numbers ever;” pushed once more for a new entitlement, “nationwide paid family leave;” and played, alternatively, both small-ball and the identity-group-hustle on topics like the eradication of AIDS and female employment.

These were some of the weakest parts of the speech. Anecdotal stories about redeemed criminals may be moving, but the rule will likely be closer to what Senator Tom Cotton has predicted: more criminals will hit the streets, sooner—with predictable results, as Joseph Bessette has written in the Claremont Review of Books (“More Justice, Less Crime”). The foreign-born population in America is at its highest levels in a century, hardly an opportune time to welcome a surge of immigrants, even legal ones. The reckoning with the debt-financed welfare state is coming—let’s not add another national entitlement.

On the other hand, Trump talked of the common sense necessity and morality of border walls, sticking it to Nancy Pelosi’s recent nonsense about the “immorality” of physical border security; had some ad-libbed fun with the Democrat ladies in white, many of whom seemed to be cheering, somewhat avariciously, for their newly-acquired jobs in Congress; touted our punitive tariffs on the intellectual property thieves in China; set up the passage of the U.S.M.C.A. (Trump’s NAFTA replacement) by a Democrat-controlled House as a fight between the #Resistance and the prosperity of working Americans in the crucial swing states of “Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, [and] New Hampshire;” immediately followed his call for a new national paid family leave entitlement we can’t afford with very frank language about recent Democrat endorsements of infanticide in New York and Virginia; reminded his audience about the substantive—and positive—results of his NATO-bashing; and enunciated his administration’s Monroe-doctrine stance on Venezuela, followed in the next paragraph by the juxtaposition of the “abject poverty and despair” caused by socialism and the recent pro-socialist rhetoric of the anti-American Left.

Perhaps most importantly, Trump repudiated the bipartisan foreign policy establishment conventional wisdom with a single sentence: “great nations do not fight endless wars.” Finally, echoing his first inaugural—and in an implied endorsement of American nationalism and a challenge to identity politics at the same time—he ended the speech with a call for a common American identity rooted in love of America, American greatness, and the maintenance of “America first in our hearts.”

On balance, then, the speech reflected much more of the populist and anti-establishment brashness we’ve come to expect from the President (and which helped get him elected).

The viewing public liked the speech, according to CBS and CNN polling. I doubt the President reads this site (give us time!), but the weaker parts of the speech can perhaps be seen as an attempt to address a sentence from Michael Uhlmann’s post on this website after the midterms: “If Trumpistas think they can govern without RINOs or suburban women, they are mistaken.” On the one hand, Trump was courting, among others, suburban women and a sub-species of anti-NeverTrump RINO. On the other hand, Trump was sounding some of his greatest hits, with a few new notes added in, in preparation for a very high-stakes run-up to 2020.

It will be interesting to see the political, rhetorical, and constitutional fight play out over the next 22 months—Americanism, properly understood, is once again at stake, as it was in 2016.

5   points that cancel each other out, with the final score to be determined.

1) A positive. What’s clear is that amidst the extreme and bordering-on-insane media narratives—which show no signs of abating—every time Trump gets a chance to speak directly to the people with a normal political speech in hand, he does rather well.

His first State of the Union was a case in point: all sides admitted it went very well, reality briefly shone through the clouds (“I guess this man’s election was not the end of the world, after all”), and then the turbulence of the news cycle suddenly began again.

Since the campaign against Trump—begun by Obama and Clinton with the power of the federal government—aims to fundamentally de-legitimize him, any time he gets to speak in traditional ways he is “normalizing” himself and thereby obtaining at least a marginal win.

In fact, one could make a case that a normal, “just read the words” political speech tour and a habit of giving them every so often from here on out would solidify a 2020 win and a place in history beyond. As Michael Uhlmann suggests.

2) A potential short term positive. Given his solid floor of 40% support, it’s the deeply confused 10-20% of the electorate that matters. 

Along with everyone else, Trump’s likely given up on Congress to come up with a suitable compromise on immigration and the budget. If so, the question is how the speech plays to actually wavering voters and meandering independents in the context of ferocious media narratives, especially if Trump starts to make the case for emergency powers for The Wall on the basis of both this speech and his previous compromise offer: “I tried to reason with Congress, but…”

In other words, will this speech undercut the Left’s inevitable response to emergency wall building (Executive Branch Tyranny!) in the eyes of swing voters? What Trump needed to accomplish rhetorically is determined by the ways in which the media tries to browbeat and shame that 10-20% from supporting him, and this speech seemed to give him cover and favor with them, in part because it set forth a plausible argument for immigration reform to the confused and undecided.

3) A historical neutral. The two points above also apply in some ways to previous Republicans, and it often failed to work for them.

Of course, one might well wonder how much the State of the Union really matters for any President, ever.

4) This was a squandered opportunity to call out Congress’s bipartisan failures and put the pressure on it directly, with authority, on immigration and the budget. He could have better described the history of immigration over the last decades and all the broken promises by members of both parties that led to millions of illegal immigrants. He could have condemned Congress for not passing an actual budget for many years. And then he could have said in even stronger terms, to them, in front of the people: “Get it done, or I will do it myself.” Granted, he did say “I will get it built.” And much of the argument could and likely will be accomplished in an emergency powers speech that specifically deals with immigration, or a speech explaining a deal—if one is somehow reached. But the entire framework for this argument could have been—but was not quite—set last night in front of a larger audience. We will find out if the “kinder, gentler” gambit worked soon enough.

5) Similarly, Trump avoided making clear what is really at stake right now in America and what the state of the union really is, given our deepest challenges and opponents. There was no meta-reframing of our situation, calling out the cultural Left in greater detail, as David Sorensen suggested, or an explanation of the regime-level roots of our challenge (“Who are Americans?,” as Colleen Sheehan asks), or direct confrontation of the regime-level challenges we face, as James Poulos suggests. Instead, some of the speech outside of immigration rested on various baubles, which, granted, are completely normal for State of the Union addresses.

But this is not a normal time.

Thus this avoidance feels like a deep loss to me, longer term, especially as Trump only rarely gives the scripted speeches that could likely propel him to even more winning if he but gave them.

But that’s to pine for the speech I wanted to write, which—while needed—may not have been needed last night.

Let’s face it.  State of the Union speeches are neither generally noteworthy nor much remembered.  Nothing of value would be lost if presidents reverted to the pre-Woodrow Wilson practice of submitting SOTU messages in writing only.  But that  isn’t going to happen.  Thanks to television and presidential vanity, the SOTU message has become an over-hyped political version of a dull variety show with too many commercials that goes on far too long.  Presidents present themselves as a cross between Santa Claus and an occasionally naggy Mary Poppins, but ere long pretty much everyone forgets all about the event.

All that being said, President Trump knocked it out of the park last night.  He looked and sounded presidential, which for him was something of a novelty.  Let’s hope he likes and sticks with this new persona.  He made the case for restoring American greatness more eloquently than he has ever done before.  That should help him in political battles on important policy issues, as for example his struggle to make our Southern border more secure.  He made the case on that issue last night forcefully, with arguments that can attract support beyond his base.  He needs to take a mini-version of what he said last night on the road, while avoiding his penchant for ad hominem pejoratives.  The question is whether he has the focused discipline to do so.

The reality and one of the beauties of America is that your ancestors didn’t have to be born here for you to be as much a part of the country as those whose families came over on the Mayflower or fought the Battle of Bunker Hill.

America was the first nation founded solely on an idea.  This idea transcends ethnicity, race, religion, and locus of birth.  This is the central idea that all human beings are created equal, which Lincoln claimed gives hope to all because it guarantees liberty to all.

So isn’t the project of building a border wall anathema to the beacon of hope that signals to all the world’s poor, tired, and huddled masses of humanity, who yearn for freedom and opportunity?

I for one, am not particularly keen about building this wall.  I doubt that it will make the nation substantially safer, and I don’t think that it will make America stronger or better. But I appreciate that some people do think it will, and I understand that good walls may at times make good neighbors.

The question for us today however is not so much who we will let in and who we will keep out, but who are these people already here who call themselves Americans?  What do Americans stand for?  Do we share a fundamental idea of right and a common cause?

President Trump invoked the central idea of America when he talked about protecting the youngest children of the land, whose lives are in even greater jeopardy today by new legislation in Virginia and New York.

This is a choice Americans have to make, and in making the right choice we will become stronger and better.

The President conveyed this same idea in recounting the story of Judah Samet and his family during World War II.  Having been 10 months in a concentration camp and loaded on a train for transport to Auschwitz, Samet and his family braced themselves for the worst when the train screeched to a halt and a soldier entered their car. But then his father jubilantly cried out: “It’s the Americans!”

This was a choice Americans made on the basis of their dedication to the idea that all human beings are created equal. This is the kind of choice that makes the country and its people safer and stronger and better.

This State of the Union address was notable for its subtle or quiet articulation of the American Dream, running parallel to the overt one. Beyond Trump’s affirmative messaging was an important theme sketched out through things unsaid.

Today and on into at least the near future, the president suggested, Americans still have the needed resources to dissipate fears that powerful global trends will overpower the American way, our more or less traditional manner of living. The New World need not yet kneel before the Old.

Despite taking his time with a lengthy speech, Trump devoted no space to the major forces roiling Europe. The grand meltdown of the established political economy, under ever greater populist heat that often takes a post-ideological character, posed no threat to America’s fortunes.

So too with technology. Although Silicon Valley is now held out for bitter condemnation by observers across the ideological spectrum, the dominant tech companies were spared Trump’s chastisement. Neither AI nor automation were singled out as menacing developments primed to take apart America’s social compact or labor markets. Trans-partisan criticism again notwithstanding, neither the deep state nor the Five Eyes intelligence alliance were invoked, or even alluded to, as encroachments on Americans’ freedom or flourishing.

These would be dark notes in any speech, and in this one, clearly calibrated to strike an upbeat tone without losing the political initiative, they might have felt ominously out of place. But they are the preoccupations of the public mind, and at some point they will need to be addressed—whether by Trump, his critics, or the American people themselves.

But only political victory can stop elite mobbery of our political discourse.

Between the “bombshell” Buzzfeed story that, “if true,” was finally going to sink Donald Trump, and the savaging of the MAGA hat wearing Covington High School teens, the tired old media has had another banner week. This promises to be yet another year of its protracted seppuku with the very #fakenews spear the media forged with Trump in mind.

Distrust and animosity deepen. Contradictions heighten. And as the media’s slow motion suicide rolls on, people are daily inoculated from the old illusions of “news” media.

This inoculation is what matters most, as after the cheap propaganda tricks of the televisual era are seen for what they are, they bring diminishing returns. (I’m following our Editor-at-Large James Poulos in making the word “televisual”—and Marshall McLuhan—great again.)

People have only just begun to see the cheap ideological sophistry of the televisual era, in which racism and sexism and other -isms were held up as the greatest, unpardonable sins possible and used as blunt instruments to bludgeon opponents right the hell out of the public square.

For an ever increasing number of people, this tactic isn’t going to work any longer.

In the case of the Covington kids, of course, the intended effect was to obscure and discredit the reason so many tens or hundreds of thousands of people were marching in Washington, DC.

Further, the story was supposed to reinforce the idea that you aren’t allowed to wear a hat supporting the President of the United States. Worse than passive racism, wearing the hat is active “white nationalism” and could lead to the justified public destruction of your life on national television.

Finally, the story was meant to reinforce the narrative that (smirking!) young white men are racists, especially if from private Catholic schools or privileged positions from which they might soon lead.

But, as Poulos might say, digital technology doesn’t care about your televisual narratives.

This realization came too late for the ruling class, which is why they are struggling to control digital forms of communication.

As Poulos points out, they thought the woke future was ensured by digital technology. But digital technology is simply memory and retrieval of information. As opposed to television, which remains the continuous flow of heavily controlled and produced imagery.

In principle, at least, digital technology gives the role of interpretation over to anyone who can retrieve the data.

Thus the era of imaginative narrative fantasy is over. Now everyone begins to deconstruct television. The old morality plays don’t work. Even old forms of advertising don’t work.

So you get what we got: this time around, it’s much harder to execute the Anita Hill/Blasey-Ford gambit, and 30 seconds of Covington video doesn’t cut it, either. Digital technology records and retrieves in potentially all directions, bringing us nearer to the complexity of the real (which TV was used to controlling and simplifying), and rendering propagandizing pundits irrelevant.

The powers that be are racing to control the early forms of digital communication (FB, Twitter, etc.), but it’s a thankless task. You can’t ultimately control digital the same way you could TV. But as they feel their control loosening and watch their formerly manicured narratives begin to grow wild, they are doubling down in response.

Considered in itself, the Covington kids incident was marginal and meaningless in the grand scheme of things happening under the sun. The absurdity of thinking a brief clip of moving pictures of a few people milling about in a throng of thousands constitutes objective “news” about the goings on of the world should be obvious to all but those still stuck in the idiocratic era of TV.

But while the news was fake, the intended effect by the Left of their latest classic cut-and-paste is quite real.

1) Don’t let your kids wear hats supporting a President of the United States we don’t like.

2) Don’t criticize us when we yell out derogatory and hate filled language at high school kids for hours on end.

3) Don’t let your 16 year old look old hippie protestors in the eye and smile.

If you do, we will publicly destroy your life and ignore and drown out your popular protest movement in real time.

Many speak as if the lesson of the last week is that we all need to avoid rushing to judgment and issuing Hot Takes, as if there was some larger goal for much of journalism and political discourse today other than using Hot Takes as weapons in a war based on longstanding judgments on both sides that the opposition must be vanquished.

Our more intellectually-minded pundits would like to think their audience sits waiting to “rationally” evaluate their columns, pining to be persuaded by op-ed reasoning. To “moderate” pundits, such “reasoning” often means either utilitarian policy arguments, laden with data and social science research that can be used as evidence by either side, or a some form of “But both sides…” sermonizing that splits up blame.

In our present circumstances, such reasoning is not persuasive.

There is a portion of the population that is persuadable, of course, by either side. But there is also a political war on, which requires victory (and defeat). And political victory is also a form of persuasion—in fact, it forms the very environment within which political discourse takes place.

This sort of elite mob behavior will never stop because any one of us writes another article on civility, cautioning against Hot Takes and rushing to judgment. It will stop only when such behavior involves tangible losses in the aforementioned war.

Real public cultural consequences—punishments—are necessary to counter outrageous propaganda and vicious mob attacks on the innocent. And the same is necessary for those on the Right who refuse to acknowledge reality. Public shaming and mockery is a two-edged sword.

The barbarous New York abortion bill passed this week reminds us that we live in a nation of technologically advanced savagery. And in one-party states like New York and California, where anything the Left wants now goes, things are about to get much, much worse.

Before Trump, the one-party, failed republics of California and New York were what the Democrats were hoping for nationally for the foreseeable future. Many still think they represent the inevitable destiny of America itself.

As California’s Attorney General, Kamala Harris didn’t hesitate to send the SWAT team into David Daleiden’s apartment, using the full power of the state to shut him down and punish him with the full force of the law, arm in arm with Planned Parenthood and the media.

Imagine what she would do as President.