Tucker Carlson - the successor to Trump?

[Jim__]

Last edited Sat Feb 15, 2020, 03:36 PM - Edit history (1)

Or Josh Hawley? Both are suggested by an essay in the February 2020 issue of Harper's, Trumpism After Trump - the article is behind a paywall - by Thomas Meaney. Meaney attended - as an observer - a meeting of the National Conservatism Conference in Washinton, DC over the summer. These people, the National Conservatives, are extremely well-organized, funded by billionaires, and - apparently without a touch of irony - honing an anti-elitist political message. Their message is strongly against the progressives who brought us free trade - you know, progressives like Ronald Reagan.

A short excerpt - the Dark Knight referred to is Curtis Yarvin:

(the anti-elitist Peter Thiel - Jim)

...

There were a few people at the National Conservatism Conference of whom it was whispered: “Future president, right there.” It had been said of J. D. Vance, who managed to conjure a world that was almost palatable to liberals. Vance was careful about his gender roles, and even gave evidence that suggested he had experience changing diapers. It had been said of Tucker Carlson that he would be even better than Trump as a White House personality. But it was Josh Hawley over whom the crown most plausibly hovered. He was thirty-nine years old, the youngest man in the Senate, a former clerk for Justice John Roberts on the Supreme Court, and biographer (when in his twenties) of Teddy Roosevelt. Hawley was a scholar-warrior out of NatCon heaven. In presentation and style, he reminded me of the young Austrian leader Sebastian Kurz, who had made his name as the shiny new bridge to the authoritarians in Eastern Europe but who was still suave enough to appeal to Carinthian grandmothers.

I took my seat early at the dinner for Hawley. A recent convert to Mormonism was bad-mouthing the Supreme Court justices: Trump had to do better. “You really don’t like Kavanaugh?” I asked her. “No, I mean Gorsuch. Have you read his decisions on Indians? He wants to give it all back to the Indians. Insidious rulings.” Another law clerk was speculating about Ginsburg’s physical health: “Amy Wax is a doctor and says that Ginsburg, even with all her exercise, will still be dead within two years, so it’s looking good.” The Dark Knight was trying to convince the table that the most important book to understand the moment was The Final Pagan Generation by Edward J. Watts, which is about how the last pagans in the Roman Empire had managed their lives in the upsurge of Christianity and how quickly their millennia-old culture had been pulverized by a small cadre of young, zealous Christian elite. This was the Dark Knight’s persistent worry: Who were the true believers at the conference, and who were the opportunists?

Roosevelt could be an opportunist, Hawley writes in his biography of Teddy. “But he was no crass intellectual opportunist.” But what was Hawley? He came onto the stage in a more powerful thrust than had anyone at the conference so far, and his speech would be a summa of all that had come before. Like Thiel, he wanted to go to war on Big Tech (and he had introduced bills that showed he was serious); like Patrick Deneen, he was worried about how to create communities led by aristo-populists; like Tucker, he was fast on his feet and projected smiley confidence; but he could also compete with Hazony’s boyish rocking back and forth between solemnity and mischief.

“The great divide of our time is not between Trump supporters and Trump opponents,” Hawley intoned in a kind of grand-old-man oratory that seemed to conjure its own pulpit. “Or between suburban voters and rural ones, or between red America and blue America. No, the great divide of our time is between the political agenda of the leadership elite and the great and broad middle of our society. And to answer the discontent of our time, we must end that divide. We must forge a new consensus. We must recover and renew the dream of the republic.” He was getting more Roman every minute. Then he rounded on his enemy. “Call it the cosmopolitan consensus. On economics, this consensus favors globalization—closer and closer economic union, more immigration, more movement of capital, more trade, on whatever terms. The boundaries between America and the rest of the world should fade and eventually vanish. The goal is to build a global consumer economy, one that will provide an endless supply of cheap goods, most of them made with cheap labor overseas but funded by American dollars.”

...

[RussellCattle]

1. This is the scariest thing I've read on DU in a long time.

These well funded fuckers are selling themselves as populist progressives, ferchrissakes.

[Jim__]

3. It scared me when I read it.

They have long term plans and lots of money to put those plans into action.

[3Hotdogs]

2. I loves the last sentence.

How does that square with Gropenfuhrer who brought back 'merican factories from extinction?

[Jim__]

4. It actually does square with Trump's claims. Hawley attributes the plans in that last sentence ...

... to us - i.e. progressives.

... Then he rounded on his enemy. “Call it the cosmopolitan consensus. On economics, this consensus favors globalization—closer and closer economic union, more immigration, more movement of capital, more trade, on whatever terms. The boundaries between America and the rest of the world should fade and eventually vanish. The goal is to build a global consumer economy, one that will provide an endless supply of cheap goods, most of them made with cheap labor overseas but funded by American dollars.”

Conservatives are almost always against cosmopolitanism. Now that people can see what free-trade does to the working class, they re-label it cosmopolitanism and blame it on progressives. Now they're (conservatives) in favor of nationalism. With their money, they'll sell that garbage to a lot of voters.

[czarjak]

5. "A recent convert to Mormonism"?

The religion founded on the tenant that The New Testament is flawed. Hence, “The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ” Good stuff!