America, America

A recent New York Times opinion piece by Christopher Buskirk contains, to be sure, a fair amount of BS. That’s no great surprise, given that Buskirk edits a web journal whose main purpose seems to be to provide a pseudo-intellectual gloss on Donald Trump’s decidedly anti-intellectual brand of right-wing populist nationalism. But not all of Buskirk’s column is nonsense, and the parts that aren’t deserve to be taken seriously by progressives concerned about the coming mid-terms—and beyond.

The BS relates mainly to Buskirk’s notion of a “conservative renaissance” under way, as what he terms the “cartoonish misreading of libertarianism” by the old Republican establishment gives way to a “renewed emphasis on addressing America and Americans as a community characterized by fraternal bonds and mutual responsibility — what Lincoln called the ‘mystic chords of memory.’”

“Renaissance” is an oddly ironic label for the resurgence of a racist, nativist, and atavistic nationalism more about instincts, attitudes, and impulses than about (if we’re going to quote Lincoln) the “better angels of our nature.” But it’s part of the spin Buskirk wants to give those attitudes and impulses as he credits Trump’s rhetorical paeans to “our farmers, our police, our flag and our national anthem — even our coal miners” with speaking “to the essential fraternity of the nation.”

Actually it sounds pretty much like the usual right-wing appeals to the cartoonish patriotism of flag, anthem, and ‘law and order’ that’s been standard Republican fare at least since Nixon. Buskirk worries that Trump’s crudeness as a messenger obscures an “essentially wholesome message” and leads many to “hear something much narrower than what is meant.” I suspect the real problem is that most outside of Trump’s base (and probably many within it) grasp exactly how narrowly the message is meant and how little of it has anything to do with the “bonds of civil union that ought to hold us together.” In any case, it’s hard to find much in the attacks on Hillary, liberals, the media, NFL players, or (good grief) John McCain that connects with any “demand that we love our fellow citizens in their imperfection even as they love us in ours.”

I’m fairly sure Trump, his fellow Republicans, and the conservative right more generally couldn’t care less about “forming good citizens and restoring a sense of Americanism that relies upon strong ties of fellowship and belief in a shared destiny.” What they mainly seem to care about is power: power for themselves and for the corporate oligarchy that sponsors them and which constitutes the only ‘community’ they meaningfully represent. But in seeking to consolidate power they, or at least some of them, may have found a winning strategy in repackaging their agenda, hitherto couched in the language of economics and libertarianism, in communitarian and fraternal appeals of a certain kind, part of whose appeal may lie in having been out of fashion for a while.

But if Buskirk’s depiction of a new kind of civic-minded conservatism is mostly fantasy, he nevertheless is on to something real in chastising as out of touch those “strategists and consultants who talk exclusively in terms of messaging tailored to statistical constructs like ‘disaffected Democrats with some college’ or ‘married suburban men who drive S.U.V.s.’” As he notes, “most people don’t want to be addressed as members of a demographic group looking for a payoff. They want to be addressed as Americans.”

Alas, he may also be right in sensing that Democrats, as well as the Republican establishment he reviles, don’t yet seem to get this. And he’s on to something again in speculating that all the relentless scrutiny of Trump administration, far from generating a big blue wave of outrage-driven Democratic enthusiasm, may instead fuel a more enervating wave of scandal fatigue, as well as a countervailing Republican resentment at perceived scandal-mongering, that could render this fall’s mid-term elections basically a wash, especially in a strong economy.

Buskirk overstates how seriously or genuinely Republicans this cycle, any more than any other, have “embraced the rhetoric and the policies that connect citizenship and civic virtue.” He’s more on target, though, in implying just how weakly most Democrats, especially those pinning their mid-term hopes on the Mueller probe and some sort of eruption of public disgust with Trump’s antics, are embracing any such civic or communitarian rhetoric either, at a time when the public may well be yearning for it.

“Persuasion still matters,” Buskirk insists, noting that “the victories won in 2016 can be reversed, but only by voters at the polls and not by any of the irregular means that occupy the fantasies of many people who still can’t believe that their side lost.” His target here is ‘Trump haters’ of all stripes, but it may be Democrats who most need to take it to heart. When they aren’t complacently predicting a big blue wave or the implosion of the Trump presidency, they seem preoccupied with trying to figure out how to tailor an appeal to some theoretically reachable sub-set of red-state voters who went for Trump in 2016 after twice voting for Obama.

“Talk about principles, not just tactics,” Buskirk urges Republicans seeking a red wave this fall instead a blue one. “Talk about America.” Democrats determined to see the opposite would do well to follow the same advice. I would merely suggest, in addition: talk about principles more than programs or policies—or at a minimum talk about programs and policies in such a way that the underlying principles come through loud and clear. Unfortunately, persuasive arguments and compelling principles are not easy to find amid the Democrats’ ‘Better Deal’ policy wish lists, their fixation on the Mueller probe, their interminable agonizing over if and when to talk about impeachment, and their repetitive  restatements of Trump’s personal unfitness for office.

True, Democrats probably invoke the words “America” and “American” as frequently as Republicans. Yet they often don’t seem to be speaking with much passion or conviction to America about the kind of America they want to build. They don’t yet seem to have found a way to connect with a yearning the right has sensed—and is seeking, however pathologically, to tap into—for some more cohesive collective response to the challenges facing the country. And until they begin to do so, Trump-style shouting about America, however vacuous, disingenuous, and even toxic, is going to continue to invade, occupy, and pollute the civic space where a more humane, progressive and truly inclusive and communitarian Democratic vision of America ought to be.