Donald Trump is going to turn me into a conservative.
That’s probably not true. But it does feel like I have grown a bit more in tune with conservatives as I understand them – certainly how I idealize them, which I know is about as far away from the truth as are the demonizations of the left that are so popular on the right, that we are babykillers or pedophiles or corrupt Fascist socialists who sell American secrets to China so we can feed that money to Hamas to promote anti-Semitism. But one obvious thing keeps coming up: I have grown much more suspicious of government, and much more frustrated with government inefficiency; and both of those feel conservative-leaning.
I mean, maybe it’s not Trump: maybe it’s because I’m getting older, which supposedly swings people to the right; though to be frank, I’m not getting richer, which I think is the actual reason why people become more conservative as they age. It’s always easy to demand higher taxes on the rich when you aren’t one of them – though it is also true that liberals, masters of NIMBYist virtue signaling, are also fond of raising taxes on other people and not on ourselves. I suspect as well that growing anxiety and paranoia contributes to the stereotypical political changes that come with age; as my own anxiety and paranoia are focused almost exclusively on government and authority, it’s basically driving me closer to socialism – or anarchism, even – rather than the increased fear of crime and of marginalized people which I’ve seen in older people around me.
But I’ll tell you what, I do think there needs to be a rebirth and resurgence of the conservatism that I grew up with (Now THAT makes me sound like an old man), at least the conservatism I think I grew up with; though it would be swell if people would first figure out that trickle-down economics is a lie intended to consolidate wealth and power in the hands of those who already have it and who then espouse trickle-down economics. The economic side is coming along, I think, as Americans may actually be figuring out that the Republicans we elected last year have done somewhere between fuck-all and fuck-you in terms of helping make life more affordable, while they fire thousands of people, reduce useful and vital government services, and cut taxes for the rich, as personified by Elon Musk. (I tell you what, if Musk turns out to be a double-agent for progressives, I will yell “AHA!” Because not a lot of genuine conservatives could have managed to throw as much shit on the GOP as Musk has done. I mean, he’s no Trump, but it still seems too much for it to be coincidence.) But I think the rest of what I imagine as idealized conservative values, like small government, local government, a clear focus on maintaining the rule of law and of the Constitution: that is what I think we actually need. And then, inasmuch as conservatism ever represented the values of independence and personal integrity, “family values,” patriotism and Christianity both in a humble, individual sense, I think people turning back to that would be an incredibly good thing.
Though honestly, it would be best if that happened to the people who are actually supposed to be conservative, namely Republicans, rather than if it happened to me. But I will confess a certain imaginary scenario in which someone like me, and maybe actually me, steps into the void left in the GOP after Donald Trump dies or becomes politically insignificant (and God willing let that happen soon), and helps people to remember that there is nothing particularly wrong with conservatism, that progressive ideas need to be tempered in rational ways, that there is benefit in a marketplace of ideas and a political process that features opposition and negotiation, that a single-minded government is dangerous no matter how right-minded (or left-minded) that government is. That the problem with the current GOP is, first, Donald J. Trump, and second, everything that Trump represents: authoritarianism, white supremacy, anti-intellectualism, hypocrisy and narcissism. Not the essential values of conservatives, which, while I generally don’t agree with them, I don’t think they are at all bad. I think the Republican party returning to those values – maybe a little more modernized than the 1950’s Eisenhower Republicans I’m probably imagining – would be the best thing for our country, barring an actual leftist revolution that swept the entire nation along with it, and I keep looking for someone to carry it out.
Can’t find them. Not in Trump’s GOP.
Can you imagine that, though? If someone charismatic enough to actually get Republicans to listen reminded them of what the party of Lincoln should truly be about? I can’t imagine a change in the politics of this country that would have a more immediate positive impact. Not even the hard pendulum swing to the left which I suspect is coming after this particular round of violent greed is over, because as long as progressives and liberals and Democrats in government are opposed by people who will lie with every breath, spread rumors and character assassination with every press interaction, start pretty literal fistfights over every disagreement, and ignore all political norms (Which, to be clear, are the ESSENCE of conservative sensibility, and there is not a much better indication that the Trump movement is not authentically conservative – other than the obvious abandonment of respect for law and order and police authority, in favor of supporting a multiple felon and the complete discarding of all due process) in order to exploit any opportunity to harm their opponents and increase their own power, government will continue to be too dysfunctional to inspire any long-term support for progressive ideas and movements.
Think of it: if the Democrats as they are currently constituted, headed by people like AOC and Cory Booker, Jamie Raskin and Adam Schiff, and Pete Buttigieg and Gavin Newsom, rather than Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, trying to actually enact Medicare for All, over the objections of Senators Donald Trump Jr. and Marjorie Taylor Greene-Trump (Dunno if she’ll marry one of the Trump boys or get Trump himself to adopt her, but I promise that she’ll be part of the family in the next decade. I am going to put my money on her taking up with The Nazi Cheeto himself after Melania finally divorces him.), who holds a filibuster on the floor of the Senate to accuse every one of the Democrats of supporting Chinese Triads in smuggling Fentanyl into Gaza to make Palestinian super-soldiers who will be unleashed across the southern US border to rape white women in order to bring about a wave of abortions which will then be used to distill that baby brain juice which keeps the Clintons alive.
What are the chances that any progressive/liberal alliance would be able to survive through that kind of inferno of flaming horseshit?
As long as Trumpian MAGA fanatics remain popular, they will ruin all attempts at a functional government. Because that is the larger Trumpian project: the undercutting of a functional federal government and a social power structure that serves the public interest and the general welfare promised in the Constitution, in service of the two main goals of the movement, namely a more lawless society where wealthy people and the white supremacist power structure can have free rein, and a right-wing-media-fed zeitgeist of apocalyptic terror that allows Daddy Trump to claim that only he has the strength and intelligence to save us all from the dangers and threats that surround us.
I do think that there is real value in conservative ideas and values – at least in real conservative values. It would have been wonderful if the last twenty years had included more genuine attempts to balance the federal budget and reduce the deficit and the debt, particularly in the times of economic growth, so long as it had been done the right way, by raising taxes on the wealthy. You know, the way Eisenhower did it: because asking the wealthy to contribute their fair share would show a respect for individual responsibility, and patriotism in the humble sense that asks everyone to contribute to the betterment of this nation and the people who make it up. (Also, while I’m no expert, I swear that taxing the rich seems pretty dang Christian…) Which value, when taken to a Trumpian extreme, is turned into that your-own-bootstraps nonsense which then justifies – or rather pretends to excuse – cutting Medicaid and food stamps and all of the social safety net, while allowing billionaires to extract all the wealth they could ever want without any return on our investments which made the wealth possible in the first place. I think the progressive desire to create programs that produce positive change is wonderful, but when combined with the liberal/Democratic desire to protect everyone and everything that needs protecting, it leads to levels of red tape and bureaucracy that undercuts the progressive program entirely; and, at least in theory, real conservatives would be useful in tempering or preventing that excess. Take, for example, this: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0uxWGBxJWf2oAB9uyDMoOB?si=407ef6fb2213428a
This episode of Jon Stewart’s wonderful podcast features Ezra Klein, the progressive former MSNBC host, who discusses a program intended to build rural broadband access under President Biden’s infrastructure bill. The program had a fourteen-stage process before a region – state or county or city – could receive grant money, which process produced so much red tape that out of 56 regions that applied for grants to build broadband infrastructure, only 3 had finished that process in the three years between the law being signed in 2021 and the end of infrastructure spending in 2024. And none of those three had actually managed to get the money and build the broadband. Klein goes into agonizing detail – he wrote about this in his most recent book – and shows how all of the delays and all of the red tape are well-meaning, but basically none of it is necessary, and taken as a whole, it was destructive: because no rural broadband was built. Multiply that by every other program Biden’s administration passed, and you can see why the Democrats lost the election: because even their important and genuine accomplishments never actually came to pass in the real world. Klein talks about how Biden planned everything on a six- to ten-year timeline – when elections happen every two or four years.
The best line in the podcast was this: “We are stuck between a party that wants to destroy government, and one that can’t make government work.”
I would argue that conservatives arguing for real conservative values could have counteracted the problems that come with a too-singleminded focus on liberal and progressive values. To be fully transparent, I do think that much of the problem is in the liberal influence on progressive movements, because I think it is liberals and Democrats who insist on political correctness and purity tests and virtue signaling, where progressives are focused on functional efforts to improve people’s lives. Klein talks about that, too, that part of the issue was things like a requirement that the subcontractors hired for the broadband installation represent women and non-white minority-run businesses, which is a great intention to have and a wonderful thing to try to do – but it’s not the point. The point was to build rural broadband (Which, coincidentally, would do a hell of a lot to help a large number of marginalized people; remember that women in rural areas are the ones who can’t find meaningful work opportunities, and also remember that the rural areas of the South are largely not white. Or maybe that’s not so coincidental, but it does show why liberals given total control can sometimes step on their own feet.). It’s this desire, not to achieve real progress, but to be liked, to be good, while working through the process, which makes the left twist itself into knots and get nothing done – though what I am ignoring is the fact that progressive goals and projects are frequently unpopular, because they are expensive and difficult and do not tend to aggrandize benefits in the hands of those who already have privilege, and it requires a spoonful of liberal/Democratic people-pleasing to help the progressive medicine go down… if there’s not going to be an actual leftist revolution, that is.
I don’t really know, at this point, if conservatives really do have that no-nonsense gruff exterior that we think of as people just getting shit done; but that’s what I’m imagining. I just picture a 60-year-old white man (Hey, I’m not stupid enough to think that the GOP will suddenly become multicultural; let’s not go too far into the fantasy) in a committee meeting, who just keeps responding to every liberal feel-good virtue-signaling suggestion with a steady beat of “The goal here is to build rural broadband.” Basically, I think we need people in government who just want to get shit done: not necessarily make sure that everything gets done in exactly the “right” way.
There is an important point to be recognized in the conservative drive to demand people work hard: because while government is necessary to make changes for large groups of people, particularly changes that are not profitable for any other group currently with privilege and power, what it comes down to, always, is people working hard. People in government work hard to make it possible for everybody else to work hard, by trying to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to actually benefit from their hard work. That’s the truth. Take it from me, a government employee who works hard to make other people work hard, so they can benefit from their own hard work. That’s what school is. And I don’t know that liberalism actually pushes people to work hard; within my example of myself and schools, liberals are the ones who get 504 accommodations and IEPs enacted and followed, and who make sure that the curriculum includes social-emotional learning and multicultural perspectives: conservatives are the ones who teach math and science and history. (English teachers are all liberals. With very few exceptions, who are mostly psychopaths.)
In the most simple sense (And I know I’m oversimplifying and basing this on stereotypes; doesn’t make me wrong, though), the recognition in liberal politics of the burdens of social marginalization and intersectional oppression, of mental health struggles and of the value of self-care, promotes a deeply valuable drive for people to take it easy, to relax and take care of themselves. But conservatism does value and push individual hard work, personal responsibility, self-reliance. Not Trumpian pseudo-conservatism, of course, which pushes people to hate everyone who doesn’t have dirt under their fingernails (Daddy Trump, as in all things, excluded, of course) unless the skin of those hands is brown, in which case they should be hated anyway no matter what is under their fingernails; but conservatism tells us that people need to do things themselves, and be responsible for the consequences of their decisions: which allows people to actually make those decisions themselves, without approval by a dozen committees, and then (in theory) holds them responsible for those decisions.
Liberalism is necessary to make sure that conservatives don’t treat people like shit in the name of promoting personal responsibility. (Also to make sure that conservatives in this country don’t go full white supremacist; which would naturally occur, as conservatism by definition is trying to retain and preserve a past system, which in this country means an oppressive racist and sexist system.) Progressives are the ones trying to make the world a better place, rather than trying to retain the status quo. I do not imagine that a United States run by conservatives of any stripe would be the best version of this country. But my God, watching the Democratic party fuck up every single opportunity that we vote for them has worn me the fuck out. The 2024 election broke me. The Republicans are going to lose in the midterms next year, and I am looking forward to that: but I cannot stand to watch Democrats win control of Congress in the coming reaction to Trump, and then do every fucking thing wrong again, so that 2028 swings back to the goddamn Republicans.
But right now, there is another reason. The main reason, the real reason, why I find myself wishing for a renewal of a conservative movement that probably never really existed. It’s not policies, not red tape and bureaucracy, not tax breaks, not cuts to the social safety net. It’s not the next election, not the future of how we see government. It’s none of those things.
I want to find a way to ensure that this country will still exist.
I’m trying not to overreact. I’m trying to see this as just more bullshit from Trump. But, I mean — he fucking sent in troops. Thousands of troops. To LA, to California, under his command, his and that fucking idiot Hegseth. He sent them not because they were needed, not because they were asked for, not because their presence will help: just because he wants to start a fight with the left, with California, with Gavin Newsom personally, who has been criticizing Trump for years, and who is willing to fight him back. Because MAGA wants to have the fight with the left — by which I mean the majority of the population of this country, the ones who don’t want a dictator, who don’t want tyranny, who actually want this to remain a Constitutional Republic, a country under the rule of law. They want to fight all the rest of us. They want to hurt us because they think we have stolen their country and filled it with illegal immigrants and trans people and abortions and fentanyl. They want us to pay for that: and Trump wants to help them do it. Not because he gives a shit about this country or what is happening to it; just because he wants to point his finger and see people die at his command. He wants the full might of the U.S. military to obey him, and destroy those he wants destroyed.
This is not about left and right, liberal and conservative. It’s about this asshole sending fucking troops to LA. It’s really just about life and death: life and death of immigrants and marginalized groups in general, life and death of this country and its self-image, life and death of the rule of law and the experiment in democracy that seems, at last, to have failed.
Our President sent troops to LA. Not to enforce the law: to enforce his will. To set off a fight — a fight that people are giving him — so he can escalate the tension until people finally snap, and fight, for real, fight for life and death.
Because Trump wants a war.
If Conservatives, real Conservatives, would help prevent that, then – yeah, I’ll be one.
I am a middle-aged white man, after all.
And whatever else I think of this country, I don’t want America to fall. Not like this.
Whatever it takes.
Just Dusty 