Crying Trump

As religious dogmatism has lost its influence over American political culture, a new dogma has emerged. Finding its roots in what liberals like Dave Rubin have taken to calling the regressive left, the new creed has but one law: “To disagree is to be deplorable.” Deviance not tolerated.

The rise of Donald Trump—a lying, amoral, corrupt, racist-pandering charlatan who is not qualified to lead his local kindergarten’s bake sale—is often cited as evidence of the veracity of the creed. But the rise of Trump is not so much indicative of the bigotry of the Republican electorate as it is of the age-tested truism that dogma breeds unthinking resistance.

Recently—since around the turn of the century—the left’s prohibition on dissent has come to dominate their thinking. The pervasiveness of the creed is felt perhaps most sharply on college campuses, where adherence to the new law is well-documented and has recently expressed itself in ugly and destructive ways. Conservative media outlets are dominated by examples, new ones appearing almost daily, of figures on campus or in the media smugly dismissing those who disagree with them as racist for everything from criticizing the IRS to voting for black politicians. Political differences are understandable, and the hackneyed counsel to “hit your opponent where it hurts” is as much a part of the day to day trudge through the trenches of modern American politics as anything else. But for too long, the left has rejected the idea that two moral human beings can come to different conclusions on a variety of issues.

By emphasizing the impossibility of benign dissent, Democrats have won elections. But liberal alarmism on issues of identity has always been a shortsighted goal—as in the case of the boy who cried wolf, the village folk will only believe the hysterics for so long.

In direct response to years of these vapid accusations and (often feigned) outrage, it has become dogma on the right that the when the left cries “bigot!” the proper reaction—always—is a disappointed shake of the head and a downward smirk. Thus, alarmism on the left has bred ossification and codified unbelief on the right. Effective communication between the sides was severed. Everyone on the right who opposed Donald Trump on moral grounds was immediately declared to be Of The Left, a “cuck” and a traitor who wished to see Hillary Clinton elected. We destroyed our ability to defend against the wolves, and perhaps we deserve to pay the price. In any case, our wolf has arrived.

Donald Trump is a bigot. Many of his comments about women are horrible. Democratic politicians correctly argue that they have been pointing this out for months, and that they therefore cannot possibly bear blame for his ascension. But they have made the same accusations about Mitt Romney, John McCain, George W. Bush, and likely most every Republican politician of whom you have ever heard. These accusations all looked shallow, desperate, and outright false to most conservative Americans. With this precedent set, why should the average Republican voter treat the allegations against Trump any differently?

The problem is that a broken clock is right twice a day.

The left has been crying Trump for a generation. Millennial conservatives have never known anything other than a left more trigger-happy than the NRA—a left ever-ready to thoughtlessly dismiss people about whom coastal elites have little genuine understanding as bitter clingers or deplorables.

The left has in this way lost the ability to effectively call out bigotry of any sort. Because of the standards developed over the years, accusations of Republican bigotry must always operate one level higher than the truth: Mitt Romney, instead of having a different worldview to be evaluated on its merits, is a racist—and if Mitt et al. are racists, then Donald Trump can’t just be a racist—his bigotry must be elevated to a nearly Hitlerian magnitude.

We are creating a dangerous self-perpetuating cycle. The more accusations are stretched, the less credible they will become, and the more likely it is that the right will refuse to acknowledge any form of bigotry, regardless of blatancy. Conservatives have thus been forced into a very difficult position in this election. Either they grudgingly embrace The Donald—and overtly do what they have always been accused of doing covertly: spending their moral capital on a politician who flirts with racism—or they disavow Trump, thereby granting a patina of credibility to a leftist worldview that will in the future be used to smear them, attacking them as merely less raucous, more tactful incarnations of the Trumpian worldview. Conservatives should know that the “Strange New Respect” given to them by the left for opposing Trump is merely loaned, and as Ross Douthat learned in the aftermath of his recent column on Samantha Bee, easily revoked.

Of course, the right also bears blame for the ascension and normalization of a detestable man. “Whoever fights with monsters,” Nietzsche said, “should look to it that he himself does not become a monster.” As the right battled in vain to deflect superfluous allegations of racism, they became lax and reactionary, and, finally, the Nietzschean abyss gazed back into them, releasing Donald Trump from its hellish maw.

The fault borne by the right for the rise of Trump is already clear to us, though, having been shouted from the rooftops by everyone left of Reagan. But what perhaps is still murky is the fact that, in searching for the Dr. Frankenstein to blame for the Trumpian beast, the left ought to gaze—for a moment—into the mirror.

Jack McIntire '20, a Crimson editorial comper, lives in Matthews Hall.