We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
We have all wasted enough time analyzing the man-child, the heir of Abraham Lincoln brooding in the Oval Office. Of as much consequence are those intent (publicly) of giving him four more years to inflame the worst devils of our nature. How many they are, or will be come November, does concern us.
Eliding their own decades-long contribution to reanimating this creature sewn together from parts, Never-Trumpers now shudder at what their efforts have wrought.
Bill Kristol points to Jonathan Last’s column in The Bulwark in which Last frets over the proportion of our non-enemies conspiratorially minded enough to believe a string of outlandish and contradictory theories about the novel coronavirus pandemic.
As all true patriots know, the virus is part of a plot by somebody somewhere to sap and impurify our precious bodily fluids. Godless Chinese communists cooked up COVID-19 in a lab funded by Anthony Fauci in collusion with Bill Gates, the World Health Organization, the Clintons, and George Soros. Or, it is the result of forcing vaccines into our arms for generations (Fauci again). Vaccines sap and impurify, etc., etc.
One would expect these groups to argue over their dark cosmologies, but they hold hands. “Which suggests that not one of these people actually believes what they’re selling,” Last argues.
Even after 80,000+ American deaths on his watch, Donald Trump, “the single person responsible for stopping this shadowy group,” comes out smelling like a rose (for those who have not lost their sense of smell).
Last explains:
The lesson here is that these stories aren’t really about vaccines or bioweapons or population control. Instead, they’re meta-parables about how the people telling them see themselves and feel about their place in the world.
Last (without providing data) sees an intersection between the conspiracy crowd and those who refuse to wear face coverings during the pandemic. In fact, he sees a broad overlap between the “don’t wear masks” movement and the “reopen immediately” movement. He argues this too is less about the virus or the economy than about how they see their place in the world.
Greg Sargent (Washington Post’s Plum Line) pushes back, arguing that data does not support the supposed culture war fomented on Trump TV over the shutdown. There is no broad urban vs. rural or class divide there.
But it is not the accuracy of Last’s Venn diagrams that is concerning as much as the presence of a non-trivial number of Americans so committed to “death before disbelief.” This faction has grown, disconnected from reality and from feelings of American esprit de corps that resurfaced temporarily after 9/11. It could be as many as 1 in 5, per this week’s Post-University of Maryland poll.
Last worries “the restless grumbling of the open-it-all-up, masks-be-damned crowd should concern us, not only because their actions endanger them and us, but also because of what it says about the American character.” Nothing good. And the world knows it.
Wearing masks is a public statement about Trump’s failure, tweets David Frum. It is a “MAGA hat in reverse.”
Frum adds:
People are meaning-craving animals. Symbols communicating meaning. Very understandably, many, many Trump supporters interpret the mask to mean, “I was wrong.”
Which is true. They were wrong, and that’s what it does mean.
Few will ever admit it. I don’t care if they do. I only care that they vote against Trump or stay home this November, and quit supporting the clowns who enabled Trump to lead America down this dead-end alley.
● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●
For The Win, 3rd Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV mechanics guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.
Note: The pandemic will upend standard field tactics in 2020. If enough promising “improvisations” come my way by June, perhaps I can issue a COVID-19 supplement.