Why is it so hard to understand what the populist Right in America wants and why they think the way they do? It’s just article after article asking these questions and not understanding the answers.
Stop leftist cultural overreach that has been empowered by the administrative state, corporate America, control of institutions, and illegal abuse of the legal system.
Enforce the whole Bill of Rights. No exceptions. Some of the greatest damage to it was done by the Bush Administration and the populists have not forgot it. As for the Democrats, they do not even pretend to care about free speech anymore let alone any of the others.
Reject the CATO/libertarian brand of neoliberal economics that the party elite love. The populists remember the damage it has caused to middle class and lower class Americans as well as how it has further enriched others. They want antitrust against corporate monopolies, not Reaganite corporate tax cuts.
Enforce immigration law and secure the border. The country cannot handle the strain of such a large influx of people. Additionally, if you do not have a border then you do not have a nation state.
Rein in the administrative state. The country is pretty much run by unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats at this point.
Enforce the law equally and crack down on crime, especially violent crime. While many populists are skeptical of law enforcement, criminals cannot be allowed to do whatever they want. The country is in the middle of a massive crime wave.
Clean house in the party. The latest populist firebrand may betray you. An establishment party member who has been there decades will betray you.
No more foreign wars or overseas adventures until the American government earns back the trust of its people. Many populists either served during the War on Terror or know someone who did. There has been no accountability since then or signs anything has changed. Additionally, the country is in crisis at home and sending vast sums of money to other countries feels like an insult.
Screw the news media. They were supposed to be the “fourth estate” keeping government in check. Now they lie shamelessly and no longer even bother to challenge the country’s elites or political establishment. The populists want someone who will call them out on their lies.
Rein in the FBI and CIA. They have gone completely out of control with few pretentions of even still following the law or Constitution.
Finally, the populists want someone who will stand up and fight for them. When it comes to taking a stand for things they say they believe in, most Republican politicians have spines with the consistency of a wet noodle and care more about being part of the Washington D.C. club than representing their voters.
No more foreign wars or overseas adventures until the American government earns back the trust of its people. Many populists either served during the War on Terror or know someone who did. There has been no accountability since then or signs anything has changed. Additionally, the country is in crisis at home and sending vast sums of money to other countries feels like an insult.
Could that (widely held) Normal American value/belief be why the NatCon movement is run by foreigners who demand our treasure, to the tune $10 million a day, and who want us to never-stop killing people in the Middle East for them, and to continue fomenting chaos in other places so that the world doesn’t pay attention to their atrocities?
They are terrified that Americans for America will realize we’re being played.
An American “National Conservative” organization run by a citizen of a hostile foreign power?
It’s called co-opting. Same thing happened with the Tea Party.
Something is rotten in Denmark!
Matt Hindman, That’s a great list!
Much of it boils down to “stop the machine” or “stop the elites.” It’s the world Christopher Lasch foresaw in “Revolt of the Elites.”
What’s the upbeat version of stopping the machine? Truman had some excellent slogans. “Give ’em hell, Harry” “The Buck Stops Here.”
How can this be transformed into a positive vision for America? What’s the opposite of the elite machine that is fundamentally more American?
“Dignity and Respect for Every American.”
That might work. The minority identity groups demand respectability. Conservatives and white men have suffered great indignity at the hands of the Elites.
The renewal of America isn’t going to come from the Left and its stale apparatus. Trump was Sturm and Drang. Sturm and Drang ran for ten short years, but it unleashed human individualism and led to the overthrow of the Enlightenment cult of Rationalism. Today, like in 1770, we see the reign of the goddess Reason, that is, of mob rule, the stuff of decay.
The terrors of life exceed the terrors of death for a vast swath of young white men. That’s the stuff of Sturm and Drang. It’s the stuff of renewal that brings societies back from the dead.
I think you do not understand MAGA, let alone Ultra MAGA. Your lists are pretty much Republican, but Mainstream Republican just the right end of the Uniparty (Dems and Mainstream Repubs are the Uniparty) – Owned by the Big Money who paid their campaigns, and will give them the insider deals if they vote correctly – to make them very rich after they leave government. Yes your list is necessary – but more.
Americans are becoming MAGA – and your list misses three main points, very big ones:
1) China is the Nation which is Existential Threat to USA and the world.
2) The Great Reset is an even bigger threat than China, in fact incorporates China, And the Uniparty and the WEF and the Corporatocracy, and global Finance. These are out to conquer the Globe. All the top companies and finance are Global, no longer National, and are overtaking all the world from inside..
3) the Constitution is the only tool to fight the Great Reset, and the Constitution’s strength is that it is a Republic – and the real power devolves to the States under it, which makes it responsible directly to the People, because the Federal Government (the Administrative State), is owned by the Great Reset, it does Not serve the people.
MAGA, Make America Great Again – because you see it is not, cannot be, under the current system. The ballot box is the only way the world can be saved, by voting in not the Uniparty, but MAGA populism, which is for USA, not the Great Reset.
I wish you guys would skip the inclusive populism and conspiracy stuff. Zionism/Talmudism and its outpourings have been and are the foremost hurdles to national sovereignty for our People. If you are European diaspora living in America, you are endangered. You’re worried about our values, not realizing that values come from people, and our People should be of primary concern to you. We are your extended family. The way to truly love something is to realize it might be lost. Blood and soil is all that matters in the end. One day you may realize this, hopefully there will still be something left to save.
This idiot begins by saying “quit the conspiracy stuff” and immediately goes in for the biggest — and dumbest — conspiracy of all — “It’s dem Jews what done it.” Pathetic, sad, and above all, real stupid.
An interventionist America is also usually bad news – Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya, ex-Yugoslavia all spring to mind.
Don’t think your Syria example holds water either as America have been involved with Syria for years.On top of the bombing and other attacks on ISIS there was support and training for the supposed ‘moderate’ rebels that mostly turned out to be Islamic radicals.
Unfortunately, we have been burned too many times now and getting involved in Ukraine just seems like doing the same thing expecting a different result.
Certainly we’ve been burned in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya … But Ukraine is a very different kettle of fish. Not much chance of ISIS taking over there.
But at what cost?
The biggest problem since at least March 2020 is single-factor thinking (a la Greg Gutfeld) with Exhibit A being covid policy based solely on deaths delayed, ignoring other factors like harm to the economy (2nd order affect on deaths) and harms to children.
Help Ukraine yes. But we are at $54B so far in 2022 and heading towards $70B this year! That is close to $1,000 form a family of 4 in the US!
As original poster noted that amount is an insult to working Americans.
It isn’t just the populist right, or even the right in general, that agrees with these points. Real liberals do as well, though of course the self-proclaimed illiberal “liberals” think it’s anathema.
Bob Smalser
1 year ago
DeSantis is the original clean-cut Boy Scout, compete with a Catholic School blue-collar background, Harvard education and a picture book family, a poster boy for American meritocracy. But he learned some hard-knuckle tactics and strategy with the SEALS and has the judgment and guts to go in for the kill when necessary. Wish we had him earlier.
I’m a DeSantis fan but I’m not certain he was ever a SEAL. I had understood that he was a Judge Advocate (Navy Lawyer) attached to a SEAL Team. Not a military expert but I believe there’s a distinction to be made between being a JAG deployed with SEAL’s and being a SEAL.
My lawyer in wartime Kuwait was a key guy on my staff, went everywhere and did everything I did. To paint him as an minor-involved outsider would be totally incorrect.
Ayan Siddiqui
1 year ago
The skepticism around DeSantis is not whether he would essentially be the reincarnation of Trumpism without Trump, it’s about whether he’s genuine about his beliefs and is willing to go against the GOP establishment. While I do believe DeSantis would be a more effective president and is the future of the conservatism (alongside Trump), there is a question around if DeSantis is essentially a ploy by the GOP establishment to get rid of Trump and have someone like DeSantis make neoconservatism fashionable again among the GOP voters.
The question in my mind is whether or not Trump is genuine about his professed beliefs. His despicable performance after August 2018 when he threw away the House to go courting McConnell’s Senate and ended up losing both the House and Senate is foremost in mind. He campaigned for everyone of MCConnell’s creeps, ignored the House Liberty caucus and seemed to rely chiefly on his idiot daughter and son-in-law for reliable advice. His list appointments from Gen. Miley to Gina Haspel told me very clearly that all Trump ever wanted was the same deals for himself and his relations as Joe Biden got for himself and his relations.
Finally, it was Trump who shut down the country in the Spring of 2020 and it was Trump who pumped the first $3 Trillion of stimulus into the economy and launched our current inflation all the while preening about how he’ll be remembered forever as the great savior from a trumped-up plague.
As for DeSantis, acta non verba seems to be his motto and that is good. Trump talks a lot in the end does nothing.
Agreed about how “reliable” Trump is. DeSantis is running for governor in November, and has raised about $140mm for campaigns. HOWEVER, unlike Trump, DeSantis is generously spending it on other candidates around the country. Trump has amassed a little less, BUT HAS NOT SPENT ONE THIN DIME, on any of the congressional and Senate candidates that he has foisted upon us (thinking particularly about Dr. Oz and Hershel Walker), let alone decent candidates that he endorsed to help win the Republican primaries – especially Blake Masters and Vance.
DeSantis’s spending money on other campaigns around the country reminds me of Nixon’s work in the trenches for other GOP candidates after he lost the CA governor’s race. He was repaid at the 68 GOP convention with the nomination.
De Santis is about as good a candidate as conservatives are likely to get. If you’re waiting for the perfect candidate who ticks all your boxes I’m afraid you’re in for a very long wait.
Maureen Finucane
1 year ago
Contrary to Liberal gloom, some of the migrants are saying they quickly got jobs after being bussed to Washington.
DA Johnson
1 year ago
Park MacDougald says: “the old party paid lip service to Christian “family values” while allowing the country’s social fabric to decay” (my emphasis). This implies that the GOP had the power to stop such decay but did not do so because their commitment to family values was only for show. But what actions could a more honest GOP actually have taken? I think the problem is that no person or party really knows the secret to reversing societal decay, even if they had the political power to implement it.
Maureen Finucane
1 year ago
They’d be better served doing what Spain has done to plug their labour gap. Hundreds of visas have been granted to Venezuelans desperate to get out.
Why is it so hard to understand what the populist Right in America wants and why they think the way they do? It’s just article after article asking these questions and not understanding the answers.
Excellent comment. Thank you.
Could that (widely held) Normal American value/belief be why the NatCon movement is run by foreigners who demand our treasure, to the tune $10 million a day, and who want us to never-stop killing people in the Middle East for them, and to continue fomenting chaos in other places so that the world doesn’t pay attention to their atrocities?
They are terrified that Americans for America will realize we’re being played.
An American “National Conservative” organization run by a citizen of a hostile foreign power?
It’s called co-opting. Same thing happened with the Tea Party.
Something is rotten in Denmark!
Matt Hindman, That’s a great list!
Much of it boils down to “stop the machine” or “stop the elites.” It’s the world Christopher Lasch foresaw in “Revolt of the Elites.”
What’s the upbeat version of stopping the machine? Truman had some excellent slogans. “Give ’em hell, Harry” “The Buck Stops Here.”
How can this be transformed into a positive vision for America? What’s the opposite of the elite machine that is fundamentally more American?
“Dignity and Respect for Every American.”
That might work. The minority identity groups demand respectability. Conservatives and white men have suffered great indignity at the hands of the Elites.
The renewal of America isn’t going to come from the Left and its stale apparatus. Trump was Sturm and Drang. Sturm and Drang ran for ten short years, but it unleashed human individualism and led to the overthrow of the Enlightenment cult of Rationalism. Today, like in 1770, we see the reign of the goddess Reason, that is, of mob rule, the stuff of decay.
The terrors of life exceed the terrors of death for a vast swath of young white men. That’s the stuff of Sturm and Drang. It’s the stuff of renewal that brings societies back from the dead.
I think you do not understand MAGA, let alone Ultra MAGA. Your lists are pretty much Republican, but Mainstream Republican just the right end of the Uniparty (Dems and Mainstream Repubs are the Uniparty) – Owned by the Big Money who paid their campaigns, and will give them the insider deals if they vote correctly – to make them very rich after they leave government. Yes your list is necessary – but more.
Americans are becoming MAGA – and your list misses three main points, very big ones:
1) China is the Nation which is Existential Threat to USA and the world.
2) The Great Reset is an even bigger threat than China, in fact incorporates China, And the Uniparty and the WEF and the Corporatocracy, and global Finance. These are out to conquer the Globe. All the top companies and finance are Global, no longer National, and are overtaking all the world from inside..
3) the Constitution is the only tool to fight the Great Reset, and the Constitution’s strength is that it is a Republic – and the real power devolves to the States under it, which makes it responsible directly to the People, because the Federal Government (the Administrative State), is owned by the Great Reset, it does Not serve the people.
MAGA, Make America Great Again – because you see it is not, cannot be, under the current system. The ballot box is the only way the world can be saved, by voting in not the Uniparty, but MAGA populism, which is for USA, not the Great Reset.
I wish you guys would skip the inclusive populism and conspiracy stuff. Zionism/Talmudism and its outpourings have been and are the foremost hurdles to national sovereignty for our People. If you are European diaspora living in America, you are endangered. You’re worried about our values, not realizing that values come from people, and our People should be of primary concern to you. We are your extended family. The way to truly love something is to realize it might be lost. Blood and soil is all that matters in the end. One day you may realize this, hopefully there will still be something left to save.
weird
This idiot begins by saying “quit the conspiracy stuff” and immediately goes in for the biggest — and dumbest — conspiracy of all — “It’s dem Jews what done it.” Pathetic, sad, and above all, real stupid.
Not sure about 8 – I strongly believe Ukrainian that sovereignty deserves to be sustained – but otherwise a really excellent comment.
Yup an isolationist America is usually bad news – Hitler, Syria, Putin.
An interventionist America is also usually bad news – Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya, ex-Yugoslavia all spring to mind.
Don’t think your Syria example holds water either as America have been involved with Syria for years.On top of the bombing and other attacks on ISIS there was support and training for the supposed ‘moderate’ rebels that mostly turned out to be Islamic radicals.
Unfortunately, we have been burned too many times now and getting involved in Ukraine just seems like doing the same thing expecting a different result.
Certainly we’ve been burned in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya … But Ukraine is a very different kettle of fish. Not much chance of ISIS taking over there.
But at what cost?
The biggest problem since at least March 2020 is single-factor thinking (a la Greg Gutfeld) with Exhibit A being covid policy based solely on deaths delayed, ignoring other factors like harm to the economy (2nd order affect on deaths) and harms to children.
Help Ukraine yes. But we are at $54B so far in 2022 and heading towards $70B this year! That is close to $1,000 form a family of 4 in the US!
As original poster noted that amount is an insult to working Americans.
It isn’t just the populist right, or even the right in general, that agrees with these points. Real liberals do as well, though of course the self-proclaimed illiberal “liberals” think it’s anathema.
DeSantis is the original clean-cut Boy Scout, compete with a Catholic School blue-collar background, Harvard education and a picture book family, a poster boy for American meritocracy. But he learned some hard-knuckle tactics and strategy with the SEALS and has the judgment and guts to go in for the kill when necessary. Wish we had him earlier.
I’m a DeSantis fan but I’m not certain he was ever a SEAL. I had understood that he was a Judge Advocate (Navy Lawyer) attached to a SEAL Team. Not a military expert but I believe there’s a distinction to be made between being a JAG deployed with SEAL’s and being a SEAL.
DeSantis was senior legal advisor to SEAL commander Dane Thorleifson. That team was heavily involved in the bloody insurgency in Fallujah.
My lawyer in wartime Kuwait was a key guy on my staff, went everywhere and did everything I did. To paint him as an minor-involved outsider would be totally incorrect.
The skepticism around DeSantis is not whether he would essentially be the reincarnation of Trumpism without Trump, it’s about whether he’s genuine about his beliefs and is willing to go against the GOP establishment. While I do believe DeSantis would be a more effective president and is the future of the conservatism (alongside Trump), there is a question around if DeSantis is essentially a ploy by the GOP establishment to get rid of Trump and have someone like DeSantis make neoconservatism fashionable again among the GOP voters.
The question in my mind is whether or not Trump is genuine about his professed beliefs. His despicable performance after August 2018 when he threw away the House to go courting McConnell’s Senate and ended up losing both the House and Senate is foremost in mind. He campaigned for everyone of MCConnell’s creeps, ignored the House Liberty caucus and seemed to rely chiefly on his idiot daughter and son-in-law for reliable advice. His list appointments from Gen. Miley to Gina Haspel told me very clearly that all Trump ever wanted was the same deals for himself and his relations as Joe Biden got for himself and his relations.
Finally, it was Trump who shut down the country in the Spring of 2020 and it was Trump who pumped the first $3 Trillion of stimulus into the economy and launched our current inflation all the while preening about how he’ll be remembered forever as the great savior from a trumped-up plague.
As for DeSantis, acta non verba seems to be his motto and that is good. Trump talks a lot in the end does nothing.
Agreed about how “reliable” Trump is. DeSantis is running for governor in November, and has raised about $140mm for campaigns. HOWEVER, unlike Trump, DeSantis is generously spending it on other candidates around the country. Trump has amassed a little less, BUT HAS NOT SPENT ONE THIN DIME, on any of the congressional and Senate candidates that he has foisted upon us (thinking particularly about Dr. Oz and Hershel Walker), let alone decent candidates that he endorsed to help win the Republican primaries – especially Blake Masters and Vance.
Trump remains all about Trump.
DeSantis’s spending money on other campaigns around the country reminds me of Nixon’s work in the trenches for other GOP candidates after he lost the CA governor’s race. He was repaid at the 68 GOP convention with the nomination.
Nice reminder – perhaps Trump should take notes (rather than risk losing Senate etc, by refusing to spend money on candidates he endorsed)
That is the rub with Trump. He’s a masterful showman but insists on being the Only Show in Town.
De Santis is about as good a candidate as conservatives are likely to get. If you’re waiting for the perfect candidate who ticks all your boxes I’m afraid you’re in for a very long wait.
Contrary to Liberal gloom, some of the migrants are saying they quickly got jobs after being bussed to Washington.
Park MacDougald says: “the old party paid lip service to Christian “family values” while allowing the country’s social fabric to decay” (my emphasis). This implies that the GOP had the power to stop such decay but did not do so because their commitment to family values was only for show. But what actions could a more honest GOP actually have taken?
I think the problem is that no person or party really knows the secret to reversing societal decay, even if they had the political power to implement it.
They’d be better served doing what Spain has done to plug their labour gap. Hundreds of visas have been granted to Venezuelans desperate to get out.
Joe Manchin + Ron DeSantis
Sorry, no Manchin in the Sky.
This is a very crisp essay, and it has inspired a lot interesting comments. Well done, everyone.