Vance at the RNC earlier this month (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
![](https://unherd.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/aris-100x100.jpeg)
A recurring theme in C.P. Cavafy’s poems is of the elites in some Hellenistic city in the Near East, long subsumed into the Roman empire, anxiously awaiting news from the imperial centre of the outcome of a great contest that will decide their fates. A similar dynamic can be seen in our own provincial outpost, as Labour officials anticipate Donald Trump’s likely second ascension to the imperial throne.
In opposition, foreign secretary David Lammy had the luxury — or lack of foresight — to condemn Trump as a “wannabe despot”, a “racist KKK and Nazi sympathiser”, a “neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath” who is “also a profound threat to the international order”. Yet should Trump return to power, as now seems likely, such rhetoric, a statement of loyalty to one imperial faction in its war against the other, will be swiftly discarded. Under Trump, America will remain, rhetorically at least, the linchpin of Britain’s security, and our establishment as loyal as ever to do Washington’s bidding.
Yet Trump has not changed. If anything, his second term will be more radical than the first, as shown by his pick of an ideological warrior, J.D. Vance, as his vice-presidential nominee. Vance’s ascension as Trump’s running mate is a genuinely symbolic moment in Western political history. As the political theorist Julian Waller rightly observes, “J.D. Vance is a millennial fully aware of, and in many cases conversant in, neo-reaction, vitalism, post-liberalism, tech-futurism, anti-managerialism and the broader American illiberal ideological constellation”. With growing unease, American liberal organs list the post-liberal and illiberal thinkers who are taken to influence Vance’s worldview, just as exultant Right-wingers list the diverse Rightist Twitter accounts (including, I am gratified to say, my own) that Vance — who describes himself as “plugged into a lot of weird, Right-wing subcultures” — follows.
Just as Waller declares, the political current in which Vance swims “is what the generational change from the Boomers is actually going to look like”. Just as the politics of the mainstream millennial Left has been shaped by the radical socialism of the online world, it is simply a fact that the worldview of younger conservatives has been influenced by the broader “dissident Right”, the constellation of often anonymous critics of America’s late 20th and early 21st-century liberal radicalisation and of the wholesale adoption of its progressive worldview by the elites of Washington’s Western satrapies — the latter category very much including our Labour government.
A decade ago, this online milieu was shunned as the preserve of racists, incels and domestic terrorists — now it will likely enter the White House. While, in the 2010s, Big Tech rushed to disassociate itself from the disparate movement it unintentionally nourished, today’s tech oligarchs proudly insert themselves into its critique of late-stage liberalism: the vibe has already shifted. This is all a natural political evolution caused by generational churn and the intellectual exhaustion of the liberal centre, fatally weakened by the outcomes of its own policies. Yet it is doubtful that the British political system, which rigorously polices any such flirtation with the online Right among its own aspiring members, is prepared for this change.
While the disparate mix of ideologies swirling among the younger Right ultimately possess wildly opposing visions of the good — there is no meaningful common ground between the Catholic social teaching of the mainstream post-liberal Right and the Nietzchean vitalism of the anonymous satirists that Vance, like every other Right-winger his age, follows — what they share is a disaffection from a political order — defined variously as “the regime”, “the Cathedral” or even “the Longhouse”— that has genuinely failed. In his speech to the Republican National Convention, Vance condemned Joe Biden as the avatar of a failed liberal consensus that had destroyed America’s manufacturing base through globalisation, empowering China even as it immiserated the heartland, while committing the country’s working class to failed crusades to export democracy to the Middle East through military occupation. It is easy to forget that, in Trump’s first term, it was still sacrilegious to declare that globalisation had weakened the West, that reliance on foreign dictators for energy supplies and vital goods gravely harmed our security, and that American military power had already peaked: yet these are now the commonly held opinions of the sensible centre, which has since radicalised itself through exposure to reality. The dissident critique of liberal hubris has already won the argument: now it is on the verge of winning, and wielding power.
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Subscribe“When even such an inoffensively benign conservative thinker as Roger Scruton swiftly proved beyond the pale to our Tory party once it received the slightest pressure from liberal enforcers, we see that there is no space for a Vance in British politics. ”
There is a space, a massive one. But it wont be filled by lickspittles who fold under the ‘immense’ weight Guardian opinion pieces.
Time for monasteries.
The main thing about Vance Mk.2 (namely the one we are seeing now) is that he has consciously shaped himself to be a Trump “Mini-Me”. Britain doesn’t have a Vance Mk.2 because it doesn’t (mercifully) have a Trump. It would be interesting to see if Vance would have returned more to his Mk.1 incarnation if Trump had in fact been killed in the recent assassination attempt.
Geez, everyone getting so excited about JD Vance and his oh so intellectual millennial philosophy. Can we pause for a moment to consider what he’s actually proposing? His isolationist foreign policy and weird retro economics (protectionism and re-regulated labour markets) will, among other things, do nothing at all to help the disadvantaged communities he professes to care about so much.
When I read his book “Hillbilly Elegy” I found his concern for the poor folks he grew up around to be be swamped by pity and the real pain of being raised by a drug-addicted single mom.
There’s some love there but a lot of contempt too. He essentially says: Your poverty and misery are your own fault. I’m not saying there’s NO truth to this, but it doesn’t suggest a readiness to help the downtrodden among the MAGA faithful to do anything but help themselves.
Why don’t they just get into the Marines then go to Yale Law School, like he did?!
Nobody’s treading them down. But no one is inspiring them up.
Maybe not actively pressing them down, but it’s true that those perceived as hillbillies, rednecks, hicks, etc. are the only people it’s still pretty safe to mock as a group—-as long as they’re white and unless your in their neighborhoods after sundown.
The state system is designed to oppress. The state by it’s very nature is oppressive.
Do you have a better idea than the state? Are you advocating anarchy? Without a state you have neither police nor army nor borders. That’s the implication of John Lennon’s Imagine, but are you serious?
Not sure really, destroying state systems would be nigh on impossible at the moment really.
Simply passing comment is trouble enough on some subjects, let alone leaving the house to dismantle the state.
I like to contemplate an anarchic system, an anarchic system would not be anything like John lennons utopian b*llshit though.
Our system has aspects which are anarchic, most people go about their business peacefully, quite naturally without the state, normally the state only turns up when you bother it or when somebody else bothers it on your behalf or for your hard earned money in taxes.
Unfortunately the state has bled us of that much tax it is now enormous and more and more people depend on it, so trying to convince people at this point of my arguments for anarchy is probably basically a massive waste of time.
Have a mises wire article anyway.
‘But anarchy only means “disorder” to the mind that can’t fathom anything but top-down dirigisme. Altogether foreign is a universe of emergent order, of “the products of human action but not human design” in the famous phrase that harks back to Adam Ferguson (Adam Smith’s contemporary during the Scottish Enlightenment). Instead, it’s a state of affairs of rules, not rulers. The etymological origin is αναρχία, where an means “without” and αρχία “rulers.” Anarchy isn’t disaster, destruction, or war but rules without rulers.’
https://mises.org/mises-wire/anarchy-uk
I think the author offers solid insight into Vance as a symbol, or the vanguard, of new post-liberal ideology beginning to penetrate the highest levels of government. But from a purely practical standpoint, Vance’s biggest challenge will be not to outshine his boss (assuming Trump is elected). The moment Vance steps out of the limelight, Trump will crush him (or, more likely, give him a demeaning nickname).
Indeed. If and when Trump returns to the White House, how Vance handles his role as VP will be hugely significant in judging exactly how politically astute he is.
The same applies to Starmer, which is the other main focus of this essay.
Well, he was politically astute enough to transform himself from someone who thought Trump was “America’s H*tl*r” to someone who is a MAGA Republican.
Thought provoking essay for sure. Vance does represent a new vision of the political order, but western democracies are most successful when rooted in pragmatism and common sense.
Trump and Vance are sucessful not because they represent some new, radical way of doing things. Like a dozen other populists across the globe, their success is entirely dependent on the failing, incompetent political class that dominates today.
I’m not sure how it happened or why, but the ruling class is driven by a wide range of policy choices that are rooted in luxury beliefs. Trump and Vance are pushing back against regimes that think net zero, open borders etc will actually improve living conditions.
These people have to go and they will – whether it’s Trump, Vance, Farage or others. This may involve more restrictive trade policies, but democracies are also rooted in free markets. Successful trade policy will include a large degree of free trade – only because it makes sense.
Trump, Vance and others may cut large swathes of bureaucrats. Some of it will be ideological, especially at the upper mngt levels, but mostly because the bureaucratic state has become bloated and unwieldy. It has grown 35% in Canada since Trudeau was elected in 2015.
I guess what I’m trying to say – in a rambling kind of way – is that western democracies work best when common sense rules the day. Smart politicians will not be driven by ideology, but by pragmatism
I think you’ve said it pretty well.
Yes. Our career politicians spend their time arguing about things they would like to do but can’t, whilst refusing to talk about the things they should be doing but don’t.
The reason, I think, is to do with accountability. It’s about changing the subject. We can’t measure the results of their climate change or DEI policies but every time we run over a pothole or some poor kid in SE London gets knifed we can see how lamentably they are falling in their core tasks. So let’s not talk about that stuff.
The greatest virtuoso in this regard is the Mayor of London – but they’re all at it.
“Our career politicians spend their time arguing about things they would like to do but can’t, whilst refusing to talk about the things they should be doing but don’t.”
This is why I subscribe to Unherd. For the comments. This one it is so good I may even borrow it (with your permission).
Worth just remembering that (although knife crime remains a problem in London) overall violent crime is going down, and at lowest level on record according to some studies. It’s not hard to think why: more people staying at home glued to screens, the growing opportunities of online fraud etc
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-67161967
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/bulletins/crimeinenglandandwales/yearendingjune2023
Absolutely
My concern is that the wheels really have to come off things before the general public clue in. Progressives are masters of giving terrible ideas nice sounding names. It works. I lived through the austerity of the 90’s in Canada – and Trudeau has put us right back there. It will once again take a generation to undo the harms these corrupt fools have done to society. After 10 years of ruinous governance it is really only the last 6 months that the majority of Canadians have woken up and realized how bad things really are.
And I don’t even think the majority of Brits have woken up yet. If they had, we wouldn’t have just elected an even worse version of the government we just kicked out.
Trump often says, that his is the party of ‘Common Sense’. On another note, it’s rather stunning to hear the garbage spewing forth from Lammy’s mouth. Wonder how that will work out for him in a Trump Presidency?
Ya. Could get a bit uncomfortable.
If Trump becomes President, and at the same time the Republicans gain a majority in both Senate and the House then . . . they will cut income tax and corporate tax rates and increase defense spending. They will make grand noises about mammoth welfare cuts, but lose their nerve when the time comes, and just settle for spending a bit less on welfare than the Democrats would. The deficit will increase. They will not care.
That is what the Republicans do. Every time. That is what serves their coalition of interests.
JD Vance’s intellectual stylings about “post-liberalism” don’t matter a damn.
If you are right in your forecast prepare for the almight $USD to crash … the debt is huge and unpayable.
Just like power grids failing due to ‘green’ policies – the massive debts incurred are going to bring reality crushing down whether people like it or not.
Is Unherd still publishing in French? I don’t understand what that sentence says.
Oh, and Vance is what happens when putrid leftist liberalism has run the show for too long.
I think I understand what it’s supposed to mean, but I don’t see how anyone can combine “tech-futurism” and “anti-managerialism.”
If you would like to know more about these things, Michael Millerman has a video on Youtube.
Hahaha! Yes!
Turgid prose!
The calling card of all serious academics.
I’m going to need some time to recover from seeing the words “millennial philosophy” written down in a non-ironic context.
I didn’t know we were supposed to have one of those. We were supposed to have affordable real estate, nice corporate jobs (which we enjoyed) and smashed glass ceilings; all of the freedom and none of the price of it. There was no space in that vision for a philosophy! (Corporate jobs aren’t really conducive to spending time thinking about life’s big questions.)
Hmm, reading my own comment back to myself makes me realise why Britain might be as intellectually bankrupt as Aris says.
What is Britain….?
…a state of (empty) mind?
The working people of the UK will define what Britain is, brexit was their first step and now we await the 2nd.
James Davison Hunter in his recent and engrossing account of the mystique guiding US politics tells us that it was a hybrid in which the aspirations of Enlightenment Reason joined the inspiration of Calvinist Christianity. (Democracy and solidarity. On the cultural roots of America’s political crisis. Yale, 2024). The mystique is evaporating fast. To be replaced by? Aristotle and Catholic Christianity? Not bad news, surely? And not well served by adjectives ‘neoreaction’ and ‘right wing’? Anyone close to this tradition in Britain?
Calvin Robinson?
This is superb.
If there’s one consistent theme of the ‘new’ right, it’s learning to say no.
Instead of accepting a premise and then offering something managerial and weasily like “our solution will be more business friendly” the ‘new right’ is much more vocal about saying “No, we’re not going to do that.”
Which, strangely enough, was why Conservatives were historically called conservative.
But it was JFK who said “Governing is all about saying no.”
The liberals, including me and my family and friends, stuck that in the back of the fridge and forgot about it.
I checked; it’s still there.
Why would Britain have a JD Vance figure? One might as well seek to find our own Modi or our Putin or our Xi – There wont be one, because we have our own political tradition.
The political genealogies of Britain and America are not analogous, they diverted irretrievably and exponentially after the Rebellion.
An ‘American Conservative’ is a nonsense, an impossible idea. They are all successors to the settled fact of the American Revolution which has no parallell in British political history.
The closest figure we have, Farage, is the legitimate ideological successor of De Montfort, the Peasants Revolt, Cobbett and to a lesser extent Chesterton and perhaps Carson and Powell – a figurehead for abused and frustrated Loyalty, who simply wants the our natural leaders to govern as they should by time honoured custom.
Vance is the successor to Cade, Cromwell, Algernon Sydney and Paine – Revolutionary figures who saw absolutely nothing wrong with overthrowing legitimate authority in the cause of Salus Populi Suprema Lex.
So killing the king and installing Cromwell presents no parallel whatsoever? Nor presenting King John with a list of sign-it-or-die demands in 1215? These acts of centuries past form a tradition of their own–just not one you sympathise with.
Once the Puritans or Lollards (etc.) get into power, when they can, they tend to become a new-Old Guard themselves. Hence the Societies of Tolerance that arose in early New England: freedom to worship and preach for Puritans and adjacent sects; cold shoulders, chastisement, exile, and even execution for others.
American Conservatives are neither nonsensical nor impossible, they just exist in a context you seem unwilling to spend much time investigating. Though often reactionary and nostalgic, they tend not to be fans of time-honoured tradition that stretches back beyond 1776–even in what they say they believe. However, William F. Buckley was quite an Anglophile, someone who (in my estimation) at least imagined he’d like to live in the London of 1595 or 1720, but without all the filth and disease. He also defended Southern segregation, before belatedly coming to his senses. I think George Will is similar in that regard: two true lovers of an idealized, sometime-establishment (who are/were also mostly reasonable and worth hearing, to my ear).
Or perhaps you acknowledge almost nothing Conservative in the present-day, nor beyond the shores of your scepter’d isle?
A genuine question: Wasn’t John Milton–a Puritan pamphleteer, among other things– conservative or traditional in certain ways?
I agree that people like Vance, Bannon, and Farage are not conservative, but reactionary agitators and right-radicals who are often as violence-ready as their counterparts on the Left side of the horseshoe. To a rather singular degree, Trump is an egomaniacal opportunist with no sincere political or non-selfish moral convictions at all. (I know this last part will permit many to dismiss my remarks even more reflexively, but it is pertinent in the context of these Rightist rabble rousers).
Can’t edit my own comment so: I think these conversations often ignore the distinction between the conservatism (or “preservationism”) of traditional ethics and customs–an old-fashioned, time-tested morality–and the institutional conservatism of things like the Crown, Congress, Court, and Counting House, which forces of the Right and Left both attack, though from different angles.
Certainly you approach to the heart of the matter as it stood up until 1776 when you mention Cromwell, the Regicides and Milton. The tension between Loyalty and Liberty is at the heart of the shared Anglo-Saxon political tradition. However it was setled decisively in one way in England between 1640 and 1688 and quite another way in America after 1776 and since then the political cultures have divided beyond reconciliation.
Milton in his life and times and in his wonderful poetry, contains both traditions. Both Cain and Abel, Athens and Jerusalem, Edgehill and Burford Church. But after him few could maintain that fecund and volatile contradiction in one head. In 1776 the ambiguity finally clave asunder.
The English tradition submits liberty to do strained homage to Loyalty and thereing lies conservatism. The Americans simply went in another direction.
I hope I dont seem to denigrate the American tradition. I merely point out that The Great Republic is a Revolutionary entity (something most Americans are demonstrably proud of) and like all revolutionary entities can only survive by exporting revolution.
Thus it cannot, as I see it, have a conservative tradition, other than in an aesthetic sense. It is not the same as the British tradition of conservatism and therefore we should not look to it for neat analogies, as this writer has done.
I follow your reasoning but don’t share your conclusions, nor accept that you have established them. Your sharp transatlantic dichotomy seems heavily overdrawn, and one can avoid neat analogies without asserting false uniqueness or ignoring valid connexions.
Of course America can and does have Conservatives, all the way back to the multitude of Loyalists who lived through the Revolution. We are not some undifferentiated rebel horde and our politics, while vicious and emotional (does that ring a bell across the Atlantic?), are too varied and versatile to be reduced to an ability to “export revolution”.
Allow at least that we can export consumerism and good music too! 😉
I cede to your knowledge of English History, but surely the Protestant Reformation, leading to Henry VIII’s Act of Supremacy was a giant rebellion against Catholicism, which shaped our history for centuries?
The Act of Supremacy purported to be a vociferous re-assertion and re-establishment of the sovereignty of the Crown in Parliament. As was the later Act of Settlement of 1688.
Whether you credit the arguments of the legislators or not is one thing – they however, felt they had to make it clear that their actions were a return to an established and legitimate order rather than a revolution.
The Declaration of Independence however is a clean different thing in that it argues from first principles and Natural Law to draw conclusions about abstract rights. That is something entirely new.
I’d add in that vein it is also worth noting that Henry VIII thought of himself as an orthodox Catholic, and not a Protestant. And even Edward VI, who was undoubtedly the real deal as a Protestant, would have seen his Protestantism as getting back to proper Church doctrine and customs and rejecting the heretical wrong turns made by the Roman Catholic Church. So, even though the Protestant Reformation objectively speaking was a brand new thing, many of its adherents would have seen themselves as wanting to restore the Church to older and truer ways of worship and thought.
“de-Baathification program” of US civil servants – well that certainly went well in Iraq!
Imagine the ‘Ideal State of Ideological Liberals’ aka ISIL consisting of the former gov’t officials and running the coastal territories with the dual capitals of DC and San Fran.
It’s a wonderful phrase though
Trump and Vance are riding a wave of widespread anger and despondency that have deep structural causes. If they win power in November, the MAGA army will expect rapid changes. But a reformation of “woke” American institutions will take many years to accomplish.
Mr Vance used to believe the causes of the anger and despondency were spiritual, not structural. And I don’t know that he wasn’t closer to the mark with that analysis.
Amen. The lack of any purpose that rises above material reward or the longing to belong at any cost is the most widespread Western ailment, across sociopolitical lines.
I dunno. How is Milei getting on?
Picking Vance is the first act of anything like succession planning that Trump has carried out. I imagine he wanted to pick someone who can win the Presidency next time, and protect the narrative lines of his Presidency, and also protect him from legal attack by a future Democrat administration.
Any significant voice who objects to Britain poodling to neocon Washington can serve this purpose.
But observe what happened to Russell Brand…
I am one of the few who think that in the politics personality means as much as ideas. That is especially valid in the modern world, which has been dominated by the ideologies and ideologues for the last 200+ years. Whoever is able to take advantage of the massive ideology fatigue, de-ideologize the politics, talk to people in an accessible language and establish an emotional connection with them is going to win. Intellectual background and ability are good resources but they are secondary to the personality. Caesar was a damn good writer, but he won the civil war because the people of Rome liked him and his legionnaires worshipped him. That’s what must be Vance’s selling point. With his personality he may be able to reach out to different people across the ideological spectrum. If he does that, I say: go JD. If not, I’ll be upset for a minute or two.
Or ‘character’ rather than personality perhaps? Lots of politicians have the charm factor in spades – Blair & Boris are two such cases – but being likeable whilst stabbing people in the back whose trust you’ve just gained is different to connecting to people by saying what you mean & honestly seeing it through. I hope Farage does the latter but I don’t know.
Britain doesn’t completely mirror the US politically. Our biggest import is identity politics (wokery) among the young.
The divisions sown by Brexit are unique to Britain, because to the ideological purists who launched Brexit, it wasn’t all about immigration, it was about control over our own economics.
However, the 2019 victory embraced Red Wall anti-immigration Brexiteers, who aren’t really right of centre in any other way. They’re not pro small state, low tax Conservatives. They don’t make the link between lower taxes and economic growth or inward investment. They don’t want reduced public sevices, and many Red Wall constituencies have an above average welfare dependency. They are joined by much older people.
Only a small percentage of Brits are ultra religious to the point of being anti-abortion or sexually illiberal. Fiscal Conservatives aren’t necessarily socially conservative or against measured anti-immigration. Many of those were turned off the Tories because of Brexit, especially under 50’s.
One thing which unites most Westerners is completely unrealistic expectations about what is possible by Governments in a world globally linked by the Internet. Another is about how much personal effort is needed to raise living standards much further in the West, and how much our young are prepared to do to achieve.
Hilarious that Roussinos doesn’t even mention the UKs wanna be Vance’s, Farage, Anderson or Gullis. Nor does he note that Vance is an absolute chameleon, changing from someone who ridiculed, quite rightly, Trump, to his biggest supporter. Nor that what unites these charlatans is their lack of principles and contempt for much of the working classes: like the Left they have narrow prescribed ideas of the working class, in the Right’s view a class defined not by it’s class understanding and organisation but by conservatism and subservience to the money making elites.
Surely that’s his point? Farage et al are the people competing for slots on GB news and piggybacking politicians from other countries. UK has nobody as consequential on the “right” as Orban or Trump.
You don’t give any evidence that Farage etc lack principles or that they hold working class people in contempt. It’s clear you don’t like them, but do you not think that Farage has doggedly stuck to his core beliefs irrespective of his slow, intermittent progress and constant abuse? Is Anderson really a stranger to the working class?
The key thing in the UK will be the outcome of Starmer’s government. If he solves the problems of housing, healthcare, immigration etc Farage and the rest will disappear without trace. If Starmer fails …….
his (Trump’s) second term will be more radical than the first,
What was so radical about no new wars, a growing economy, the Abraham Accords, record-low minority unemployment, and a far more controlled border? I remain ambivalent about Vance, grateful that he is not an entrenched member of the establishment while also aware of some of his external ties to proponents of the surveillance state.
It is worth looking at him; the last few days and weeks have made clear the importance of having a capable VP, instead of a DEI hire. If he represents a deviation from the standard political order, that should be embraced given the problems that can be laid at the feet of that calcified self-serving order that never pays a price for what it inflicts on the rest of us.
Meanwhile, perhaps someone can Mr. Lammy toward a history book, which will show him that the Klan was a product of the Dems. As was Jim Crow, as is DEI, as is the fixation on identity politics that punish and privilege certain groups. Changing the terms does not change the intent, no matter how badly he wishes to demonize those unlike himself.
And the Democratic President Wilson waa actually a member of the KKK.
And the founder of the Palestinian Liberation Movement – the cause du jour for today’s left – worked for and got paid by the Third Reich
The Republican and Democrat parties are no longer aligned as they were in 1955, as you likely know. Since the Civil Rights legislation of the 50s and 60s, and the Southern Strategy, the script has been flipped. Find me a Lost Cause romantic, or other white bigot of today, whose major party preference (if he or she has one) is not Republican. Very few.
We’ve all come across the local version of JD Vance in the office. Invariably he’s the geek in the IT department confidently espousing easy solutions. He’s a believer in the power of technology and AI and for whom social niceties and personal hygiene are an irrelevance. Latterly we haven’t seen much of him thanks to home working and that’s why it comes as such a shock that he’s started to be taken seriously. (*Highly unlikely to be a female.)
Can parents or coops of parents homeschool in UM but avoid race and gender, anti colonial, sic, curricula garbage?
These are dynamic times with accelerating and decelerating vectors such as the “twilight of the Boomers” and the ascendance of Millennials. The cultural/political deck is also being reshuffled by effects of immigration, globalization, and technology. How these varied influences will eventually combine and what future equilibrium derives is anyone’s guess. As the old Chinese curse goes: May you live in interesting times.
Centrists, like me, are heartened that a sea change has been gaining momentum on the Right. Twenty years ago the American Republican Party consisted of a base of angry, downscale, proudly anti-intellectual Boomer populists and a detached leadership of ivy-educated globalist pro-immigration elites like Bush and Romney who paid them lip service while selling them out to corporate interests. The spokespeople for the former were extravagantly provocative, ala Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, whose mantles have been taken up by Tucker Carlson and Candice Owens. Trump took advantage of the discrepancy between the disaffected Republican base and its out of touch leadership. He has succeeded in steamrolling the old Republican Party and marginalizing its elites but has, himself, no cogent political philosophy other than what will get him elected and provide the attention he craves. Trump is simply not ideologically-driven. He surfs waves but does not create them.
However, the leveling of the Republican Party has created an opportunity for a new and different creature to sprout from its ruins. Vance is one example of a young ambitious Republican with one foot in a “hillbilly” past and the other in the highly-educated world of the elites. If he succeeds in straddling that divide he may be effective long term, if not he may soon be yesterday’s news. Whether he remains an iconoclast avenging his downscale supporters or uses them to his personal gain is too soon to say. What is certain is that the ranks of Millenials (and younger) who are both highly educated and unimpressed with progressivism and establishment liberalism is growing. Post-Trump this new strain may enlarge the beach head they have gained or be crushed under the treads of the deep state’s eminence grise. At least we now have refreshing recourse in the advent of numerous thoughtful journalists and essayists of their kind who defy progressive orthodoxy and offer an alternative to MSM.
The Left, on the other hand, has ironically ceded its intellectual credibility in favor of orthodoxies that continue to lose internal consistency. For example, formerly feminist ideology must now be warped into a pretzel to accommodate transexual dogma that insists birth-males-identifying-as-females should be allowed to compete against birth-women-identifying-as-women; Gays for Palestine protestors have no answer to the glaring reality that Islam condemns homosexuality more fiercely than any Western democracy or religion; designations of “people of color” require modifications such that some “colors” are now reclassified in the index of victims for their “white-adjacency”. The Shibboleths against guns and violence are newly conditional on whether or not they are employed in the service of liberal/progressive ends. The net effect is that the Left is slouching ever more toward an anti-intellectualism that has abandoned rationality itself, propelled by enforced orthodoxy, while their ranks become ever more swollen with adherents elevated by attributes other than merit.
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I might be out of date, old fashioned etc, but I still think the politics of the West are going to be defined by our huge public and private debt.
Unless we re-industrilise we are forever in the hands of China, to do that the almighty $USdollar and other Western countries must devalue substantially.
Hang onto your hats and fix your seatbelts, it’s closer than we think I suspect
I sometimes wonder whether the UK system is now too complex to govern well – growth of lawfare, judicial review, development of human rights law, planning system, PSED, etc etc – all developing organically though case law – all begun with the best of intentions but now resulting in inertia, democratic deficit and disengagement from politics in general. So, even if there was a British Vance type figure, could he or she ultimately even make a difference?
I write from the West side of the pond and realize that the British and American political and party systems are very, very different in many ways. But, hypothetically, how might these things look if after the Brexit vote Nigel Farage had been able to do to the Conservatives what Donald Trump did to the Republicans at roughly the same time? Both were outsiders with very limited support in the chattering and managerial classes but broad support among the working and small business classes, strong personalities and effective advocates, and was not Farage’s argument for Brexit essentially MBGA (Make Britain Great Again)?
I think the key issue with Vance is that ideologically he’s a reactionary dead end full of naivete and wishful thinking with a large dose of weird opinions on abortion, marriage and women.
Take China and Russia for instance. One can’t tackle one and ignore the other. I can see what he and others want to do, they want to try and pull a Nixon and hive Russia away from China so that they can befriend the former and isolate the latter.
The key issue with this is that China & Russia are always going to be more closely aligned on world issues than, say, America & Russia. China will always want to seek to bolster Russia as a way weakening America and the West. Therefore, the more you challenge China in the Far East and elsewhere, the more likely you’re going to end up running into Russia.
The final issues are both actually padding out what “post-liberalism” actually means beyond endless culture warfare and Donald Trump himself.
Firstly, policies like restricting divorces and limiting abortions eliminating even the ability to have one in a medical emergency are hardly vote winners. Also the talk of using “state power” to help the working classes just sounds like either Chavismo or Peronism or even Allendeism dressed up in right wing populist clothing. All three were economic and ideological dead ends, figuratively and in some cases even literally.
For post-liberalism to work, it has to stop attempting to defy economic gravity and instead find competent and viable solutions to everyday problems which improves living standards. There are only so many culture boogeymen to divert people’s attention away from the fact that their water is contaminated, that their healthcare system simply doesn’t work and that the rail and road networks are falling apart. In this way that facet of post-liberalism is actually pretty similar to the hysterical incompetence of the likes of Braverman & Truss in British Conversatism.
Secondly, I think we’re overstating the capacity of Trump to make an ideologically shrewd move. The more you look into how Trump tapped Vance, the more you realise that he actually wanted access to that libertarian silicon valley cash to bolster his campaign more than he wanted to revamp the American Right. Trumpism is essentially whatever the hell Donald Trump wants it to be. If he wanted Trumpism to be about bringing back super sized cups at McDonalds then he’d bang on about the issue enough at rallies to get it front and centre of the debate.
If Trump for a moment feels that Vance has outlived his use – and that will probably be months if not weeks into his second stint in the Oval office, then Vance – and with it the entire Project 2025 agenda – will end up being kicked to the kerb. Thats a LOT riding on one guy who is supposedly single handedly leading the vanguard of post-liberalism.
I think the key issue with Vance is that ideologically he’s a reactionary dead end full of naivete and wishful thinking with a large dose of weird opinions on abortion, marriage and women.
Take China and Russia for instance. One can’t tackle one and ignore the other. I can see what he and others want to do, they want to try and pull a Nixon and hive Russia away from China so that they can befriend the former and isolate the latter.
The key issue with this is that China & Russia are always going to be more closely aligned on world issues than, say, America & Russia. China will always want to seek to bolster Russia as a way weakening America and the West. Therefore, the more you challenge China in the Far East and elsewhere, the more likely you’re going to end up running into Russia.
The final issues are both actually padding out what “post-liberalism” actually means beyond endless culture warfare and Donald Trump himself.
Firstly, policies like restricting divorces and limiting abortions eliminating even the ability to have one in a medical emergency are hardly vote winners. Also the talk of using “state power” to help the working classes just sounds like either Chavismo or Peronism or even Allendeism dressed up in right wing populist clothing. All three were economic and ideological dead ends, figuratively and in some cases even literally.
For post-liberalism to work, it has to stop attempting to defy economic gravity and instead find competent and viable solutions to everyday problems which improves living standards. There are only so many culture boogeymen to divert people’s attention away from the fact that their water is contaminated, that their healthcare system simply doesn’t work and that the rail and road networks are falling apart. In this way that facet of post-liberalism is actually pretty similar to the hysterical incompetence of the likes of Braverman & Truss in British Conversatism.
Secondly, I think we’re overstating the capacity of Trump to make an ideologically shrewd move. The more you look into how Trump tapped Vance, the more you realise that he actually wanted access to that libertarian silicon valley cash to bolster his campaign more than he wanted to revamp the American Right. Trumpism is essentially whatever the hell Donald Trump wants it to be. If he wanted Trumpism to be about bringing back super sized cups at McDonalds then he’d bang on about the issue enough at rallies to get it front and centre of the debate.
If Trump for a moment feels that Vance has outlived his use – and that will probably be months if not weeks into his second stint in the Oval office, then Vance – and with it the entire Project 2025 agenda – will end up being kicked to the kerb. Thats a LOT riding on one guy who is supposedly single handedly leading the vanguard of post-liberalism.
As Britain has yet to have a 1789 moment, I’d say Tommy could do a job for the UK as things stand. He wouldn’t need to be elected either, unless he eventually stood for 1st president of a British constitutional republic.