Washington, D.C.
The National Mall is a double-edged sword for event planners, offering a majestic backdrop which inevitably invites daunting comparisons. Such was the case at Bret Weinstein’s “Rescue the Republic” rally this weekend, as thousands of people braved the rain to hear from anti-establishment luminaries of the Left and Right.
Rescue the Republic set expectations high. Ahead of the event, organisers told the media that they expected over 100,000 people to be in Washington for Sunday’s rally. It wasn’t quite that. The Wall Street Journal ultimately estimated the crowd turned out to be “a few thousand strong.” But I’d put emphasis on “strong.” Livestreams of the event on social media drew many additional thousands of viewers.
Speakers from Tulsi Gabbard to Russell Brand to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. addressed the crowd in Washington under a pastel “Make America Healthy Again” banner. Entrepreneurs hawked green “MAHA” merch in the iconic style of Donald Trump’s MAGA gear. As far as symbols go, the sartorial marriage of MAGA and MAHA may be the most powerful takeaway from Rescue the Republic.
It’s one thing to see on social media, but quite another to watch as barefoot hippies mingle with gym rats in Infowars gear, or middle-aged Leftists in Birkenstocks find genuine fellowship with evangelical Trump supporters. And not just on fluoride, but on war and art and — dare I say — voting Republican? (Tea Party Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin was a crowd favourite.)
Not all of MAHA will vote MAGA. I saw at least one attendee in a keffiyeh who likely finds little to love about the GOP ticket, even if he came to hear Jimmy Dore. The question of scale, then, becomes very important.
In late August, writer Matt Yglesias coined a new term for America’s shifting politics: “The crank realignment”. “The partisan shifts of both Trump and RFK Jr. are part of a long term cycle in which educated professionals have gravitated toward the Democratic Party coalition and a generic suspicion of institutions and the people who run them has come to be associated with conservative politics,” Yglesias wrote, adding, “The most obvious problem is that as Republicans increasingly become the party of retirees and folks who didn’t go to college, they still need smart, educated professionals to actually do stuff, and they’re fishing in an increasingly thin pool”.
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SubscribeThe political and technocratic classes are unfit for purpose. The incompetency goes way beyond their pathetic covid response. If smart people were running the institutions, there wouldn’t be populists movements springing up across western democracies. Back in the day, graduating from university did signal a degree of intelligence. That day passed about 10 years ago.
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Wish I’d been there.
Matt Taibbi’s article, which is referenced above, is worth the read to grasp who and what is truly weird in today’s environment.
https://www.racket.news/p/my-speech-in-washington-rescue-the?r=cyqk&triedRedirect=true