Main Edition
US
FR
September 30, 2024 - 7:30pm
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”.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeWish I’d been there.
When I’m “looking at the faces in the crowd” what most strikes me is that they’re predominantly white men. Speaking as a (white) woman myself I don’t think this reflects very well on women or POCs. I like to think I’d have been there if I was American.
I wonder why the Canadian flag is on the poster. Presumably because Musk pretends to be Canadian.
The 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.
Test post
Right on Jim!
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
It’s also on YouTube under the Racket News account if you would like to listen:
https://youtu.be/pTfe8sP-KPM?si=zvlj-Eq4Wy8-7Wvz
“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”.
This is maybe the dumbest thing i’ve ever read.
It really is. Educated professionals “doing stuff” when the titans of American industry are nearly all unprofessional college drop outs? The inferring that farming, building, making isn’t “doing stuff”? Use of the juvenile phrase “doing stuff” to presumably articulate sponging off taxpayers, sitting on the sofa writing 500 word confetti or crafting anti-Musk tweets on X?
I hope our George Washington University educated professional checks how thin a pool is before diving in more thoroughly than she checked this diatribe that tells us nothing about the event and everything about her neuroses and prejudices.
It is copy and paste Grauniad material. Why am I paying to read it here? If I want undergraduate level partisan, ill-conceived, and poorly edited opinion pieces I can get 30 a day free on the actual Guardian website.
Ms. Jashinsky was quoting from Mr. Yglesias and holding his tin-eared theory up to ridicule.
You appear to be attributing to Emily Jashinsky a sentence and sentiment expressed by Matt Yglesias, despite the fact that she quoted his opinion directly and – one would have thought – unambiguously, using quotation marks.
Maybe you went straight to the comments without reading the article, and simply assumed that what you saw quoted here was something she wrote, rather than something she quoted. I suppose that is the most generous interpretation.
It’s certainly up there in the rankings.
According to the sign in the picture, the Trump Dream Team consists of some people who are mad, some people who are deeply unpleasant (strong overlap on these two), and some people I’ve never heard of.
Let’s see, the list is Bobby Kennedy at the top, and his running mate Nicole Shanahan at the bottom. Then there’s Tulsi Gabbard (former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii), Elon Musk and Vivak Ramaswamy (former Republican presidential nomination candidate). I’d be curious to hear which you think are mad, which are unpleasant, and which you’d never heard of.
Ah, ok. I was wondering who Shanahan was. I know very little about Gabbard, although I have heard the name (bear in mind that I do not live in the US, and so don’t really follow US politics on a “micro” level). RFK Jr is completely mad, and although I am prepared to reserve judgment on whether he is unpleasant, there is anecdotal evidence that he may be. Ramaswamy seems sane enough, although he is fairly unpleasant. Musk is both mad and deeply unpleasant (he is after all a white South African, so that goes with the turf, I guess).
One if the greatest displays of ducking and diving i’ve seen in comments. Congratulations.
Thanks. It is good to achieve a bit of recognition occasionally.
“he is after all a white South African, so that goes with the turf, I guess”
Thanks for showing me who you are.
When I worked for a property management company, my job was screening potential tenants for the apartments.
I learned that for most people, you simply have to ask them questions about themselves. They will invariably tell you everything you need to know about whether they will be good or crappy tenants.
Did you rent a lot of places to white South Africans?
Well, there was this one athlete guy. I remember him because he had no legs and he kept asking how thick the bathroom door was.
Hey, I live in Australia. There is no shortage of white South Africans around these parts. Having destroyed their country, a large number of them have come over here. Unfortunately, we let them in. In fairness, it is the Apartheid-era ones (those around my age) that are the worst. The next generation on is probably nowhere near as bad.
I can only assume you don’t know any Japies.
OK. This confession by you now fully explains to me why it is that your ignorance of the USA shines through in virtually every comment from you on UnHerd. Thanks for the clarification. It is very honest of you.
I am admittedly a foreigner, but I know a fair bit about the USA. I grew up with the same American cultural influences as Americans of my age (music, TV etc). Also, during my lifetime, Australia turned up to fight in pretty much all America’s wars (Vietnam, Gulf 1, Gulf 2, Afghanistan).
Get your head out of that smelly cavity.
The answer is no. Unfortunately, this group is too small to make a difference. The Democratic machine seems poised to win this one by pushing a couple of low-quality candidates — Kamala Harris and Tim Walz — past the post mainly because they are Democrats.
The original Carlos Danger made more sense.
Ms. Jashinsky’s piece is naive and biased. She manages to get in the word “weird”, and goes on about Yglesias’ “cranks theory”, and tells us what Molly Ball thinks. Everything has a negative slant. I wonder if she talked to any one who was there for the rally, or just walked by?
Journallists are predictably lazy, so the question answers itself.
Unfortunately the political parties have a tendency to swap their loyalties over time, sometimes smoothly, sometimes jerkily… I’d point out the working man support gradually aligning with the Republicans in the USA as the Democrats switch to supporting the new money elites.
Perhaps this is the source of populism? People soldier on in their ‘class’ only to realise that ‘their’ political party is wandering off elsewhere? And the ‘cranks’ are just the canaries in the coal mine.
“Is this motley group of people big enough to take Trump to the White House?”
No. The institutional control of the voting system and the entrenched interests of the college-educated latte-class are such that Harris is guaranteed entry into the WH.
But the hope is that they will form the kernel of a genuine opposition that can grow and be ready to assume political control when the car crash that will be the Harris Regime is done playing out.
Why is JD Vances name missing?
I definitely hope so!