David Cole writes:
Jogging, jogging paths, cycling, bike lanes, not running over cyclists, hiking, the ethical treatment of animals, food appreciation, veganism, health food, herbal tea, nutritional guidelines, vitamins for health, solar power, legalized weed. All racist, because they’re the product of white culture and “privilege.” See the problem, though? These are all things that white folks (especially those left-of-center) generally do like. These are things that many (perhaps most) white people associate with good. This is a dangerous strategy for the left to pursue, associating racist with good in the minds of young whites.
And now the roles have been reversed, and even here in ultraleftist L.A., I’ve recently seen five of my young white liberal friends pushed rightward after being verbally abused online or in person for being white. In one case, an early-20s blond actress friend was chewed out when she left a slow-moving line at Walmart to move to a shorter one. The black woman who had been in front of her in the first line accused her of racism. “You left this line because you can’t stand being near black people, you racist white bitch,” the woman screamed as the cashiers allowed the rant to continue. Later on, my friend admitted to me, “I guess for the first time I see why some people voted for Trump.”
Cole mentions a NYT op-ed about Trump being a “dud,” and the Right turning from principle to personal politics:
It’s by Charles J. Sykes, who wrote a seminal conservative book, A Nation of Victims, but whose latest is How the Right Lost Its Mind.
And also in the NYT, here’s Brett (“The Right Wing One”) Stephens, who doesn’t seem to understand metaphors and similes, but I grudgingly admire that last line:
To reread “The Flight 93 Election” today is to understand what has gone wrong not only with the Trump presidency, but also with so much of the conservative movement writ large. In a word, it’s become unhinged.
To imply, as Anton did, that Barack Obama, for all his shortcomings, was Ziad Jarrah, Flight 93’s lead hijacker, is vile. To suppose that we’d all be dead if Hillary Clinton, for all her flaws, had been elected is hallucinatory. To argue that the United States, for all its problems, was the equivalent of a doomed aircraft is absurd. To suggest that Donald Trump, a man who has sacrificed nothing in his life for anyone or anything, is the worthy moral heir to the Flight 93 passengers is a travesty.
It is the mark of every millenarian fanatic to assume that the world stands on the verge of a precipice, and that only radical or violent action can save it. That’s the premise of Anton’s essay. It’s also the kind of thinking that has inspired extremists from time immemorial, including the people who grabbed the planes on 9/11.
Maybe 2016 was the Flight 93 election, or something like it. Maybe the pilots are dead. Maybe the passengers failed to storm the cockpit. Maybe the hijackers reached their target by landing on the White House after all.