Friday, October 20, 2017

The Staggering Genius of Kevin Williamson

You should read this piece on why white underclass populism and conservatism are incompatible.  It is--as are most things Williamson writes--brilliant. Care for a bit of it?

"White people acting white have embraced the ethic of the white underclass, which is distinct from the white working class, which has the distinguishing feature of regular gainful employment. The manners of the white underclass are Trump’s — vulgar, aggressive, boastful, selfish, promiscuous, consumerist. The white working class has a very different ethic. Its members are, in the main, churchgoing, financially prudent, and married, and their manners are formal to the point of icy politeness. You’ll recognize the style if you’ve ever been around it: It’s “Yes, sir” and “No, ma’am,” but it is the formality of soldiers and police officers — correct and polite, but not in the least bit deferential. It is a formality adopted not to acknowledge the superiority of social betters but to assert the equality of the speaker — equal to any person or situation, perfectly republican manners. It is the general social respect rooted in genuine self-respect. 

Its opposite is the sneering, leveling, drag-’em-all-down-into-the-mud anti-“elitism” of contemporary right-wing populism. Self-respect says: “I’m an American citizen, and I can walk into any room, talk to any president, prince, or potentate, because I can rise to any occasion.” Populist anti-elitism says the opposite: “I can be rude enough and denigrating enough to drag anybody down to my level.” Trump’s rhetoric — ridiculous and demeaning schoolyard nicknames, boasting about money, etc. — has always been about reducing. Trump doesn’t have the intellectual capacity to duke it out with even the modest wits at the New York Times, hence it’s “the failing New York Times.” Never mind that the New York Times isn’t actually failing and that any number of Trump-related businesses have failed so thoroughly that they’ve gone into bankruptcy; the truth doesn’t matter to the argument any more than it matters whether the fifth-grade bully actually has an actionable claim on some poor kid’s lunch money. It would never even occur to the low-minded to identify with anybody other than the bully. That’s what all that ridiculous stuff about “winning” was all about in the campaign. It is might-makes-right, i.e., the politics of chimpanzee troupes, prison yards, kindergartens, and other primitive environments. That is where the underclass ethic thrives — and how “smart people” came to be a term of abuse."

Readers may recognize the type from examples in their everyday lives. 

2 comments:

  1. Wow, it's kind of rare these days when one sees this kind of blatant racism. Substitute black for white and George Lincoln Rockwell could have written this screed. Plus can you imagine if Kevin D. Williamson (does the 'D' stand for Dirk or Diggler?) had written this about any other ethnic group? Oh boy would there be hell to pay.
    But I choose to ascribe this to classism more than racism. This is just Hillary's 'deplorables' speech rationalized. Why would Kevin "D" do this you ask? Simple, there is only ONE ESTABLISHMENT, and they despise President Trump. It's not his policies, it's not his appointments, it's not his style his rhetoric or his Twitter rants. It's simply the fact they don't own him. They didn't put him in office and he owes them NOTHING. For the first time in most of these people's lives they are NOT in CONTROL, which for them must be terrifying.
    FEAR AND HATE should have been the title of this piece of crap "journalism". Bill Buckley is spinning in his grave.

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  2. 'Smatter, Snowflake? Your feelings hurt? What was that I was reading about a safe space yesterday?

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