One of the Most Annoying American Traditions
Using the last "worst person ever" to beat up the current "worst person ever"
What it Means to be Uniquely Terrible
I was abroad on a student exchange trip to Germany in 2004 when news broke that Ronald Reagan had died. It was a strange time for me. I was deep into my “subversively conservative” phase, such that the backpack I used for the trip had an iron-on patch of the Republican elephant logo, an American flag, and various political buttons. One was of then-president George W. Bush — mostly because I knew it irritated the Continentals — and another was of Ronald Reagan.
Obviously the death of a former American president is international news, and given that Reagan’s famous “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” speech was delivered in Berlin, it gave German news broadcasters an excuse to play that clip in the background of every news segment about Reagan’s death.
I was having dinner with my host family, and my student partner had invited a friend over, and we ate while the news was on. The friend, who was a few years younger than I was, had not heard of Ronald Reagan. So I tried to explain to him, in my grade-school-level German, that he was one of the better U.S. presidents in history, before adding “he was my hero.” Now, turns out, if you ever want to bring a conversation to a screeching halt with awkward silence so thick it could patch drywall, tell a table full of Germans that your hero is a former Head of State. After what seemed like three hours, my dear sweet host mother sheepishly tells me “that’s interesting…we would not say this in Germany.” …yeah, I bet. Germans are rightly reticent about holding government leaders in too high esteem, considering, well, roughly a third of the 20th century. But I digress.
As the tributes poured in, I noticed something rubbing me the wrong way. Many Democrats were remarking on the death of Reagan with some version of “the death of Ronald Reagan highlights how far Republicans have drifted from a time when they were more reasonable, if only Republicans could return to how they were under Reagan.” It was just galling to me because Democrats hated Ronald Reagan in his time. He was “Ronnie Ray-gun” and he was going to get us all annihilated in nuclear war. He was an “amiable dunce.” Out of his league, completely unqualified, etc. And here Democrats were, praising him as one of the good Republicans. Reagan was good, y’see, it’s these Republicans now that are bad.
Republicans have a bit of a strange life cycle. When they’re running for office or in office, they’re a threat to the republic. But then they leave office or die and they’re affable scamps (George W. Bush took up painting! That rascal!) that highlight the waywardness of current Republicans.
In an impressive performance of political contortion, the process has started around Donald Trump. “Sure, Donald Trump was (and is) an aspiring authoritarian who degraded American political institutions and punctuated his term with a violent extra-constitutional effort to remain in power against the will of the people,” the argument goes, “but at least he was dumb and lazy! But Ron DeSantis is smart enough to pull it off, so he’s the real threat!”
Can we not?
As someone who’s been banging the drum against Trump’s reverse-Midas-touch since before he started pandering to internet racists about “longform birth certificates,” I’m fully cognizant of his unique threat to the republic. And as such, I look at Ron DeSantis and I see, well, not that. And I don’t even care for Ron DeSantis as a political figure. He ran for governor of Florida by nakedly pandering to Donald Trump and his voters in a manner that would make Lindsey Graham blush. And he’s spent an inordinate amount of his tenure playing to the base on all manner of rightwing populist culture war issues from performative COVID/vaccine skepticism, to winking at election conspiracists, to forbidding the mention of LGBT issues in schools, to using the power of the state to punish private corporations for engaging in political speech his base didn’t like. He’s not my cup of tea, so to speak, and he’s not my first choice in the Republican primary for 2024 (nor am I on board with the idea that the only way to stop Trump is to go all-in on DeSantis now). And while it’s inarguable that he’s smarter and more competent than Donald Trump — truly the faintest of praise — the idea that those attributes make him more dangerous to the republic than Donald Trump is just dress-over-the-head histrionic nonsense. For one thing, and perhaps mostly importantly, is there any evidence that DeSantis possesses the same anti-democratic, extra-constitutional tendencies that Donald Trump proudly flaunts? I’ve not seen it. As P.J. O’Rourke said about Hillary Clinton, even if you grant that Ron DeSantis is wrong on every single issue, he’s at least wrong within normal parameters.
If Democrats genuinely believe that Donald Trump is a threat to the republic — and they should, because he is — they should act like it. And hand-wringing over Ron DeSantis being a bigger threat just strikes me as completely unserious.
This may all be moot because, if reports are to be believed, Donald Trump may be announcing his 2024 bid for president as early as September. So the debate about whether DeSantis would actually be more dangerous than Trump is going to get a real-world test.
Honestly, the prospect of another Trump campaign just fills me with the weight of exhaustion. I simply cannot bear the thought of going through that again as a country. There’s a saying in baseball — “three things can happen with you swing the bat, and two of them are bad.” As far as I can tell, three things can happen when Trump runs for president, and two of them are bad. And of the two things that are bad, one is way worse. I figure either he loses the primary — which at this point is plausible though certainly not likely — or he wins the primary (bad) and loses the general election (good) but he still does his whole voter fraud song and dance (quite bad), or he [dry heave] actually wins the general election and takes office with a renewed sense of invincibility. And I just don’t think we as a country are prepared for that.
But sure, Ron DeSantis would be worse, you overdramatic perpetual adolescents.
Geese, Ganders, etc.
Speaking of overdramatic perpetual adolescents (ok, that’s meaner than I intended but I liked it as a segue)…
Less than a week after explicitly saying that Brett Kavanaugh deserved no sympathy for having an angry mob follow him to dinner, some guy followed Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez around the Capitol grounds, yelling presumably untoward things in her direction, to which she had this reaction:
She criticized the Capitol police for allowing it, and the Capitol Police released a statement basically saying “what do you want us to do about it?”
I’ll say upfront that this guy shouldn’t have been following her around and yelling whatever crude things he was yelling. But he pretty clearly has the right to do so, much less on Capitol grounds.
I honestly cannot comprehend how AOC doesn’t recognize her blazing hypocrisy here. When an angry mob follows a Supreme Court Justice to dinner, well that’s just freedom of speech in action, maybe he’ll think about that next time he makes an unpopular ruling. But when some schmuck — a one-man angry mob, if you will — follows her outside the Capitol — a place known for expressions of freedom of speech — she gets all “the police should do something about this, it’s dangerous!”
As I said, I don’t think angry mobs should follow political figures around. I’m generally anti-angry-mob. I think we’d all feel a lot better if we had fewer angry mobs. But you don’t get to say to your political opponents, “angry mobs for thee but not for me!” You would think — you would think — that this would teach AOC a lesson about the downsides of encouraging angry mobs, but she seems determined to miss that point. She’s not unintelligent, so I can only presume it’s intentional.
Occasional Trivia
Answer from last time:
Category: Asian Geography
Clue: This Sri Lankan capital was named for the Kelani Ferry; not the detective in a rumpled raincoat.
Colombo
Today’s clue:
Category: 20th Century History
Clue: In 1945, Chinese soldiers loyal to Chiang Kai-shek occupied Formosa and changed its name back to this.
Dispatches from the Homefront
My older daughter turns three (!) next month, and we’ve definitely reached the stage where she will see anything she likes and say “I want that for my birthday!” But kids are fickle, man. She won’t remember wanting it 10 minutes later, much less a month from now, so we plan to stick to the classics. Which mostly means Frozen and Paw Patrol. So, so much Frozen and Paw Patrol.