In which we are told we miss the WASPs
Good god. Ross Douthat wrote a thing, and it’s so jaw-dropping I should just let it speak for itself. I won’t, but I should.
He starts by pretending that the “nostalgia” for George Bush the elder requires subtle explanation when in fact it’s just settled conventional routine: we have to pretend the newly deceased president was a gem, hidden or obvious. They did it with Nixon ffs so obviously they were going to do it with Shrub 1. But the fiction gives Douthat a pretext for quoting this bilge:
Franklin Foer described “the subtext” of Bush nostalgia as a “fondness for a bygone institution known as the Establishment, hardened in the cold of New England boarding schools, acculturated by the late-night rituals of Skull and Bones, sent off to the world with a sense of noblesse oblige. For more than a century, this Establishment resided at the top of the American caste system. Now it is gone, and apparently people wish it weren’t.”
Which people, kemosabe? That’s a tiny minority of rich white males there, and I strongly doubt the rest of us wish they still had a lock on all the levers of power.
But never mind, because Douthat was just clearing his throat for the real meat of his Big Idea:
I think you can usefully combine these takes, and describe Bush nostalgia as a longing for something America used to have and doesn’t really any more — a ruling class that was widely (not universally, but more widely than today) deemed legitimate, and that inspired various kinds of trust (intergenerational, institutional) conspicuously absent in our society today.
Put simply, Americans miss Bush because we miss the WASPs — because we feel, at some level, that their more meritocratic and diverse and secular successors rule us neither as wisely nor as well.
In other words, we long for the return of the talentless godbothering white male.
He goes on to make the not-new point that meritocracy is not egalitarianism, but he doesn’t make it well or very coherently.
Or maybe — just maybe — the nostalgia and warm feelings are (in addition to being deemed sort of obligatory for dead presidents as noted in the post) for the days when a Republican would actually be willing to (1) raise taxes, because concern about the deficit was more than just an insincere talking point; (2) run afoul of the NRA; (3) stand up to racists like David Duke (“who? Ok, sure, fine, I denounce, ok? I denounce.”); (4) sign legislation to protect a minority group (the disabled); etc.
Not that you can’t make a longer list of GHWB’s bad policies and shortcomings. I’m just saying that there was a time when you could at least say that Republicans had principles — even if some of them were bad principles, or were poorly implemented — beyond “cut taxes for the rich,” “piss off the libs,” and “whatever helps or enriches Dear Leader.” (I’m not listing abortion because I’m not sure how many elected Republicans sincerely care about that.) Republicans didn’t degenerate to their present state because they allowed too many non-WASPs in the party. I could barely type that last sentence without laughing at the absurdity.
How the fuck can anyone be so far up their own arse that they consider the current leadership a meritocracy? What the fuck is wrong with this guy?
And what the fuck is wrong with the New York Times that it pays him to write this shit?
The word “meritocracy” should be enclosed in scare quotes.
Ross Douthat has his good points but he’s truly been a mixed bag (and especially prone to shoving his head up his arse). He’s at least not stupid…
Krauthammer he ain’t…
The talentless, warmongering, god-bothering white male. I thought that George (Bush) 1 was bad enough George (Bush) 2 was even worse.
Perhaps this fits here, I’m not sure. Identity politics according to Stewart Lee: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHA1ufmLZQY
That is jaw dropping for how stupid it is.
The current sitting president got into office in part on the idea that he would undo the Johnson Amendment, and specifically pushed his connections with the American religious right.
The man’s such a Wasp that all the other wasps in the Oval office are debating whether or not removing his nest would end up with them getting stung.
He couldn’t be more of a WASP if he laid his eggs in a spider.
Hmmm. He’s not, though, not if you take “WASP” metaphorically, which you kind of have to. It’s never meant the white working class, for instance, however Protestant the worker may be. It means old money and Ivy League schools as well as what the initials explicitly stand for. Trump definitely is not that kind of WASP, and according to many journalists on the subject it has always eaten at him. The Bush family is VERY wasp in that way, which is what makes W’s phony Texas act so irritating.