Paglia On Why We Have Trump
Interviewed in The Weekly Standard, she explains to Jonathan V. Last:
My position continues to be that Hillary, with her supercilious, Marie Antoinette-style entitlement, was a disastrously wrong candidate for 2016 and that she secured the nomination only through overt chicanery by the Democratic National Committee, assisted by a corrupt national media who, for over a year, imposed a virtual blackout on potential primary rivals. Bernie Sanders had the populist passion, economic message, government record, and personal warmth to counter Trump. It was Sanders, for example, who addressed the crisis of crippling student debt, an issue that other candidates (including Hillary) then took up. Despite his history of embarrassing gaffes, the affable, plain-spoken Joe Biden, in my view, could also have defeated Trump, but he was blocked from running at literally the last moment by President Barack Obama, for reasons that the major media refused to explore.After Trump's victory (for which there were abundant signs in the preceding months), both the Democratic party and the big-city media urgently needed to do a scathingly honest self-analysis, because the election results plainly demonstrated that Trump was speaking to vital concerns (jobs, immigration, and terrorism among them) for which the Democrats had few concrete solutions. Indeed, throughout the campaign, too many leading Democratic politicians were preoccupied with domestic issues and acted strangely uninterested in international affairs. Among the electorate, the most fervid Hillary acolytes (especially young and middle-aged women and assorted show biz celebs) seemed obtusely indifferent to her tepid performance as Secretary of State, during which she doggedly piled up air miles while accomplishing virtually nothing except the destabilization of North Africa.
Had Hillary won, everyone would have expected disappointed Trump voters to show a modicum of respect for the electoral results as well as for the historic ceremony of the inauguration, during which former combatants momentarily unite to pay homage to the peaceful transition of power in our democracy. But that was not the reaction of a vast cadre of Democrats shocked by Trump's win. In an abject failure of leadership that may be one of the most disgraceful episodes in the history of the modern Democratic party, Chuck Schumer, who had risen to become the Senate Democratic leader after the retirement of Harry Reid, asserted absolutely no moral authority as the party spun out of control in a nationwide orgy of rage and spite. Nor were there statesmanlike words of caution and restraint from two seasoned politicians whom I have admired for decades and believe should have run for president long ago--Senator Dianne Feinstein and Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi. How do Democrats imagine they can ever expand their electoral support if they go on and on in this self-destructive way, impugning half the nation as vile racists and homophobes?
Via @CHSommers -- Christina Hoff Sommers -- whose book, "Who Stole Feminism," was a big influence on me and is still worth reading.
two seasoned politicians whom I have admired for decades
chuck schooner, di fi and nanski peloski? good grief, charlie brown!
Stinky the Clown at June 15, 2017 7:35 AM
Hillary's campaign slogan, instead of "I'm with her" should have been "It's her turn", because that's the kind of campaign she ran. Somebody should have told that that Marie Antoinette is usually not considered a positive figure in Western culture history. (Or maybe they did tell her...)
Pelosi strikes me as a fundamentally unserious person. Maybe it's just a mannerism thing, but I've never heard anything come out of her mouth that didn't strike me as utterly brainless. (She was the author of the infamous quote regarding Obamacare, "We have to pass it so you can see what's in it!".) Feinstein, I have a certain amount of respect for. She's one of the few Democrats who takes national security issues seriously, and she has quietly expressed her concerns about the abuse of the intelligence agencies and their surveillance powers. On the other hand, she's corrupt as hell. She chairs a subcommittee that covers military facilities, and her husband makes millions on no-bid military construction contracts which are appropriated by that committee.
Trump vs. Sanders certainly would have made for an interesting election. Sanders' economic ideas are juvenile and unimplementable. But he's at least aware of economic issues that most of the Democratic Party seems to be blind to. And he's actually a Second Amendment defender. (And he's not prone to off-the-cuff tweeting.) Would he have won against Trump? I'm not sure. The problem with alt-history speculating is usually that the person doing it think that they can change one variable and everything else will stay the same. Had Sanders been the nominee, Trump would have run a different style of campaign. Moreover, had it been apparent early on that Sanders was going to be the Democratic nominee, it's possible that the Republican primary process would have had a different outcome. It might have been, say, Sanders vs. Rubio.
Cousin Dave at June 15, 2017 7:51 AM
This.
It's the same argument I had with someone here about Hillary winning the popular vote if the president were elected that way.
Conan the Grammarian at June 15, 2017 7:58 AM
I like and respect Camille Paglia, but then she utters nonsense like this, "two seasoned politicians whom I have admired for decades and believe should have run for president long ago--Senator Dianne Feinstein and Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi."
How can anyone of any intelligence admire Pelosi? She's a mental midget. He political gamesmanship skills are first rate, but her ability to grasp the nuances of complex issues is nil. How she got elected as leader of her party's House contingent, and not just once, is beyond me.
BTW, Pelosi's actual comment on Obamacare was, "You’ve heard about the controversies, the process about the bill … but I don’t know if you’ve heard that it is legislation for the future – not just about health care for America, but about a healthier America. But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it – away from the fog of the controversy."
She was addressing the National Association of Counties annual legislative conference. She wasn't saying that Congress would have to pass the bill to understand what's in it, but that once Congress passes it, the people will understand what's in it. Still, it was a stupid statement.
Feinstein is at least confounding. She'll say something that makes you stand up and cheer one time and then says something that will have you slapping your head the next. You'll cheer when she asks James Comey why he didn't have the stones to say "this is inappropriate" to Trump during their private conversation, and you'll scream when she talks nonsense about gun control (with her California-issued concealed carry permit safely tucked in her pocketbook).
Di-Fi won plaudits as mayor of San Francisco, calming the city after the assassination of Harvey Milk and George Moscone, but is lockstep-liberal enough to have a near-permanent Senate seat from California.
Conan the Grammarian at June 15, 2017 8:13 AM
I don't feel I have to agree with everything a person is for in order to find value in their writing. I'm mystified by her allegiance to Feinstein and Pelosi, but she's otherwise on target.
To be human is to have rational and intellectual shortcomings. Even if you're Camille Paglia.
Amy Alkon at June 15, 2017 9:17 AM
Its a real whodunit on how we got Trump. When both parties systematically ignore their base and use their positions of power to enrich themselves its not surprising that populist candidates like Sanders and Trump are going to emerge. The only surprise for me was that the populist candidate that won was a billionaire but that is more of a testament to how shitty our current crop politicians and bureaucrats are.
Shtetl G at June 15, 2017 10:17 AM
And while we're talking about "how we got Trump", let's talk about the media reaction to the Scalise shooting today, led by the NY Times and MSNBC. Completely contrary to the (false) narrative that they pushed after the Giffords shooting, the narrative today is "it wasn't political, but if it was, the GOP totally deserved it". And I see that Van Jones -- Van Jones! is talking about how the rash of opioid use and overdoses in rural America is a problem that must be addressed -- and he's getting shouted down by the Left for saying so. You want middle America to really feel like their backs are against the wall? Congratulations. You achieved your goal.
I don't know if everyone on the Left realizes this, but they've just declared civil war. (And no, I'm not being hyperbolic here. When you advocate and practice violence justified by politics, that's the definition of civil war.) So what happens next? Will Alexandria become known as our century's Charleston?
Cousin Dave at June 15, 2017 11:32 AM
"Will Alexandria become known as our century's Charleston?"
I'm not sure there are any flappers left to ask.
But it was an iconic dance, that's for sure.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at June 15, 2017 1:35 PM
> I don't feel I have to agree
> with everything a person is
> for in order to find value in
> their writing.
☑ This is a crazy-important point. For nearly thirty years, people —often most enthusiastically, women— have been theatrically eager to discount the entirety of Paglia's insight on the basis of some niggling yet sharply-twitching disagreement.*
It's instructive (especially given the nearly cosmic scope of her opus) that this freaky neurological response, so tart yet vapid, should have appeared in many American lives with concurrent recognition that vast pools of meaning were being deliberately ignored. It can't (and needn't) be dressed up as a new or intricate psychological phenomenon: These people are merely in denial.
It's like the lonely, bitter, inarticulate voters who describe their enchantment with Trump as a "winner": None would bother to affirm the currency of such a judgment but the one who thinks of himself as a "loser." (Hi Raddy! Hi Snoopy!)
Crid at June 15, 2017 1:45 PM
No argument here. I'll seek out Paglia's writings and interviews. I like to read people from whom I learn things, who make me think, or who make me stretch my intellectual muscles to defend my positions. Paglia does all those. And the fact that she doesn't merely confirm left-wing biases is, I suspect, why many people, especially on the Left, take issue with her.
Conan the Grammarian at June 15, 2017 2:21 PM
Does anyone really think Sanders could have won the general election? He reminds me of George McGovern more than anyone else. (For those of you too young to remember him, the aphorism that came out of the 1972 election was "As Massachusetts goes, so goes the District of Columbia".)
Rex Little at June 16, 2017 12:26 AM
That Paglia interview is fantastic. She's incredibly perceptive.
Her political enthusiasms are inane, as they have always been. In particular, Kamala Harris is as corrupt a politician as California has ever produced, and that's not fucking around.
But Paglia's thoughts about Trump's infrastructure project are absolutely golden:
Yet as with Nato, immigration and a few other matters, so what? What difference does it make if Trump says the right things? He hasn't the clarity, resolve or political skill to move the ball forward. He's an exceptionally small-minded guy... And groomed by a central figure in one of postwar America's darkest episodes to never give a moment's loyalty to anyone or anything.
Crid at June 16, 2017 1:50 AM
"He hasn't the clarity, resolve or political skill to move the ball forward"
I would really like a working definition of what this means to you.
Do you think Obama moved the ball *forward* in any meaningful sense?
I suspect most of us who voted for Trump hoped that the ball wouldnt be moved forward on evicerating the first and second amendments, diluting and corrupting the verification of legitimate voters and on the anti freedom goals of the democratic party.
Isab at June 16, 2017 4:29 AM
Paglia is searching for the great female hope, a female politician who can inspire the masses and build an enthusiastic following like Reagan or Obama, an Eva Peron for America. It's her weakness as a political commentator. The fact that she didn't automatically force-fit Hillary into that role, like so many feminists did, is to her credit. If you can get around that weakness though, she's otherwise pretty insightful.
Conan the Grammarian at June 16, 2017 7:14 AM
> It's her weakness as a
> political commentator.
Naw, it's just her weakness as a voter, which is much less of interest. What you're describing is very real, a fragment of the issue described above. (And having admired her for a quarter-century, I can affirm that this is not a new problem.) You're right that her eagerness for a female President seems transparent (and naive).
The actual ballots of scholars and rhetors like Paglia are a vanishingly tiny component of their citizenship, as this piece so well demonstrates. She neatly infers the characteristics and even blessings a figure like Trump might bring to the White House, while colorfully charting all the other corrupting forces in the environment.
We can all agree that Paglia hasn't done the reading on Kamala, Feinstein, Pelosi, or maybe even Hillary. But who cares? It remains the case that any voter who has measured the character of those politicians will be greatly enriched by Paglia's perspective of larger contexts. She illuminates enormous valleys; if she wants to cower in a lesser grove during her own midnight hikes, who GAF?
So it is with her illiterate critics who believe 'Paglia says it's okay for savage rapists to be mean to retarded schoolgirls!' or whatever. Such readers are obviously too terrified of the world to make sense of uncomfortable & ironic wisdom that's all around them. If plainspoken Cammy can't help them, no one can.
Who'd want to join their team?
Crid at June 16, 2017 1:35 PM
> I would really like a working
> definition of what this means
> to you.
Higher taxes; a more richly corrupted health-care marketplace; a more intrusive government in all contexts; disrupted and perhaps destabilized international affairs; a continuing disproportion of social affection & support for our most capable citizens even as the hard-working but less-blessed struggle and wither; reckless, exploitative, essentially cancerous patterns of immigration, and on and on.
> Do you think Obama moved
> the ball *forward* in any
> meaningful sense?
What, honestly, the fuck? It's 2017; Obama was not to be president this year in any case. To complain about Hillary or Obama at this point is too piss away your life over that shitheel Herbert Hoover.
Crid at June 16, 2017 1:46 PM
Before "and on and on," insert "continuing and perhaps debilitating collapse of our nation's physical infrastructure," if it will help you take the point.
Crid at June 16, 2017 2:01 PM
Peggy Noonan, perhaps not in Camille's league, but nonetheless another woman worth the time it takes to read her column, warns that with the violence and rage we're awash in right now, we're on the path to disaster and tragedy:
AND
AND
We, as the adults in the world, have the opportunity, and the responsibility, to cool things down. We've seen where this level of animosity and venomous discourse lead. Over 600,000 Americans died then when our forebears did not cool things down after Preston Brooks beat Charles Sumner nearly to death on the Senate floor, "symbolic of the breakdown of reasoned discourse that eventually led to the American Civil War."
It's on us to take a more reasoned approach. Trump is the president, he's not the devil. He was duly elected. Those who don't like him or his policies can vote for a Democratic House in 2018 and a new president in 2020. No more violence. No more rage.
Conan the Grammarian at June 16, 2017 3:08 PM
"Bernie Sanders had the populist passion, economic message, government record, and personal warmth to counter Trump."
And we are to admire Paglia for trash like this? Bernie advocates things the frickin' Mayflower passengers proved didn't work - and isn't he the least successful person in the Capitol building who gets to vote on bills?
His best role to date is to provide proof that the Democratic Party's allies, or whatever you might call organized affiliates, will do anything whatsoever. Roving bands of Republicans aren't bloodying people for disagreeing with them. The "adult" candidate's people do that.
Radwaste at June 16, 2017 4:36 PM
As you've demonstrated is so many contexts, all the world's enterprise is to strike you as instantly accessible, agreeable, flattering and enduring, in all contexts and in all moments.
We're doing the best we can, Honey.
Crid at June 16, 2017 4:53 PM
A brilliant comment on this was lost on the daily reboot. Hate that.
> No more violence. No more rage.
Everyone should of course disavow and resist violent response to political matters. But patrolling each other's emotional lives, even to demand purges of "rage," is not gonna go well.
I think this week's atrocity, like Laughner's, was the work of a deeply disturbed guy. We probably shouldn't restrict our contentious political engagements to pander to such people.
Crid at June 16, 2017 10:19 PM
A plea for rational debate instead of violence is not an attempt to patrol each other's emotional lives. No one is demanding a purge of rage, merely a dialing back of the public calls for violence. Go home and seethe all you want. Take up boxing to work out your rage, just stop tearing the fabric of civilized society apart. The rest of us don't need a front-row seat to a stranger's meltdown. And we don't need to be encouraging or celebrating that meltdown.
By 1856 (the year Brooks beat Sumner), we'd lost the ability to slow the creep toward civil war. We sometimes look back and wonder at how a nation so recently conceived had reached such a divisive moment; less than 100 years after winning its independence in a show of unity and cooperation. We reached that moment by a steady stream of violence and vitriol in political and cultural disagreements.
So, by all means, let's continue to display the severed head of the president, to cheer a portrayal of his assassination, to call for the deaths of members of the opposing political party, and to seek justification for killing any and all who disagree with us.
Hodgkinson and Laughner were indeed disturbed individuals. And we should not tailor our behavior and contentious encounters to pander to such people. However, we can limit our overt calls for violence to be perpetrated on people who simply disagree with us. We can stop encouraging such people. We can stop creating a culture and environment that enables such behavior. We can acknowledge when we've gone too far and make amends. We can once in a while publicly recognize that we're all Americans. We can bring back the idea of the "loyal opposition."
In calling for violence against people who disagree with us on politics or culture, are we any better than those fanatics half world away who insist that unbelievers are to be killed according to divine will? We may not have a religious text that explicitly states that to fall back upon, but can we really decry them while arguing that randomly killing Republicans who voted to repeal Obamacare is self defense?
We, the adults in the room, need to take it down a notch. We need to remonstrate those who casually advocate violence for mere disagreement, even if they're on our side. Otherwise, in another 100 years, people will be wondering how a people blessed with the freedom and opportunity as is ours today could descend into such madness and violence ... again.
A warning, not a call to patrol the emotional lives of others. Take it as you will.
Conan the Grammarian at June 17, 2017 6:01 AM
I've always found Noonan behind the times Conan. But if she is noticing the movement to civil war then that war is far closer than she thinks.
Ben at June 17, 2017 12:06 PM
> Otherwise, in another 100 years,
> people will be wondering how a
> people blessed with the freedom
> and opportunity as is ours today
> could descend into such madness
> and violence ... again.
Still feels overheated. The last three or four years have seen an uptick, but the trends on national violence are still way down for our lifetimes. Indeed, the globally-recognized shakeup of NATO (etc.) is a compelling, if clumsily-presented demonstration of America's impatience with deadly violence. We don't like bad things happening to our young men anymore, even when the losses are pennies in comparison the world-calming tens and twenties spent in yesteryear.
Trump is more than a whinge of needy petulance from individual ninnies, though he certainly is that, and I'll mock them for it until the day I die.
Some meanings from Trump's election are apparent, but most are not. I think it's probably a game-changer for in certain contexts of our political arrangements, but it doesn't change everything forevermore. It doesn't mean that everything else in our culture is up for grabs.
Crid at June 18, 2017 2:45 AM
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