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TRUMPISM AFTER TRUMP Will the movement outlive the man? By Thomas Meaney

DAY ONE

The course of true never did into sidewalks, carried pylons, and ate gathering here, at the Ritz- Carlton, at run smooth. lunch from metal boxes, while waiters 22nd Street and M. Disparate tribes —Ernest Gellner in restaurants complimented old re- had posted up for the potlatch: refor- spectable bobbing heads on how well macons, blood-and-soilers, curious he city was not beautiful; no they were progressing with their rib liberal nationalists, “Austrians,” repen- T one made that claim for it. At eyes and iceberg wedges. tant neocons, evangelical Christians, the height of summer, corporate raiders, cattle ranchers, people in suits, shellacked by the Silicon Valley dissidents, Buck- sun, moved like harassed insects leyites, Straussians, Orthodox to avoid the concentrated light. Jews, Catholics, Mormons, To- There was a civil –like frac- ries, dark-web spiders, tradcons, ture in —the president Lone Conservatives, Fed-Socs, had said so—but little of it Young Republicans, Reaganites showed in the capital. Everyone in amber. Most straddled more was polite and smooth in their than one category. exchanges. The corridor between They were here because of one Dupont Circle and Georgetown undeniable fact: was like the dream of Yugoslav was going to die. Trump might planners: long blocks of uniform be ejected from ofce or lose the earth-toned buildings that made election or win the election— the classical edices of but he was, also, denitely going seem the residue of ancestors to die. And needed to straining for pedigree. Bunting, survive. It was just getting started. starched and perfectly rufed in If Trumpism were snuffed out red-white-and-blue fans, hung with Trump, Republicans would everywhere—from air condition- fall back into march with the ers, from gutters, from statues of party lemmings in hock to their dead revolutionaries. Coming donors (hardly any Republican from Berlin, where the manual labor- I had come to Washington to wit- voters agreed with the donors about ers are white, I felt as though I was ness either the birth of an or anything, as Trump had intuited), entering the heart of a caste civiliza- what may turn out to be the passing who would connive with liberals to tion. Untouchables in hard hats drilled of a kidney stone through the Repub- contaminate the country with more lican Party. There was a new move- , more Big Tech trea- Thomas Meaney is a fellow at the Max ment afoot: National Conservatives, son, more “free” trade, more endless Planck Society in Göttingen, Germany. they called themselves, and they were , more slouching toward .

Illustrations by Mark Weaver. Source photograph: Donald Trump © Olivier Douliery/AFP/Getty Images REPORT 23

Meaney Report Final 8.indd 23  12/17/19 3:16 PM The ancien régime was threatening to faux-silk-lined hallway leading into a dozen organizers of the National reconstitute itself. the main ballroom, I watched a Tex- Conference. “We are Someone had to stand up for Trump- an’s cowboy hat get within kissing not alone anymore,” Brog bleated. “We ism in the noble abstract. Someone range of a rabbi’s Borsalino. want to be connected, connected to philosophical, who knew how to ex- The Australian was named Jack. He one another, connected to our descen- tract timelessness from the tawdriness. was there with the blessing of his MP dants. . . . Our American brothers and Trump the Man might be crude and boss to make contact with allies and sisters are crying out.” venal, but Trump the Spirit had opened convey the warmest greetings. “It’s His voice oated higher in register a trapdoor in history. Some political- exciting to be among so many intelli- until it was full eighteenth-century theological exegesis would be required gent people!” Jack was addressing a oracular, the Great Awakening re- to unspool the nature of the accom- dour undergraduate from the Univer- turned. “We’ve read Burke and our plishment. The old world of the Cold sity of , who was scanning the Bibles.” It was very heaven to be alive War and the American was crowd for luminaries and idly elding now, Brog observed. Brexit was a sign. over; an older world of nations—a com- Jack’s questions. “How did you get “The British people literally stood munity of nations! A brotherhood!—was here?” “I was sort of sick of the liber- astride history and yelled ‘stop!’ They struggling to be reborn. Orbán, Bol- tarian choke hold on campus. I’ve refused to sell the birthright of their sanaro, Bibi, Boris—all were wise to it, read Carlyle and Evola. And Hazony, for the shiny coins of higher while liberal professors sat on panels GDP.” And then came a line that about “Hungary’s Wrong Turn” or seemed lobbed over the assembled “’s Self-Implosion” or “The guests directly at Jennifer Schuessler, Brexit Backwash,” as if History were TRUMP THE MAN MIGHT BE CRUDE cultural correspondent for the New a hedgerow only they were privileged AND VENAL, BUT TRUMP THE York Times, who was sitting in the to prune. Had they no eyes? SPIRIT HAD OPENED A far back of the ballroom. “We are was about to decide whether it pre- nationalists, not white nationalists! ferred curtailing its exports or eating TRAPDOOR IN HISTORY But no screening system is perfect, grass. Germany was primed to be so if there’s anyone here tonight who pastoralized at last, once Detroit believes being an American has any- patented the right car battery. It was obviously. But the College Republi- thing whatsoever to do with the color house-hunting season in the West cans are still pretty captured by liber- of someone’s skin, there is the door.” No Bank—did you know a good broker? tarian dogma. Like, no interest in one stood up to leave; therefore let it be American industry was at a halftime political economy, or a national indus- known that there were no racists break- pause, waiting for Clint Eastwood’s trial policy, or anything. I found these ing bread among us. voice-over to resume. Was there room folks online. These guys, these are the Brog next lanced various simulacra at Guantánamo for the board guys I like.” of common sense. “We give no aid to of Google? The drugs needed to ow The high degree of bonhomie in our immigrants when we promote the back out—a new Opium War!—and the ballroom was hard to deny. Con- erosion of the reason they moved here the jobs needed to ow back in—full servatives in their comfort zones can in the rst place.” Only by denying im- employment! A few good NatCons establish an instant rapport. Aloofness migrants’ dreams could those dreams could keep the Republican zombie-ar- is rapidly abandoned as a hindrance to be fulfilled. . . . He ended with pure chy at bay. might well fall the assembly of a highly charged emo- singsong sweetness, chirping out some into conniptions at the notion, but tional grid. The speed of social fusion Whitman to the congregants: “Cam- what was needed was “class warfare”— exceeds its own object, so that every- erado, I give you my hand! I give you or perhaps more precisely, a war within one already seems prepared to bleed love more precious than money!” the elites—to ensure that the future for they know not yet what. But money could not altogether be remained Trumpian and did not revert expelled from the temple. One of the to the globalist highway to nowhere. e ambled toward the dinner conference’s backers was Colin Mo- “I’m from the lesbian armpit of Wtables just as the ran, a hedge funder, who Australia!” said a buoyant young jokes began. “I’d call this got up and told the audience that he blond man, fresh off the plane from stage the presidium, but I don’t want liked every damn thing about Na- his woke-infected hometown of Mel- to be accused of collusion with Rus- tional Conservatism. He didn’t think bourne. We were thick in the melee sia,” announced the stony moderator it was antimarket at all—hell it would of the hotel’s bowels. People were Christopher DeMuth, Reagan’s rst- probably be better for the market, or collecting their National Conserva- term “ czar.” He handed at least his market. “It’s sometimes tism folders and pens, adjusting their over the reins to David Brog, a more said that the new National Conserva- name tags. Lounging in plush chairs treacly specimen. Brog had worked for tism is hostile to ,” DeMuth and couches were all manner of pro- the end-times televangelist John Ha- added. He smiled. “To rebut these fessional and amateur right-wingers— gee’s Christians United for Israel be- scurrilous allegations, we will now lawyers, radio hosts, professors, and fore heading up Sheldon Adelson’s hear from one of the titans of Ameri- journalists, all thrilled to nd them- Maccabee Task Force to ght the BDS can finance. Ladies and gentlemen, selves in public so unspurned. In the movement. He was one of about a half !”

24 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / FEBRUARY 2020

Meaney Report Final 8.indd 24  12/17/19 3:16 PM Thiel was a possible prototype of think we’re trying to accomplish, which ating trade treaties who dogmatically the new elite the NatCons wanted to is widening the Overton window of believe in , because the propagate. He came equipped with a discourse.” Then his mouth dropped worse they are at negotiating, the bet- blowtorch to illuminate the merito- open like a torpedo bay, and out pro- ter job they think they do.” cratic conspiracy among pelled a series of questions: But where Thiel really hit his stride— and government and media. Yes, where he began to kill—was on the Thiel was a destroyer- entrepreneur Is Big Tech good for the composition of the American elite. The straight out of the pa ges of Schum- of America? factories that produce this elite were Is free trade good for the U.S.of A.? peter. In the fairy-tale world of Silicon Is college good for the U.S.? the universities, and that was the Valley start ups—most of which were Is war good for us? place to train the bomb sights. The coquettishly waiting for a Wall Street thousands of third-rate colleges manager to take them public or for Thiel was going to “drill down into should be destroyed with criminal Facebook to acquire them—Thiel was some of the particulars” of these investigations while the Ivies and a swashbuckling privateer. He elite universities were could take a machete to the taxed into oblivion. For there hedgerow view of history. Like was nothing so big as the self- the most effective reactionaries, flattering lies told in America he was all-in on technology—but about education: that there were on his own terms. He had co- so many good schools and that founded PayPal, a venture that these institutions were the best might at rst seem too prosaic, place for selecting and training even beneath him, until you re- elites rather than just conrm- member that PayPal’s original ing and credentialing them. He mission was to become a global quoted Michelle Obama talking currency. Thiel was going to about her daughters’ applications make great stuff again, not just to college: new iterations of phones. He was going to reconnect technological The one thing I’ve been telling advancement with political revo- my daughters is that I don’t want lution. He was going to colonize them to choose a name. I don’t the moon. He was going to extin- want them to think, “Oh, I should go to these top schools.” guish enemies with vengeance. We live in a country where there Any American journalist of my are thousands of amazing univer- generation had to treat that last sities. So the question is: What’s ambition with a touch of respect: going to work for you? after a gratuitous violation of his privacy, Thiel had, in an act of twenty- matters. Google? It had lost any at- “In their defense, they don’t ac tu ally rst-century lèse-majesté, singlehand- tachment to the American nation, believe it,” Thiel said. “And I would edly eviscerated one of the breeding and it was in bed with Chinese intelli- worry about them even more if they grounds of New York — gence. Its executives should be inter- actually did.” Shortly after Obama’s Gawker. There were more habitats out rogated “in a not excessively gentle remarks, her elder daughter went off to there he could scorch to the ground. way.” Then came an interesting twist: Harvard. Thiel would have been “very Thiel was a seasoned speaker. He’d China was dirtying up the whole disturbed” if they’d sent her to the one- stumped at the Republican National globe, Thiel said. He suggested that thousandth ranked school instead. Convention; he’d given Trump a mil- the 25percent on Chinese This was genuinely funny. Rolling the lion dollars and counseled him to be- goods be “reframed” as a carbon tax, Obamas over the coals of their own come disrupter-in-chief. Thiel claimed “and maybe the twenty- ve percent is utterances never got old. But Thiel had to have received little grief from a oor and not a ceiling.” The audi- done more than his duty to National Trump-endorsing evangelicals for being ence loved the way he was co- opting Conservatism by intimating that a new gay, nor, it seemed, would he get much a left-wing cause () for elite could still come into being. It from NatCons, who mostly held fast to NatCon ends (American greatness). would be a techy elite, and a very small the Walt Whitman position on homo- It was even perhaps more subtle than one, but one that served the homeland, sexuality and nationalism. Though that: co- opting a left-wing policy pro- whose normal citizens would graze Thiel’s delivery was constipated and gram (carbon-taxing a country in or- among the innite pleasures pro vided robotic, he came across as someone der to encourage it to green its econo- them. The coming elite would recog- who could beam himself somewhere my) and just insisting that its content nize the con of mass education and else at any given moment, and so his was populist protectionist. The spare millions the dunce hat of the sheer presence and attention attered Trump team, according to Thiel, al- community college or the online uni- the audience. He announced his inten- ready had the correct instincts on versity. Thiel himself had already tried tion to stick to “the spirit of what I trade: “You don’t want people negoti- to buy out promising young coders

Source photograph: Peter Thiel © Daniel Acker/Bloomberg/Getty Images REPORT 25

Meaney Report Final 8.indd 25  12/17/19 3:16 PM from going to college in the rst place: lem? himself had been way. “I mean, it’s okay if you are; I’m so the Thiel Fellowship accepted applica- notoriously skeptical of them, espe- far right that I’m in Maoist territory.” tions on a rolling basis and paid grant- cially those like himself: better to be The speaker was , a Sili- ees six gures not to go to school. A governed by half-demented aristocrats con Valley star of the neo- reactionary picture of the Thielian version of the with long-standing claims to land and web, whose Thiel-backed technology, NatCon future was coming into focus: title than by intellectual hustlers who Urbit, was meant to reinvent comput- rooms of talented fteen-year-olds nd- misconstrue their own rocketing so- ing (everyone would have access to ing new ways to drill into the earth’s cial ascent with the lift-off of human- their own ercely sovereign servers and core and lower temperatures through ity in general. would not have to bow to Big Tech). sublime acts of geo lo gic engineering. Yarvin the Dark Knight had written a Children were our future, if they could s Thiel was escorted off the series of texts under the name Mencius avoid college. Our savior was not the A stage through a parted sea of Moldbug, making him a revered “alt- tech- abstinence- preaching Greta fans, I moved to the center right” pamphleteer. Thunberg, but some as yet unknown of the ballroom. Something curious I walked outside with the Dark prodigy, funded by Thiel, who would was happening. There was a young Knight and two Stanford undergradu- gure out how to recode the physical man in a vintage tan Nehru jacket ates to the corner of M and 22nd. “This processes of the planet. guy is kind of famous,” said Un- Thiel’s private effort to siphon dergrad One. The undergrads had off a natural aristocracy of talent both recently taken a course from the doomed universities by taught by Thiel. “He made us read plying them with cash and lab Carl Schmitt’s Land and Sea,” said time was part of the larger eld of Undergrad Two. “It was awe- NatCon thought. Trump had some.” The pair worked as assis- won the election by feeding the tants to Niall Ferguson, the con- insatiable anti-elitist hunger in servative historian who had . The Clintons had gotten himself into trouble at cooperated perfectly. But nation- Stanford’s for alists and populists have as much encouraging “oppo research” on a need for elites as anyone else. In liberal student. “Oh man, it was the rst ush of European nation- bullshit. They only got Ferguson alism, members of the Napole- because ’s son acciden- onic generation found themselves tally forwarded a whole email promoted from cannoneers to chain to some unreliable student.” princes of freshly conquered “Wait, you mean Susan Rice—” states. The Third World nation- “Totally conservative, her son, alists who came to power in de- yeah,” said Undergrad One. colonizing nations in the 1960s The Dark Knight was in a gre- had only recently formed a stratum garious mood. “I just wanted to of colonial rule: lawyers, doctors, and see what’s going on poets, and soldiers. The trouble now speaking to a group of a dozen younger with the ofcial conservatives these in the United States was that the people in suits and dresses. The sub- days,” he told the group. “It’s cool that would-have-been regional ruling class ject appeared to be poetry. “And so they let me come.” Undergrad One said had been sucked out of every corner of Dickinson’s editor, this guy Thomas he was intrigued by the anti-imperial the heartland to join the ranks of the Wentworth Higginson, is actually in tenor at the conference. “We should just global meritocracy, leaving the ranks of contact with John Brown.” It was too dismantle the empire,” the Dark Knight the local elite nearly empty. Anyone propitious—to have the chance this said. “It could be done so quickly if you visiting an classroom could early in the conference to put in a really wanted to. All our embassies encounter twenty bright teenagers word for John Brown. “What’s the could be wrapped up right away. from all over the world—a few of problem with John Brown?” I asked There’s nothing in the Constitution them vacuumed out of obscure corners him. The young man in the Nehru that says we have to have embassies. of the U.S.A.—who all spoke the jacket blinked slowly, tortoiselike, and All of those staffs could come home. same gradient of En glish, streamed a knowing smile arrived. “Only that We can conduct diplomatic relations the same TV series, and believed that he was a terrorist, only that he’s the via Skype. This idea that we need they represented di ver sity. The clever equivalent of a pro-life activist today people over there is so ridiculous, such sell of the Pete Buttigiegs and Rory who blows up abortion clinics because an anachronism.” “What about Israel?” Stewarts of the moment was to at least of the evil inside them.” asked Undergrad Two. “Do you know simulate the return-to-Ithaca drama “Doesn’t it depend on what your how much we contribute to the Is- of a globalist come home to pay re- cause is, though?” raeli defense budget?” said the Dark gional amends. But what if merito- “Are you a communist or some- Knight. “It’s something like three or cratic elites in general were the prob- thing?” he asked, in a friendly, sparring four percent—peanuts. I think we

26 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / FEBRUARY 2020 Source photograph:

Meaney Report Final 8.indd 26  12/17/19 3:16 PM should let them loose. Is anybody re- critics of the modern corpo- academy, and the professions. They were ally going to want to fuck with Israel? ration, such as Adolf Berle and Gar- not aristocrats, nor were they capitalist I’d say you’d see Israel picking up new diner Means, Burnham came to believe tycoons, but rather an ofce-bound spe- territory in no time if we just let them that the and the United cies that merely understood the tech- go. We could roll in our empire, and let States were converging on a kind of niques of and as a class no them give empire a shot. Theirs could managerialism: two only marginally longer bothered with questions of their stretch from Beirut to Rabat. I mean, different planned economies, with little own legitimacy. Burnham had coun- they’re Jews—they’ll gure it out.” place for individual freedom. He started seled a kind of equanimity in the face of The Dark Knight overowed with drifting to the right, and eventually this technocratic elite—the best you antiquarian theories and gleanings. wound up as the in-house guru of Wil- could do was to pit elites against one His thoughts kept circling back to the liam F.Buckley’s . But another in order to create space for con- mid century right-winger James Burn- his professional life did have some co- cessionary freedoms. But Yarvin was ham, a hallowed figure among the herence over the decades. It was spent more intent on destroying it. He be- NatCons. Burnham’s trajectory per- taking up positions from various crum- lieved that the United States was simply fectly matched the moment. He’d be- bling ideological ramparts to get a bet- a more advanced form of totalitarianism gun his career as a mild-mannered ter shot in at his lifelong enemy: the than China. It had decentralized its professor of , a genteel liberal elite. Burnham could summon despotism, spread it among different Princetonian whom one student de- a good word for the Black Panthers, sectors, but the totalitarian imprint was scribed as having walked out of a LSD, and Woodstock, which had at still there: who watched Fox T.S.Eliot poem, but some vision News were captive to one , amid the had and those who watched MSNBC changed him. Though he was daz- were captive to another. But for zled by his Marxist colleague Sid- BURNHAM COUNSELED A KIND OF Yarvin the trouble was that the orig- ney Hook, and by his encounter EQUANIMITY IN THE FACE OF THE inal mythology of American democ- with ’s History of the TECHNOCRATIC ELITE; YARVIN WAS racy was breaking down. One could Russian Revolution, which he inter- keep believing in it for only so long, preted as a coming attraction for INTENT ON DESTROYING IT just as it had required herculean America, it still took a car ride myopia to continue to believe in through Detroit, the epicenter of Third World liberation long after its the Depression, to clinch Burnham’s least sent some shockwaves to Vital expiration date. Did anyone really still conversion. “The class struggle, the Center Command Control. believe in American postwar inno- starvation and terror in act” that he Refreshingly, the NatCons and the cence? Yarvin played at drawing the witnessed among the city’s autowork- Dark Knight were interested not in stench of the rebombing of Dresden ers convinced him that capitalism was Burnham’s avowedly right-wing phase— into his nostrils. Did anyone still believe ruined forever; he wanted to be a part when brittle treatises such as The Suicide that liberal elites wanted equality in of what came next. of the West (1964) appeared—but in his education? And so Yarvin had identied At NYU, Burnham still lectured on earlier, more ambivalent wartime out- a groaning gap in the conference. “It will Aquinas and Dante, but he was in- put, The Managerial Revolution (1941) be interesting to see what kind of elite creasingly occupied with drafting strat- and The Machiavellians (1943), which they come up with,” he said. egies for Communist Party discipline. were written in an era when Burnham His attacks on Franklin Roosevelt, was still contending with “remnants of DAY TWO whom he accused of being an incipient .” These books, invoked by totali ta rian, were even more vitriolic NatCons throughout my days in Wash- God’s used imperfect people all through than the conservative attacks on the ington, worked like a back door through history. King David wasn’t perfect, Saul New Deal. Trotsky, in exile on the is- which they could smuggle materialism wasn’t perfect, Solomon wasn’t perfect. land of Büyükada off Istanbul, was so into their program. Other phrases that And I actually gave the president a little taken with Comrade Burnham’s agit- I did not associate with conservatives one-pager on those Old Testament prop that he marked him as a protégé. were brought out like worn old pieces of kings. . . I said, “Mr. President, I know Some organizers around Burnham were family furniture, each brokered by - there are people that say, y’know, ‘You said put off by his tailored suits, his taste for worthy conservative middlemen. “The you were the chosen one.’ ” And, I said: champagne and baccarat, and his dry ruling class” was often cited at the Ritz, “You were.” patrician monotone, but this was also or, just as com monly, “the ruling class, — part of what made him useful; he lent as calls it”—a refer- American Marxism a dignied patina. ence to the intelligence analyst, conser- he second day of the National Burnham broke with the Trotskyites vative professor, and writer for the Clare- T Conservatism Conference was over the question of whether the So- mont Review of Books. a day of myth maintenance. viet Union was in fact a worker’s state. Burnham’s chief idea—adopted by The men of God were gearing up. Peter Trotsky thought it still qualied despite Yarvin—was that the American elite Thiel had worried that the American the corruptions of ; Burnham had become a managerial class that right was still in thrall to the myth of thought it did not. From his reading of acted as guardians over institutions, the when what

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Meaney Report Final 9.indd 27  12/18/19 2:34 PM was needed was the opposite: more sion of that. It would be a twisted act to visiting worshippers are dispatched in comparisons of America with other try to take patriotic love away from our black vans with papered-over windows countries to see where it fell short, more fellow citizens. “Many of our fellow to the deepest reaches of the Yucatán. competition fueled by the intimation Americans have made a mess of their “Next time we’ll do the service over that we might not be special at all. lives in various ways, and they haven’t Skype. That will be better for everyone,” Yarvin had wondered late into the night accomplished very much—unlike many says the minister, hat in his hands. “No where the new myths could come from. of us in the room—and for many of need to have them on the soil when we The Silicon Valley contingent, Pro- them their citizenship is their most already coexist on a spiritual plane.” methean in outlook, did not have much precious possession, from which they While it had fallen to Reno to square time for God. draw the greatest honor. It’s not enough Christian universalism with nationalist It was the moment for a Christian that we take away the functional fam- particularism, Yoram Hazony made nationalist to ascend the mount. They ily life—we even have to take away bolder claims for his faith. Launching were hardly endangered. Over the sum- their own citizenship, or their love out against a hundred years of histori- mer, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán had given of their own citizenship.” Reno was prof- ography, Hazony claimed that, no, na- a speech in a small Romanian village fering a peculiar notion of worldly suc- tionalism was not about forgetting proclaiming the blooming of a re-Chris- cess, and one could sense some self- things in common or sharing a mis- tianized Europe. R.R.“Rusty” Reno, flattery working within him. But taken view of the past; it was about another conference organizer and the elsewhere his speech took a wilder turn. keeping a covenant with God. For editor of the ecumenical, Catholic- “There is a potential for a great deal of Hazony—founder of the Princeton , inected journal , was in onetime confidant of Netanyahu, the strange position of having to and chief Talmudist of National reconcile nationalism and Christian- Conservatism—nationalism began ity all over again for a twenty- rst- FOR R. R. RENO, THE NATION with the Hebrews. Donald Trump century audience. He took to the WAS NOT ONLY RECONCILABLE might speak in slogans, but he was task with a weary sense of duty, the WITH CHRISTIANITY BUT also speaking the Torah. The He- creep of melancholy in his voice, as brew God “doesn’t say go out and he bore his burden in plain sight of FURTHERED ITS CAUSE conquer all the nations of the world. his congregants. “The anti-elite, He says, You stay behind your bor- populist sentiments that are abroad der.” You can have this patch of land at the moment,” Reno told us, “are best mischief if we fuse church with nation,” for your people, and it will become understood as expressions of the Amer- he said. “There are bishops in the Cath- great; other peoples can do the same on ican love for self- government. Faced olic Church in the United States and their patches. And so, after a break of a with a liberal empire, overseen by a Europe and Protestant pastors who judge few thousand years, the Dutch, the En- technocratic elite, the American people prudent restrictions on immigration to glish, and finally the Americans all have become truculent. This is true on be violations of biblical ideals of univer- copied the original. the left and the right. Count me as no sal welcome and universal hospitality, Hazony’s lecture stuck to the wagon fan of , but I interpret its rhe- but these ideals apply to the people of ruts of traditional nationalist thought. torical return in the Democratic Party God, to the Church, not to the United There had been Jewish nationalists— as a sign that Democratic voters want States of America.” Zionists after all—going back to the to recover their political agency. . . . I What was meant by this? That border nineteenth century. Earlier, the Ameri- dread the triumph of these loveless vi- crossing was permissible for people in can Founders and their En glish forerun- sions of our political future; for they their capacity as Christians but not ners had borrowed the ideas of a chosen mean the end of the democratic age, in their capacity as Mexicans? I had a state from Jewish thinkers. The trouble and its supersession by a managerial, vision of El Paso, of trucks of Mexican was not merely that Hazony swept under therapeutic empire run by central bank- Christians arriving at a megachurch. the carpet all the difculties of actually ers and diversity consultants.” Old white Texan gentlemen help the existing nationalism—Where does it For Reno, the particularities of the elderly Mexican gentlewomen down begin? Where does it end? Who is in and nation were not only reconcilable with the stairs, leading them arm in arm who is out?—but that he was sacralizing Christianity, they furthered its cause. into the church where in booming En- a political compromise as a God- directed Scripture was unmistakable: “If anyone glish with Spanish subtitles a minister project. With the borders sacred, and the does not provide for his own people, and preaches the bounty of Christian union, exact mixture of people within them especially his own family, he has dis- and baptisms are performed on small sacred, considerable subterfuge and vio- owned his faith and is worse than an Mexican babies. At the tea and biscuits lence were now justiable in defending indel” (1 Timothy 5:8). The nation was session after the service, one of the el- the frozen state of this order. no false idol for Reno. God in His be- derly Texans notices a bulge under the nevolence had provided it “as a further loose clothing of a young Mexican t would have been mete and right remedy for our sinful self-regard.” Cath- woman. “Get ’em out of here!” The I for such somber tones to be fol- olics could excuse passionate love of bonds of Christian fellowship having lowed by organ music. Instead, af- your mate if it brought you closer to been observed, it is now time to sound ter a coffee break, there came ; the nation was a much higher ver- the alarm of national : the Conservatism’s long-awaited jester.

28 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / FEBRUARY 2020

Meaney Report Final 9.indd 28  12/18/19 2:34 PM Because she doesn’t necessarily need jewelry for Valentine’s Day, “You gotta love Tucker,” as Stanford Monopoly capitalism was real. “The a quality felt hat for your collection. Undergraduate One had put it. Tucker main threat to your ability to live your Carlson was the leading propagandist life as you choose does not come from of the cause. He had his own show on the government, but comes from the Fox News. He did daily battle with the private sector,” Tucker said. “I was enemy. And not only battle; Tucker trained from the youngest age, from a even extracted what he liked from the pup, to believe that the threats to lib- Jacobin- magazine left, twisted it around, erty came from government. . . . And so and sold it at a discount to his follow- it really took a huge amount of evidence ers. He hated liberals, but he resented wagging right in my face—not being the left for leaving his hypocrisy a- the brightest person in D.C.—to realize Made in Australia grantly exposed. And so he seesawed that in 2019. . . the threats come pri- Rain or shine the Banjo Paterson is equally between this hatred and this resent- marily from companies, and not from at home in the city or out in the country. ment. In the resentment there was a the federal government.” He could give Full grain roan leather sweatband, kind of respect; in the hatred there examples. “All new Oreos have the label Barramundi hat band. was mirthful righteousness. ‘What’s your pronoun?’ A large Ameri- Sizes: 6 - 8. Heritage Fawn or Charcoal.

“I actually have contact with the can company is committing a pretty #1622 Banjo Paterson ...... $175 people the rest of us complain about,” brazen act of aimed at your he began his speech—and, lo, it was kids, and the message is that the binary true. Not only did he have his makeup gender scheme which we were taught in done by liberals and communists ve biology class in seventh grade is no days a week, but nearly everyone in the longer operative.” In ghting this, the media wanted to stop him. They didn’t libertarians would be worse than use- succeed because, even within the nar- less. Their response was, Yeah, well, if row constraints of monopoly capital- you don’t like it, start your own Oreo ism, Tucker, like a Christian among the company. “But that’s not really an op- Romans, was able to get the word out, erative option in a world of monopoly and his virtuous ock heeded the call. power. . . . You can’t create your own Hummingbird Heart Earrings in Bronze The NatCons were in awe of the Google. . . . You have more power vested #KBE-88-FH Earrings, shhook ...... $72 great de ection service Tucker pro- in fewer hands than at any time in vided for the American ruling class: American history. And that itself is identifying actual material grievances ominous and should make all of us cast and laboriously laundering them into aside any thread of ideology or theology petty insecurities familiar from the or whatever, just look at that straight in Nineties culture wars. Tucker preached the face. Are you comfortable with the Gospel that? You shouldn’t be. Of course you’re even without quite understanding it. not. . . . They can make whole ideas The organizers believed he contained disappear. And there’s some evidence a wisdom he himself did not fully rec- that they’re working to do that.” Lovebirds: Raven and Eagle in Sterling Silver ognize, like a fool in Shakespeare. His For Tucker, Trump was a galactic #N32080N Necklet w/18" sterling chain... $88 demeanor was bouncy and cheerful: tear in the universe, setting the terms the vibe was part Groton lacrosse of a new reality. Anything was possi- Jewelry shown full size, made in USA cheerleader, part nance frat boy. His ble. “If the Loch Ness monster exists, $9 handling per order face was ruddied from his summer in what about the yeti!” (Versailles laugh- , where he’d been communing ter.) “The Trump election spurred in Shop davidmorgan com with his ethnos. His pace was a bit me a kind of reassessment of UFOs. stop-and-start at the beginning—he’d I’m serious. And it turns out, like, or request our catalog just given up nicotine—but his signa- they’re real.” (Laughter again.) ture tic was there: the planted joke, Tucker riled his audience a bit when #KB-336-SSC followed by the waterfall, throw-back- he exposed his knowledge of the Amer- the-head, court-of-Versailles laugh. He ican left. He found bits to admire in was like a man who looked down at Warren’s “economic ,” and as N22080E #1746 his mouth amazed that it had been long as the left kept quiet about the transformed into a giant conveyor belt minorities and the migrants, some of dispensing perfect modules of com- them were promising candidates for a Pacic Northwest Jewelry mon sense. His trust in his subjective left-right nationalist pact. For this was Wildlife Jewelry in Bronze experience was immense. Tucker’s great insight: the social- Akubra® Hats from Australia Tucker had some tough news for the democratic left was essentially right assembled faithful. “Big Business Hates about . It would be good to ^ Your Family” was the title of his talk. nationalize social media; it would be 800-324-4934 davidmorgan.com 11812 N Creek Pkwy N, Ste 103•Bothell, WA 98011 REPORT 29

Meaney Report Final 8.indd 29  12/17/19 3:16 PM good to boost American wages. The the historian of the Russian Revolu- speakers at the conference, it was trouble with the left was that it wanted tion Richard Pipes. “I think in the end only the Notre Dame professor Pat- to do these things on behalf of an my father was a social democrat,” Pipes rick Deneen who argued with some amorphous citizenry with no sense of confessed to me in the tone of com- cogency that the NatCons needed to boundaries for where American bounty ing to terms with one’s father having foster new, local mini-aristocracies should stop. We already knew who served in the Waffen-SS. He was that would both keep the “c” of “con- Americans were, Tucker implied; the scowly and solemn, and appeared servatism” small—and not court big denition was settled: Americans were like an Orthodox priest who had government all over again, as some of people who watched and believed misplaced his thurible. He spent the the NatCons clamoring for an indus- . afternoon on a panel defending East- trial policy seemed to want. Awk- It did all raise a question. What if ern European right-wing movements wardly for Deneen’s reputation, but Trump had dialed down the white na- as “civilizationist” paladins, regard- less awkwardly for his bank account, tionalism after taking the White House ing their anti-Semitism more as Obama had read and liked his book and, instead of betraying nearly every growing pains than as an inherent Why Liberalism Failed. word of his campaign rhetoric of eco- feature of their ideology. In the bar, the Dark Knight and I nomic , had ruthlessly enacted Among the other revelers in infamy found a table of older conservatives. populist policies, passing gargantuan was . Accompanying the Dark There was Daniel Oliver, the one- infrastructure bills, shredding time executive editor of National NAFTA instead of remodeling it, Review and a friend of Buckley giving a tax cut to the lower middle and Burnham. We ordered a class instead of the rich, and con- THIS WAS TUCKER’S GREAT round of gin and tonics. The Dark spiring to raise the wages of Ameri- INSIGHT: THE SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC Knight wanted to know about can workers? It doesn’t take much to LEFT WAS ESSENTIALLY Burnham. “The most charming imagine how that would play against man,” said Oliver. The American a Democratic challenger with - RIGHT ABOUT ECONOMICS Revolution was the topic on the or table. “You know, when the queen imprinted on his or her forehead. of En gland came for the Bicenten- There seemed to be two futures for Knight, I entered her talk in a small nial to Boston, my great-uncle re- Trumpism as a distinctive strain of conference room, which she opened ceived her, since he was descended populism: one in which the last re- with a defense of — a from the last line of Tory governors.” serves of white were “prophet without honor in the last Yarvin launched into his Loyalist mined until the cave collapsed and one century.” Yarvin was getting giddy off account of the American Revolu- in which the coalition was expanded of Wax’s denunciation of the “ magic tion. He was incensed that the Whig to include working Americans, enlist- dirt” idea, which purports that im- interpretation had infected all of the ing blacks and Hispanics and Asians in migrants are transformed by the U.S. historiography. “It’s so sad that peo- the cause of conquering the conde- soil into better people. “Oh my God, ple believe that America won the scending citadels of Wokistan. Was it she’s going for it—she’s talking about war militarily, or that if the British predestined that Trump would choose ‘magic dirt.’ You know Powell was a had just conciliated more, they could the former? was already brigadier in the army, right? Dude was have kept the colonies. I mean, the audience-testing Trumpism 2.0, wrong- super fucking tough!” Then Wax de- Whigs in En gland wanted to lose. footing the crowd at the Oxford Union scended into a diatribe, calling out They sent General Howe—a total with complaints about the lack of black immigrants as littering noise polluters radical—to ght the war. That’s like technicians in Silicon Valley. Why who did not meet the conditions of sending Bill Ayers to lead the re- couldn’t Trumpism go in this direction our society—in her own way repeat- sponse to the Tet Offensive.” in reality? The shrewdest move for the ing, in degraded En glish, the kind of We discussed the coming attrac- NatCons would surely have been to at- view Henry James had once given tions of the conference. “I’m thinking tract as many non-whites as possible to voice to in a description of the Jewish of organizing a of John the Ritz and strike into the hearts ghetto of the Lower East Side: “Some Bolton,” joked William Ruger, the vice of the globalists with a multiracial vast sallow aquarium in which innu- president for research at the Charles populist carnival—a new post-Trump merable sh, of overdeveloped probos- Koch Institute. Bolton was a persona pan-ethnic coalition that would some- cis, were to bump together, forever, not very grata among the NatCons. day consider it quaint that it had once amid heaped soils of the sea.” Recently anointed needed to begin conferences with the Wax presented more than just a PR adviser, he was the sort of old guard profession: We are not actually racist. problem for the NatCons. In her en- Republican loyalist that many people comium to the Berkshires and other at the conference loathed. “Bolton or the rest of the afternoon, I clean, white places in America where just loves war too much,” said Ruger. F wandered into talks and panels she likes to spend time, she exposed “Never saw a war he didn’t like.” and discussions and cocktail one of the contradictions of the Nat- In the corner of the Ritz bar, I saw chatter. On the floor I saw Daniel Cons, setting their anti-elitist rhetoric Jennifer Schuessler of the New York Pipes, the old right-winger and son of against their elitist behavior. Of the Times. Trump was ring out tweets

30 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / FEBRUARY 2020

Meaney Report Final 8.indd 30  12/17/19 3:16 PM against and Alexandria In support of Cass, further speeches DAVID HOLDRIDGE Ocasio-Cortez, telling them to go back came from the oor. A voice from the “describes humanitarian aid to their countries. The mediasphere South, J.D.Vance’s, made a searing 2>;9@413>;A:0A< -05Ŋ1>1:@ was saturated with outrage and glee. appeal in emotional tones. The au- Schuessler was asking conference par- thor of , Vance was the and fascinating perspective.” ticipants about the tweets, but no one bard of the NatCons, the most gifted — JOSEPH S. NYE, former dean of the was taking the bait. The NatCons lyricist of Trumpism. He was from Harvard School of Government treated her like a poor, uninitiated Appalachia and had climbed his way innocent. They performed looks of into the elite hive of . pity when she asked about the admin- “I’m a venture capitalist,” he said. “If istration’s actual record. Pushed on the you’re in the Peninsula, right off high- Trump question, Hazony gave a super- way 101 there’s an exit called Willow cilious smile that seemed to say, If you Road. And on Willow Road you’ll have to ask about tweets, you’re never nd the Facebook headquarters. And going to be ready for conversion. at Facebook, there are neuroscientists In the evening there was a floor currently being paid a lot of money debate that pitted a representative of quite literally to addict our children the pure free-market creed against the to their applications. And not far NatCon mutation. Richard Reinsch, a from the Facebook headquarters, hale Indianan who worked for the Lib- there are neuroscientists working on erty Fund, which subsidizes the reprint- how to cure dementia, and how to ing of Friedrich Hayek’s works, faced cure some of the most intractable off against Oren Cass, a young policy diseases that our society. The wonk from the Manhattan Institute. people who are working at Facebook The question at hand: “Should addicting our children to their appli- America adopt an industrial policy?” cations make much more money than Reinsch was perfectly orthodox in his the people who are attempting to defense of the status quo: “In real cure our society of its worst diseases, terms, growth in manufacturing has and I think this question about A MEMOIR BY DAVID HOLDRIDGE kept up with the growth of the econ- whether we should have an industrial omy over the previous seventy years,” policy ultimately reduces to the ques- WINNER OF THE PRIZE AMERICANA he told the ballroom. Its declining tion of, Do you think our politics employment share was the result of should have an answer about whether increased productivity. “In 1980? Ten it is more valuable to cure our grand- THE AVANT GARDE man-hours to make a ton of steel,” children than to addict them to terri- Reinsch said. “In 2015? Two man- ble applications? And I think the an- OF WESTERN CIV hours. . . . Even if manufacturing wages swer is obviously yes.” are on average higher than service- There was mighty applause. Vance sector wages, it doesn’t follow that was followed by mini-Vances. A Young “David and his team in tariffs will make more jobs that pay at Republican from Texas spoke of the the Shia heartland of Iraq the current manufacturing wage.” The loss he feels in the west of his state, implication was politically clear: good covered, he said, in “these beautiful represented the best values luck trying to wean American workers storefronts that are empty.” If Texas and hopes of his country . . . off cheap products at Walmart. Oren Republicans did not purge themselves in pursuit of leaving some Cass wanted to do something close to of neoliberal tendencies, they’d eventu- lasting good behind within that. “We see slowing productivity ally lose the state to Democrats, who growth,” he said. “We see slow to non- were already rening the rhetoric of the larger Iraqi context of existent wage growth. A male with a economic populism. A oor vote was dismay and disintegration.” high school degree in 1970 could have taken, and Cass’s side easily won. It supported a family of four at more than was 99 in favor of a national industrial — CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, twice the poverty line; in 2016, he’s policy, 51 against. former congressman, R. Conn. only about thirty- ve percent above it.” In the hot dark, walking back to my Libertarians were trying to tie the gov- hotel, I nodded to Julius Krein, the ernment’s hands too much, which was thirty-three-year-old editor of Ameri- preventing U.S.participation in the can Affairs, the NatCon house jour- wordwide competition of each nation nal. He was among the more serious protecting its own workers. “You can of the instant intellectuals whom AVAILABLE ONLINE AT have free trade or you can have free Trump’s political arrival had spewed www.avantgardeofwesternciv.com markets, but you can’t have both,” said forth. , the most well- Cass, to the audience’s delight. known “Trumpist intellectual,” was a OR FOR PURCHASE FROM + BARNES & NOBLE

REPORT 31

Meaney Report Final 8.indd 31  $QQSPWFEXJUIXBSOJOHT 12/17/19 3:16 PM caricature of academic Straussianism a few holdout enemies and a press trinaire about him; he was curious by comparison: a man who rambled corps visibly uncomfortable in his about the proceedings around him about Xenophon and whose speech at presence, Bolton showed that he was, and ready to score the performances. the NatCon conference sounded like after all, a professional operator. Here “It’s impressive how Bolton just a preface to a preface of a preface to a was a man who in law school had won’t let them get to him—he’s too commentary on a commentary on a stayed up into the wee hours convert- experienced,” he said. “Some of classical text. No, with his suit, neatly ing to conservatism these guys seem reasonable enough. parted hair, and his at Midwestern (or so the rumor went). J.D.Vance’s stuff about supporting vowels, Krein appeared like a whiz kid One audience member tried to working families—I mean, it’s not from the Kennedy Administration. bait Bolton with a question about exactly bad what he’s saying.” Ges- But in his style of argument, he was immigration in Europe: “Should we sen was from Russian intelligentsia the closest thing that the NatCons be worried about European birth lev- stock. When he read histories of the had to a re-embodied James Burnham. els?” But Bolton, sensing a trap, re- Revolution, he rooted for the Men- Like Burnham, Krein believed that sisted this. He did not want to tell sheviks, who lost every time. He both the left and the right had misiden- Europeans how many children they had a natural afnity for the under- tied the radical agent in recent Amer- should have, nor Africans either. He dog, but he was put off by the ican history. It was not the devastated wasn’t going to perform any symbolic NatCons’ pretensions, by their ab- working class, as the left believed, allegiance to Trumpist themes. In- surd miming of learnedness and by which could barely nd its feet politi- stead, he bore down on the points he their you-must-break-eggs justica- cally; nor was it the 401(k)-holding wanted to make to an audience that tions of the Trump approach. “Must American masses who kept the faith of viewed him as oil in the water of say that it remains one of the chief market fundamentalism more than Trump’s . regrets of the time I spent in Wash- socialist-curious elites. For Krein, the might have to be occupied by the ington D.C. this summer,” he would war to win was within the elite. It was a United States. Why? Well, it was al- later write, “that I shook Michael question of who would exploit the ready occupied by the Cubans. “If Anton’s hand.” amour propre of the professional- the 20,000 or more Cubans in Ven- managerial class and enlist it in a battle ezuela left tomorrow, the Ma duro here were a few people at the against the top 1 percent—or top government would fall by mid- TNational Conservatism Con- .1percent. Up until this point, the bil- night.” NATO nations needed to ference of whom it was whis- lionaire class had operated in near per- pay their fair share, just as Obama pered: “Future president, right there.” fect conditions, with a Democratic had said, though Trump had said it It had been said of J.D.Vance, who Party that swooned over them and a more forcefully. There was more managed to conjure a world that was Republican Party that was so conve- continuity between the two admin- almost palatable to liberals. Vance niently repulsive to the top 10percent istrations than the NatCons might was careful about his gender roles, that it drew their energy away from like to acknowledge. Bolton was al- and even gave evidence that sug- revolutionary rumbles. Much as the lergic to pandering and made no at- gested he had experience changing Bernie Sanders strategists wondered tempt to hide his addiction to Amer- diapers. It had been said of Tucker about how many Warrenites they could ican global supremacy and wars of Carlson that he would be even better attract to socialism before she em- choice. He was honest about his than Trump as a White House per- barked on an inevitable voyage back to wish never to get clean. sonality. But it was over the center, so Krein and his cadre In the coming months, the irony whom the crown most plausibly hov- wanted to make National Conserva- of Trump’s militarism would exceed ered. He was thirty-nine years old, tism a viable alternative for a new, more the media’s capacity to comprehend the youngest man in the Senate, a politically responsible elite that would it: Bolton, like James Mattis before former clerk for Justice not shy from war with the globalists. him, was red or resigned in view of on the Supreme Court, and biogra- what he thought of as an unaccept- pher (when in his twenties) of Teddy DAY THREE able troop withdrawal that Trump Roosevelt. Hawley was a scholar- had committed to but did not actu- warrior out of NatCon heaven. In When men of rank sacrice all ideas of ally undertake. In fact, Trump had presentation and style, he reminded dignity to an ambition without a distinct doubled down on nearly every mili- me of the young Austrian leader Se- object, and work with low instruments tary theater in which the United bastian Kurz, who had made his name and for low ends, the whole composition States had troops. as the shiny new bridge to the au- becomes low and base. At the back of the ballroom I thoritarians in Eastern Europe but —Edmund Burke, Reections on the spotted Keith Gessen, jotting down who was still suave enough to appeal Revolution in notes on Bolton’s remarks. It was to Carinthian grandmothers. strange to see him there, a literary I took my seat early at the dinner ohn Bolton arrived to a room of gure of major standing in Brook- for Hawley. A recent convert to Jskeptics, but there was no walk- lyn, a co founder of n+1, the most Mormonism was bad-mouthing the out. Civility persisted in the ball- successful leftist magazine of his Supreme Court justices: Trump had room of the Ritz. In the face of at least generation. There was nothing doc- to do better. “You really don’t like

32 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / FEBRUARY 2020

Meaney Report Final 8.indd 32  12/17/19 3:16 PM Kavanaugh?” I asked her. “No, I tual opportunist.” But what was And to answer the discontent of our mean Gorsuch. Have you read his Hawley? He came onto the stage in a time, we must end that divide. We decisions on Indians? He wants to more powerful thrust than had any- must forge a new consensus. We must give it all back to the Indians. Insidi- one at the conference so far, and his recover and renew the dream of the ous rulings.” Another was speech would be a summa of all that republic.” He was getting more Ro- speculating about Ginsburg’s physi- had come before. Like Thiel, he man every minute. Then he rounded cal health: “Amy Wax is a doctor wanted to go to war on Big Tech on his enemy. “Call it the cosmopoli- and says that Ginsburg, even with all (and he had introduced bills that tan consensus. On economics, this her exercise, will still be dead within showed he was serious); like Patrick consensus favors — two years, so it’s looking good.” The Deneen, he was worried about how closer and closer economic union, Dark Knight was trying to convince to create communities led by aristo- more immigration, more movement the table that the most important populists; like Tucker, he was fast on of capital, more trade, on whatever book to understand the moment was his feet and projected smiley con - terms. The boundaries between The Final Pagan Generation by Ed- dence; but he could also compete America and the rest of the world ward J.Watts, which is about how with Hazony’s boyish rocking should fade and eventually vanish. the last pagans in the Roman Em- back and forth between solemnity The goal is to build a global consumer pire had managed their lives in the and mischief. economy, one that will provide an upsurge of Christianity and how “The great divide of our time is not endless supply of cheap goods, most of quickly their millennia-old culture between Trump supporters and them made with cheap labor overseas had been pulverized by a small cadre Trump opponents,” Hawley intoned but funded by American dollars.” of young, zealous Christian elite. in a kind of grand-old-man oratory According to the cosmopolitan This was the Dark Knight’s persis- that seemed to conjure its own pulpit. consensus, globalization was a moral tent worry: Who were the true be- “Or between suburban voters and ru- imperative. The elites distrusted pa- lievers at the conference, and who ral ones, or between red America and triotism and “the common culture were the opportunists? blue America. No, the great divide of that was left to us by our forebears.” Roosevelt could be an opportun- our time is between the political What’s more, they were happy to say ist, Hawley writes in his biography of agenda of the leadership elite and the as much for the rec ord. A roll call of Teddy. “But he was no crass intellec- great and broad middle of our society. enemies of the people followed. MIT’s

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Meaney Report Final 8.indd 33  12/17/19 3:16 PM A PPORTRAITORTRAIT OOFF Richard Sennett had denounced “the line, Horatius glanced over his shoul- evil of shared .” Ac- der to the Roman hills and caught a VALOVALORR cording to Martha Nussbaum, it was glimpse of his own home there, and morally dangerous to teach students knew that it was worth defending. that they are “above all citizens of the And so he took his stand. We know, FROM A LION OF United States.” with the benet of history, that the You would have never known from Roman republic was still then quite THTHEE LELEFTFT Hawley’s speech that there are cos- young. Its most glorious days were mopolitans working at Starbucks and still ahead. But Horatius didn’t— people who believe in socialism rid- couldn’t—know that as he took up his ing bikes for Grubhub. Yet it was still position. He only knew that extraordinary to listen to the feat of rhetoric: a conservative slipping To every man upon this earth seamlessly back and forth between Death cometh soon or late; class-based attacks and cultural ti- And how can man die better Than facing fearful odds, rades, bashing the elite on class For the ashes of his fathers grounds, claiming again—as in the And the temples of his gods. days of T.R. (and of Reagan)—that Republicans were on the side of the “Now we, too, need courage in our common man against a sequestered nation’s moment of need. Now we too elite that had transformed the ivory need bravery born of love for the tower into a great turret of the re- place we call home. For our republic newed . My table was is yet young, and our greatest days are smitten with Hawley’s embroideries. yet unwritten—if we will stand. Then Hawley dropped into the kind “So let us stand together, let us of national-unity speech that Obama stand for love of country and hearth used to do in his sleep. and home, let us stand with the con- viction of Horatius. For— For in the heart of our country, BEFORE HE BECAME A CELEBRATED American strength has not failed. In yon strait path a thousand May well be stopped by three: POLITICIAN, GEORGE MƜGOVERN The kind of people who built this na- tion are here still, waking early and Now who will stand on either hand, SERVED IN WORLD WAR II AS A working late, manning the re de- And keep the bridge with me? B-24 BOMBER PILOT. HE FLEW IN partment and coaching the Little When Hawley had nished, every- THIRTY-FIVE COMBAT MISSIONS AND League, helping the neighbor who just lost a spouse, donating their gas one in the Ritz ballroom stood up. We EARNED THE DISTINGUISHED FLYING money to a needy family halfway were unied and collected. At my ta- CROSS FOR HIS INGENUITY IN THE around the world. ble there was still the lingering ques- FACE OF ADVERSITY. MY LIFE IN THE tion of whether Hawley was an ideo- SERVICE, A FACSIMILE OF THE DIARY And then the theme did become ac- logical freeloader—or the real deal. tually Roman. “I wonder if you re- The truth was that it was the MƜGOVERN KEPT BETWEEN 1944 member the story of Horatius at the wrong question. For Trump was do- AND 1945, VISUALLY EVOKES THE bridge,” Hawley said. “It happened in ing tricky ideological lifting that ERA AND PROVIDES A FIRSTHAND the early days of the Roman republic, went all but unappreciated by the ACCOUNT OF THE ALLIED BOMBING sometime around 500 .. The Etrus- NatCons. He fed the richest in soci- OF NAZI-OCCUPIED EUROPE. can army, the story goes, marched on ety in the currency they prefer— Rome to invade, and the Roman de- dollars—and he fed his fans lower fenses were caught off guard. Eventu- down with a temporarily effective INTRODUCTION BY ally the ghting coalesced around a substitute—recognition. It takes a cer- ANDREW J. BACEVICH, bridge leading across the Tiber into tain talent to keep so much in the air. CONTRIBUTING EDITOR OF the city. All was chaos. The Roman The Trumpists will survive the end HARPER’S MAGAZINE generals, surprised and unsure, were of Trump, but they will also inherit falling back. The city seemed in great Trump’s circus act. The dimmer peril. But a junior officer named NatCons aspire to sustain the perfor- STORE.HARPERS.ORG Horatius thought otherwise. He saw mance; the more earnest want to slip that if the Roman army could simply an actual popular agenda into the mix. FRANKLIN hold the bridge long enough for the But when the time is ripe, the Grand SQUARE PRESS city to reset its defenses, the republic Old Party will treat Trumpian ideal- could be saved. So as the senior of- ism like any debt-ridden entity, sell- cers retreated, he advanced. Macaulay ing it for what they can, once they’ve tells us that as he charged to the front stripped it of its parts. Q Distributed by Midpoint Trade Books, a division of IPG

34 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / FEBRUARY 2020

Meaney Report Final 8.indd 34  12/17/19 3:16 PM