Choosing more wisely

Conservatives have a habit of adopting liberals and "independents" as spokespeople, only to have that arrangement come back and bite them in their asses

Well. It’s been another long week of fending off “conservatives for Hamas,” but I press on — and today, in fact, I was tasked with rebutting these same “conservatives’” arguments that US military policy in WWII was but a series of “war crimes” (Rob Schneider), that dropping two atomic bombs on Japan was an especially egregious act, because we need, as Americans, to hold ourselves to a high ethical standard, and live by a certain measure of morality, one which from what I can tell includes never killing an innocent civilian in war.

Or, in other words, we must resign ourselves to living under some despotic regime that doesn’t much give a shit about our morals and chooses instead to eat our lunch, because that’s the inevitable outcome of such a folly. Should we continue to press such ill-conceived and facile, sanctimonious positions, we may as well begin learning some dialect of Chinese.

Of course, it’s easy, from a position of safety, to pass judgment on those who actually enlisted and fought in a war to defeat Nazism, fascism, and Japanese imperialism; playing armchair general or CiC, with the luxury of a freedom in which to engage such considerations, is an exciting yet appalling form of presentism and is no different in kind than judging any other historical figure for what during their lives were not considered transgressions. This is what the left does. And it is yet another reason why I will not stop pointing out how the current alt-right literally mirrors the left, down to and including the adoption of its historical revisionism to claim some current moral high ground.

Now, do I think many of these “conservatives” believe the US committed war crimes in WWII? Not really — though I think some are quite clearly willing to romanticize the aims of ethnic nationalism fetishized by Hitler and those in his orbit. Instead, I believe they have affected this position because it allows them to do what they do best and most often: castigate and demonize Jews. If it was historically wrong for the British to firebomb Dresden, then it’s wrong today for the Israelis, despite their best efforts to prevent them, to amass civilian casualties in Gaza. Once we denounce Hiroshima and Nagasaki as historical atrocities, it’s much easier to appear “consistent” when denouncing Israel for having the temerity to try winning a war foisted upon them by a genocidal terrorist regime voted into power by those it governs.

But here’s the rub: unlike those who fought and died at the time, or who supported the US war effort at home or abroad, these presentists have nothing to lose taking such positions. The people they now so cavalierly cast as war criminals have already provided them with the freedom under which they live and pontificate, historically illiterate though those pontifications may be. The truth is, it’s easy being an armchair critic, especially when someone else long ago bought you the armchair and provided you a place to safetly use it.

It’s being grateful that’s proving difficult for this collection of turds.

But enough of that. Because what I really wanted to flesh out here, while I’m unburdening myself, is a phenomenom I’ve been noticing far too frequently within the rightwing sphere of online political influence.

To wit: last week, a constellation of online right influencers all began in unison to practically cream over a young black gentleman called Coleman Hughes, who — judging by his various TV hits promoting his new book — really, really wants you to know that 1) he’s only voted for Democrats (including Biden), 2) that he’s a “political independent” (albeit one that has only voted for Democrats), and 3) that he’s a CNN contributor who also writes for Bari Weiss. On these points he is insistent.

Yet in an exchange with Sunny Hostin on “The View,” Hughes very capably and very effectively rebuffed what we’ve most of us come to expect as the typical racialist ambush, one leveled at nearly every black public figure who meets the legacy media having challenged the left’s racial orthodoxy — which sadly, is more and more becoming an overt return to racial essentialism.

It was a fine performance by Mr Hughes, to be sure. But this is “The View,” home to some of the dumbest women on planet earth. So when Hostin accused Hughes of being a pawn of the “right wing” and a “charlatan” who is being duped by malign racist actors he can’t possibly suss out, not sharing Ms Hostin’s ear for racist dog whistles, he was able calmly to catalogue his liberal bona fides as a way to defang her and blunt her attack. For instance, have I mentioned he’s only voted for Democrats, and that he works at CNN…?

Essentially, Hughes’ thesis is that race-based set asides are inherently racialist, and that, should government engage in any advancement programs for the underprivileged (including those deemed historically so, which can include whites in Appalachia just as readily as blacks in urban enclaves), it should be doing so through programs “based on class.”

Personally, I reject the “class” framing as Marxist and prefer to situate the issue around something more concrete, like economic position, but that’s something we can haggle over later, once we’ve closed on the house and have it fully furnished.

Hughes’ intellectual hook — what has gained him attention (and subsequent blowback from the “anti-racist” race hustlers, Hostin among them) — is that he takes quite literally the idea of “color blindness” with respect to racial political thinking in order to then reject it. For Hughes, aside from maybe children, he argues, of course we see race, so we mustn’t pretend not to. Having articulated this formulation, Hughes then proceeds to make the case why the empirical and immutable fact of race needn’t and shouldn’t determine, nor automatically trigger, special government dispensation or protected group status.

What is at play here is, in effect, a gimmick: nobody — or at least, very few — who use the term “color blind” to position themself on racial policy, means to suggest they somehow can’t physically see race, that the rods and cones are misfiring to a pleasing and salubrious moral effect.

Instead, what they’re doing is using color blindness — made famous and ubiquitous by Dr King’s call for applying judgment to individuals regardless of their race — as a metaphor. The “blindness” isn’t literal. It is aspirational — and not in the sense that one day in some utopian racial future everyone should look the same (Maoists tried this); but rather that how they look, which is something often determined by hereditary genetics, not then signal some intrinsic alliance with any particular tribal identity.

This isn’t new or groundbreaking thought. And while I understand the fillip of joy one gets when a person with an apparently refined intellect aligns himself with one’s own racial thinking, I think too many conservatives — far too often — over thank and over praise such people. They act like they’ve adopted an especially worthy pet, which they then pass around and show off.

Then, when the independent-minded dear later pisses all over the bed, chews a few shoes, and runs away to greener pastures, conservatives seem stunned and hurt.

If you like Coleman Hughes, do so for his ideas and how he articulates them. From what I’ve seen of him, he is impressive in live interviews, keeping measured and speaking carefully. And I don’t trust him one bit beyond his position on racial set-asides, mostly because I don’t know enough about him blindly to do so.

— Though I do know he’s only voted twice, both times for Democrats. And that he contributes to CNN. These things he’s made abundantly clear. Almost as if he’s laying the groundwork for a later alibi.

So. Like him or don’t. Trust him or don’t. But please: stop adopting people as mascots. It is anathema to classical liberalism and modern constitutional conservatism. And it ends up granting an awful lot of cultural power to people who in the longterm may have very little use for you or what you stand for beyond a single, fraught issue.

****

Buy me a cup of coffee? Lunch? A sports car?