… Yes, it’s such a shame that patrician WASPs like Bush Sr. are no longer in power. Instead now our country is controlled by someone completely different - a wealthy White Anglo-Saxon (well, Saxon) Protestant who grew up firmly part of the Northeast establishment and who went to an Ivy League school. Oh, why couldn’t we have stuck to the old ways and the pure stock!
(Or, maybe, just maybe, horrible people suck, regardless of their genes or where they went to school. )
Meanwhile, Douthat ignores that the fact most of the actual patrician WASPs of the greatest generation that he venerates would have regarded him as a grubby little upstart purely because he’s a Catholic. (Source: am descended from WASPs, saw this attitude all the time in WASPs of my grandparents’ generation.)
There are two meanings to WASP. One is the literal one, anyone who is a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. Under this definition, Elvis Presley was a WASP, and the average WASP is a truck driver living somewhere in the south making sixty grand a year.
This is not how the term is usually used, though. When it was popular (say, the 1950s through 70s) it was almost invariably used to mean a rich, establishment White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. A WASP by that definition grew up with a silver spoon in their mouth, went to the right schools, knew all the right people, and had easy access to the levers of power because they and theirs controlled all the levers - like the Bush family. This is the sense Douthat means.
He actually said something about how the Jews and Catholics learned all the great things from the WASPS so they are now great. I assume he continues on the point saying how the other minorities could eventually do so if white enough. I did not want to continue reading. Articles need a ‘fuck you’ button.
Aside from all the other obvious ways in which that headline is horrible, what the hell kind of visual imagery is “stand like bedrock” supposed to be anyway? It’s a simile in which the vertical is like the horizontal? Is this some weirdly written version of the “loss” meme?
You’re right, by the book, bedrock doesn’t stand. It lies. Which fits the Republicans.
Today the NYT’s headline writer tries a different tack, perhaps sensing they overstepped with all the drooling over the GOP’s massive muscles in the last two headlines. Today the GOP is all about authenticity, man.
(The first paragraph of the article starts out strong, accurately implying that depicting rural voters as more “real” than urban ones is bullshit framing intentionally pushed by racists to further their agenda. But given the Grey Lady’s insistence on decorum and equal time above anything else, it gets all mealy-mouthed and bothsidesish after that.)
Like Bush Sr. and Jr., Bill Kristol was perfectly fine with opening the gate to barbarians and giving them the best seats at the feast. That’s because the dolt thought he could control them.
I’m not gonna weep any tears when the barbarians make him the main course.
It’s just further indication that the conservative movement in this country, led by Republicans, has been devoured by the monster they created. The ideology has been disgraced by what the Republican party has been doing since Nixon.
Actively courting racists and enacting harmful policies (often under the thin veneer of conservatism, of course) has alienated many people over the years, as many on this board can attest to. Even though there may have been conservative leaders in the Republican party that didn’t believe all the hateful and hurtful crap, they still knowingly cultivated it. Groomed it. Used it. Those who saw through it have long since walked away. The majority of those remaining are the monsters they courted to get their tax cuts and their fight against social services.
I can appreciate that they didn’t go Trumpist, but don’t expect me to shed a tear for them either. They created this hellish administration we’ve suffered through over the past two years. They killed thousands of Americans and probably tens or hundreds of thousands of civilians in two ill-thought out wars in the Middle East. They seeded the ground for the seven year old girl that died in ICE custody the other day.
Don’t expect me to feel bad for them or mourn their loss. I want them to burn in hell.
