Happy New Year!
Is Donald Trump a Conservative?
One of the raps against Donald Trump frequently trotted out by some of his conservative critics, often supporters of one of the more traditional conservative candidates, is that he is not really a conservative. Some even call him a liberal. Yet despite this charge, Trump continues to gain the support of prominent conservatives whose conservative credentials it is difficult to impugn.
For example, Trump recently garnered the support of former congressman Virgil Goode, who was the 2012 Presidential nominee of the Constitution Party. It’s hard to question the conservative credentials of a Constitution Party Presidential nominee. He has also landed the endorsement (or virtual endorsement) of prominent conservative scholar William Lind. Lind is a leading theorist of the concept of Fourth Generation warfare, and is arguably the primary person responsible for the increased recognition of the phenomenon of cultural Marxism that besets our modern discourse. Trump has also been endorsed by longtime conservative movement stalwart, Phyllis Schlafly, whose conservative credentials need no elaboration. I could go on, but this should suffice to illustrate my contention.
So is Trump a conservative, and if not, why is he racking up support from notable conservatives and continuing to dominate polls of potential Republican Party voters? Well, the answer is both yes and no. It depends on what you mean by conservative, but I believe Trump is a conservative in the most meaningful sense.
I attempted to explain Trump’s politics in a couple of past essays. His politics are really not as inscrutable as some believe. They just don’t fit tidily into our current Red and Blue boxes. Briefly, the key to understanding Trump’s politics is to focus on his economic nationalism. This has been a part of his rhetoric since he first became a public figure in the 1980s and is undoubtedly authentic. But Trump appears to view this as a common sense, tough minded position, not an ideological one. It is important to recognize that Trump is not an ideologue. His focus is on getting things done, and he is results-oriented. While he has long flirted with politics, he has not historically immersed himself in the conservative milieu, nor the liberal milieu for that matter. He has clearly tailored some of his current positions to fit the base of the party whose nomination he is seeking, such as gun control and abortion, but he has never donned the mantle of purist crusader for laissez-faire economics or government-slashing spending hawk because those positions would conflict with his economic nationalism and his focus on outcomes rather than pure principle.
Consider, for example, Trump’s past support of universal health care, a position often raised by his conservative critics. This was not likely a position he arrived at based on an ideological commitment to liberalism because that wouldn’t fit the known pattern. Rather it likely was an extension of his patriotic economic nationalism, something along the lines of “A great country like America can have a great health care system that takes care of all its citizens.” Remember that before the Affordable Care Act, universal coverage per se polled well. People just don’t seem to like the details when you attach a name to it, like HillaryCare or ObamaCare. The point being that Trump’s position on universal health care was likely not evidence of an ideological liberal disposition, but rather a roll-up-our-sleeves-and-get-it-done outcome based approach. What the conservative box checkers need to understand is that a lot of the electorate is similarly non-ideological. They may lean one way or the other and viscerally identify with the Blue Team or the Red Team, but they are not dogmatic ideologues.
Trump’s positions and rhetoric place him firmly in the category of Middle American Radical (MAR), as are many of his supporters. He just happens to also be a billionaire. MARs are a well described and relatively large demographic. It’s curious that so many journalist and pundits have missed this relationship and are still struggling to characterize Trump. Liberal columnist Ezra Klein was one of the first to pick up on Trump’s particular policy mix in this article he wrote for Vox, about which I thought at the time, “In other words, what (late conservative columnist) Sam Francis was saying 20 years ago.” Liberal John Judis expanded on the idea in this essay for the National Journal. Judis cannot resist a little PC finger wagging, but beyond that it is an insightful piece. Of interest, I was informed by someone who was familiar with the relationship that John Judis and Sam Francis were friends despite their political differences, so this may be a reason for Judis’ insights.
As a MAR, his conservative critics are correct that Trump is not your typical cookie cutter “three-legs-of-the-stool” modern conservative ideologue, but the problem for them is that what modern conservatism has become is generally a mishmash of policy positions that are often internally contradictory and as a whole have very little to do with actually conserving anything. The MAR position of opposition to mass immigration and opposition to international “free” trade deals, for example, both of which Trump has seized upon with great success, are more conservative in actual effect, in the most basic sense of the word, than is any amount of babbling about the “invisible hand” of the marketplace and cutting marginal tax rates. Trump’s supporters sense this. “Make America Great Again,” is an inherently conservative, reactionary really, sentiment. It speaks of loss for the worse and a need to restore.
As Russell Kirk reminded us, conservatism is not an ideology or hodgepodge of policy issues. Rather, it is a disposition, the desire to conserve what is or else restore something that has been lost. The angry masses in Flyover Country who are supporting Trump look around and see middle class manufacturing jobs going south of the border or overseas and their neighborhoods changing from mass immigration, more people they and their children and their children’s children will have to compete with for jobs, and they want it to stop. Contrast this to Rep. Paul Ryan’s foolish statement that Trump’s proposed ban on Muslim immigration “is not conservatism.” Well, actually, yes it is. What is not conservatism is throwing open the doors of your country to masses of new dissimilar immigrants, including groups that are known to be hostile to us. Only a muddle-headed modern conservative ideologue could miss which one of these positions expresses a truly conservative sentiment.
With the rise of Trump, this election has taken on a meta dimension that it otherwise wouldn’t have had. Partisan stakeholders always attempt to cast every Presidential election as a crossroads, perhaps the starkest in history, but in truth we only really have a choice between Elitist Globalist Neoliberal A and Elitist Globalist Neoliberal B. Trump represents something truly unique in recent elections. He offers a real choice between the elitist post-national consensus embraced by the Establishment of both parties, and a patriotic economic nationalism that truly challenges this elite consensus.
So yes, Trump is a conservative in the sense that really matters. He wants to conserve and restore the nation state of America and not stand by as it turns into just another post-national administrative unit ruled by a globalist power elite. Virgil Goode, William Lind, and Phyllis Schlafly and many other conservative luminaries clearly get this. The conservative box checkers who are ticking off Trump’s fidelity to some laundry list of policy positions are missing the forest for the trees. They are on the verge of losing their country while they hand-wring about eminent domain.
The View From Olympus: My List for Santa
The real Saint Nicholas was less famous for giving gifts than he was for coming back from the dead to beat somebody up. That’s my kind of saint. It is to that St. Nicholas I sent my Christmas list, viz.
- All American military officers will read the canon, the list of seven books which, if read in the correct order, will take the reader from the first to fourth generation of modern war. Without the roadmap the canon provides, our officer corps will continue to stumble around in the dark, losing one fourth generation war after another.
- The Marine Corps will face the fact that it remains a second generation military. Its formal, written doctrine is third generation, i.e., maneuver warfare. But what the Marine Corps says and what it does are two different things. Its culture remains second generation: inward-focused, centralized, preferring obedience to initiative, and relying on imposed discipline. Such a military can talk about maneuver warfare but it can’t do it. The Corps is the only American armed service with the potential to join the third generation. It’s time to turn potential into reality.
- The foreign policy establishment will realize that war between states has become obsolete because the losing state will often disintegrate and become another stateless region, a petri dish for 4GW elements. That is more of a threat to us than is any other state. What we and all other states need is an alliance of all states against 4GW forces. At stake in the 21st century is nothing less than the state system itself.
- All women seeking to join the combat arms will insist on serving as comfort women, the one useful role they can play.
- The F-35 program will crash and burn, saving the taxpayer around a trillion dollars and freeing our fighter pilots from having to fly a real dog. The aircraft already ordered can be sold to the Chinese, thereby wrecking their fighter force for a generation.
- The CNO will realize a real littoral combat ship is a converted trawler and start buying some. Shallow waters are the important waters when facing 4GW enemies. We can safely leave blue water warfare to dreadnoughts and zeppelins (I’d like the movie rights, please.).
- Congress will order the Air Force to reopen the production line and buy more A-10s, the only combat aircraft we have that can do something useful.
- The Army will dry up and blow away. It is beyond reforming. All it can do for the country is offer up more defeats. Put the money into the National Guard, which is our land force of the future, useful in peace and in war.
- All police departments will start using the grid. The grid (available in the FMFM-1A here or in The Fourth Generation Warfare Handbook) allows police to understand the likely effects of their actions at the mental and moral levels, not just the physical. At a Boyd conference a couple years ago, some cops from Massachusetts told me their department now uses it for all operations. If other police departments were to do so, it would take away much of the ammunition the Left uses in its war on cops.
That’s probably enough to keep Santa busy for a while. Since by politically correct standards I have been very naughty this year, I expect to get everything on my list. Anyone who comes back from the dead to beat the crap out of somebody likes political correctness about as much as I do. Merry Christmas!
The View From Olympus: Donald Trump and Fourth Generation War
Donald Trump’s recent proposals to register Islamics living in the United States and to bar more Islamics from entering this country until we can determine how to separate the dangerous ones from those who are not dangerous show that he is the only candidate who understands what a Fourth Generation world will be like. The hysterical denunciations from all other candidates except Senator Cruz demonstrate they don’t get it. While that alone may not be enough to indicate Trump would be a good president, it strongly suggests none of his opponents are fit to hold the office. Whether they like it or not, or understand it or not, Fourth Generation war is what they and this country are facing.
In 4GW, primary loyalties shift away from the state–someone’s native state or one to whch they have immigrated–to a wide variety of other things, including religions, races and ethnic groups, and cultures. Immigrants who do not acculturate are especially likely to become Fourth Generation threats, because they probably will not give their loyalty to a state whose culture is not their own (and to which they may be hostile).
Measures such as those Trump proposed vis-a-vis Islamics will be routine in a world of Fourth Generation war. Any state that wants to survive will have to take them, and stronger actions as well. If a population becomes a base for 4GW on a state’s soil, that state may have to expel them. There may be no other way for the state to perform its primary duty, maintaining order. Any state that cannot maintain order–safety of persons and property–will disappear.
Cultural Marxism forbids us to acknowlege any of these realities, which is why culturally Marxist politicians (Democrats actually believe the stuff; Republicans are too cowardly to challenge it) and institutions such as the New York Times editorial page have frothed at the mouth over Mr. Trump’s entirely reasonable proposals. Cultural Marxism says all cultures are wonderful, peaceful, “vibrant” sources of enlightenment, except our own culture, Western culture, which is evil and oppressive. Defend ourselves against another culture? The very notion horrifies the cultural Marxists; we are instead to embrace it even as it cuts our throats. Cultural Marxism’s goal, after all, from Gramsci and Lukacs onward, has been the destruction of Western culture and the religion from which it grew, Christianity.
Mr. Trump’s proposals do not indicate he has studied 4GW. I would guess he has probably never heard the term. His reactions are instinctive. But they are sound. They reflect reality. If elected, he can leave the theory to the leaders of his Defense Department (we can hope he chooses leaders who do know the theory). He would need only to keep the same instincts under the barrage of conemnation they will bring from the establishment. So far, he seems pretty good at that.
The degree to which the establishment has abandoned all grasp of reality was shown last week in Time magazine’s choice of Angela Merkel as Person of the Year. Merkel will go down in history as Germany’s poisoner, the person who flooded what was a safe, orderly country with carriers of the 4GW bacillus. That, of course, is exactly what cultural Marxism demands, so she is a hero to Time and the rest of the establishment.
Meanwhile, the more Trump insists on confronting cultural Marxism, a.k.a. political correctness, and urges us to face reality, the more his poll numbers go up. The public, it seems, both here and in Europe, want leaders whose feet are planted in the real world. No wonder the shrieks and cries of the cultural Marxists sound ever more shrill. Ideology has no deadlier enemy than reality.
The View From Olympus: The SECDEF Lied
In announcing that all positions in the U.S. armed forces would be opened to women, Secretary of Defense Ashton B. Carter lied. According to the December 4 New York Times, he said,
They’ll [women] be able to serve as Army Rangers and Green Berets, Navy SEALS, Marine Corps infantry, Air Force parajumpers, and everything else that was previously open only to men.
That statement is false. Women will not be able to do those things. Their bodies are not designed to do many of the tasks those positions entail. So long as realistic standards are maintained for those specialties, women will not be able even to qualify for them much less perform adequately in them. Men and women are different, physically and mentally, and their traditional social roles reflect their inherent differences.
Had the Truth Fairy landed on the SECDEF’s tongue as he was about to make his announcement, he would have said,
We are opening all positions in the armed forces to women. Women will not be able to do many of the duties entailed especially in the combat arms. We–the Obama administration–don’t care about that. Our ideology of cultural Marxism demands we pretend men and women are interchangeable. We will do whatever is necessary to maintain that illusion. In this case, if women cannot meet the standards, we will change the standards. If not enough women make it into the combat arms, we will establish quotas.
If, in combat, women cannot perform the mission, that’s not our problem. If it means lost engagements and unnecessary American casualties, what is that to us? Our ideology comes first. Get with the party’s program–or else.
Here again we see the slide of state armed forces into history’s wastebasket. Playthings of a political establishment that knows nothing of war, they exist for every purpose except fighting. Many of those inside them have figured this out. An Army study done at least ten years ago found that two-thirds of the Army’s women and one-third of its men disagreed with the statement, “The Army’s main purpose is to fight.” Most state armed forces produce so few fighters from their total manpower that they could not fight if they wanted to, not against any serious opponent.
So why do we keep them around, at immese cost? Mostly from habit. Few politicians know enough to see their obsolescence, and fewer still would take the political risks involved in pruning them back to budgets that reflect their military utility. The public, wallowing in the usual “Support the troops” rhetoric, cannot see their uselessness, and the air shows are fun to watch.
For the establishment, state militaries remain highly useful. They provide jobs and money that can be steered to political allies. Defense companies are big political donors. If you vote right, when you leave office many will offer you paid seats on their boards, plus lobbying contracts.
Senior officers feed from the same troughs, not to mention pensions that most people can only dream about (paid for by those dreamers). Once you make it to lieutenant colonel, the pay is great and the duties are easy, so long as you don’t object to working on vast staffs that produce nothing but contentless briefings which you must pretend to take seriously. If you hope to keep moving on up the career ladder, don’t forget the knee pads and the vaseline.
So to this dysfunctional and militarily impotent stew let’s now add women. Why not? Can anything make it worse than it already is? Actually, in this case yes, because putting women in combat units undermines the basic reason why they fight, unit cohesion. Instead of forming a band of brothers, the men fight each other over the women. When I asked the captain of an amphib with a male/female crew the fraternization rate, he replied, “100% of course. I have male sailors in knife fights over women officers.”
But in the end, it doesn’t matter much. These institutions are finished. Every time they take on non-state, Fourth Generation opponents they get their butts kicked.
4GW forces are about fighting. They don’t have much gear and their technical skills often aren’t great. But they and the men in them want to fight. Most of their personnel are fighters. Senior officers regularly get killed. Some of them seriously study war, a practice virtually unknown among our officers.
So the wheel of fortune turns. The fat, dumb, and happy careerists in their pressed camis are on the way down, and the lean and hungry believers with their AKs and IEDs are on the way up. Unserious, womanized state armed forces will vanish with the states they cannot protect and their ideologies not worth defending.
traditionalRIGHT Podcast: Fash Americana
Brent spoke to his friend Blake about the future prospects of American identitarianism.
The View From Olympus: Register Moslems? Good Idea.
Donald Trump apparently was misquoted when he reportedly called for registering all Moslems in the U.S., but the idea is a good one. We are going to have to do it eventually, so we might as well get started now.
Moslems will not be the only non-state element fighting Fourth Generation war on American soil. Other entities, such as gangs, are already doing so. But the spread of puritanism within the world of Islam, which continues to gather strength, means Moslems will increasingly be a source of 4GW, here and abroad. At some point politically correct Washington will be forced by events to acknowledge reality and act.
A registry of all Moslems in America, if properly done, could benefit both the state and American Islamics. How? It would allow the sate to focus on those Moslems most likely to be violent, leaving others alone. For example, any Moslems registered as Sufis could and should be left undisturbed. Why? Because alone among major Islamic sects, the Sufis present no threat of violence. For that sin (the Koran commands violence against “unbelievers”), the Sufis are persecuted by both Sunnis and Shiites.
As is the case with violent crime, most Islamic Fourth Generation fighters are young men. A registry would allow security efforts to focus on them, assuming it asked for both age and sex. Children, women, and older men could be ignored, although many young Islamic women are now acting as suicide bombers.
A registry should indicate what mosque an American Moslem regularly attends. Presumably, the FBI is keeping watch on mosques where Islamic 4GW “jihad” is preached. People who attend such mosques should be prime suspects. On first thought, such mosques should be closed and their imams deported. But second thought suggest we might want to leave them open to serve as candle flames to draw the jihadis so they can be identified.
While political correctness gasps in horror at the idea of registering all American Islamics, the spread of Islamic puritanism suggests that may not be sufficient. The reason the state came into existence was to provide order–safety of persons and property–and if it is to retain legitimacy, it must do whatever is required to that end. If a registry and other security measures are not sufficient to prevent Islamic 4GW on American soil–from the state’s perspective prevention is everything; all first response is too late, because the peace has been broken and the state has therefore failed–stronger measures will be needed, including the option of exile.
Consider this scenario: A suitcase nuke goes off in, say, Seattle. It was brought in on an ordinary sailboat that came up from Mexico, where some of the drug gangs may have a relationship with Islamic 4GW entities. One of those entities–al Qaeda, ISIS, take your pick–credibly takes responsibility for the strike. An American city lies destroyed and casualties are in the tens or hundreds of thousands.
The little stage play that routinely accompanies Islamic massacres on Western soil–empty bluster from politicians, a few more useless airstrikes, blaming guns, women weeping and lighting candles–will not satisfy public anger. Across the country, mosques are being burned and Moslems strung up from lampposts.
At that point a Moslem registry might save Moslems’ lives, because it would allow the government to move quickly to send them into exile. For good reason, the age-old punishment of exile has been considered less severe than its alternative, death. Given the choice, American Moslems would probably rather leave than die. With Seattle still glowing, the public would probably not accept any lesser action.
Islam wants to have it both ways: at the same time it condemns civil society, demanding Sharia replace it, it seeks all the benefits civil society provides. The public, both here and in Europe, is beginning to perceive the contradiction. Each new incident of Islamic violence on Western soil will make that contradiction more clear. At some point, the state will have to resolve it or lose its legitimacy. A registry is a good, and rather moderate, place to start.
The Turkish-ISIS Alliance
Why did Turkey shoot down a Russian fighter-bomber? Tactically, the Russian Su-24 may have crossed briefly into what they Turks consider their airspace. That area, now controlled by Turkey, used to be part of Syria and is still claimed by Syria. If the Russian pilots were using Syrian maps, they thought they were still in Syrian airspace. But to the Turks, they were flying over Turkish territory.
Operationally, the Turks may have shot the plane down in Syrian airspace because it was attacking Turkmen rebels in Syria. Turkmen are ethnic Turks who live outside Turkey. They are found in an arc that runs from the Mediterranean to China. Turkey claims a special right to protect Turkmen wherever they are found.
That claim ties into the real reason Turkey shot the Russian jet down. Following the islamic bombings in Paris, French President Hollande set out to form an American-French-Russian alliance against ISIS. Russia is eager for such a grand coalition. Turkey did not want it to happen. Why not? Because at the strategic level, Turkey is allied to ISIS.
The shoot-down pulled NATO and the U.S. away from Russia, because both felt they had to line up with a fellow NATO member, Turkey. Behind closed doors, they read Turkey the riot act, but in public they had to blame the Russians. Just at a point where, thanks to the French, the U.S. and Russia might have come together against ISIS, the Turks pulled them apart.
Turkey’s de facto alliance with ISIS has been visible for some time. ISIS’s supply lines run through Turkey, which they can only do with the approval of the Turkish government of President Recep Erdogan. Recent ISIS bombings in Turkey have been directed against Erdogan’s political opponents and the Kurds. Turkey regularly carries out bombing missions in Syria aginst the Kurds, America’s only effective ally on the ground and ISIS’s most dangerous opponent. ISIS in turn fights the Kurds, Turkey’s most hated enemy.
Note that Russia now has an opportunity to put an end to those Turkish airstrikes on the Pesh Merga. It can declare any Turkish warplane found in Syrian airspace a target on the grounds that what goes for (claimed) Turkish airspace also goes for Syrian airspace. Russia is openly Syria’s ally; why shouldn’t it help Syria assert its sovereignty in the air?
Why has Mr. Erdogan’s Turkey allied with ISIS? His goal is nothing less than re-establishing the regional place and role Turkey had when it was the core of the Ottoman Empire. At home, he has overthrown Ataturk’s secular state and is re-Islamicizing Turkey. In so doing, he has had strong (and idiotic) support from the U.S. and the E.U. The guardian of Ataturk’s secularism was the Turkish military. The U.S. and the E.U. demanded it surrender that role because it was not “democratic”. Both did nothing when Erdogan arrested hundreds of Turkish officers on trumped-up charges of planning a coup. That broke the power of the military domestically. Once again, the West screwed itself by its worship of its totem, “democracy”.
Abroad, Erdogan seeks to re-establish Turkey as the leader of the region’s Sunnis. That is why Turkey is so bitterly opposed to Assad’s governemt in Syria: it is Alawite, a Shiite off-shoot. Turkey’s support of Turkmen throughout the region is also an element of its strategy to regain its Ottoman role. Protection of Christian minorities was a reason often used by European Powers in the 19th century to justify intervention in Ottoman internal affairs. The Turks now play the same game using the Turkmen.
ISIS is useful to Turkey as a tool to re-establish Sunni dominance over large parts of what used to be Syria and Iraq. The more territory it can take from the Shiites, the better. Again, ISIS is dependent on Turkey; it dare not threaten Turkey, other than Turkish Kurds and Erdogan’s political opponents. Erdogan may well have calculated–rightly, in my view–that the puritanism ISIS and al Qaeda represent will burn itself out, leaving Turkey to pick up the pieces. Those pieces, once parts of the Ottoman Empire, come home to mama. Perhaps Erdogan even sees himself becoming caliph, a title the Ottoman sultan used to hold (it still rightly belongs to the House of Osman).
Is our foreign service too bloody dumb to see all this? Yes. So we continue to act as Turkey’s ally, which is ISIS’s ally, which makes us…? That’s what happens when you intervene in someone else’s Thirty Years War. It gets complicated. Wise men stay home and tend their own fire.
Don’t miss William S. Lind’s latest book, co-authored with Lt. Col. Gregory A. Thiele USMC, the Fourth Generation Warfare Handbook. A follow-on to Mr. Lind’s well-known Maneuver Warfare Handbook, the new Handbook is a practical, action-oriented guide for all soldiers and Marines facing 4GW opponents. Now available as an e-book (the paperback will come out in early 2016).
You haven’t yet read Victoria: A Novel of Fourth Generation War by Thomas Hobbes, the famous author of Leviathan? Not just entertainment, Victoria offers a series of 4GW tactical decision games as Americans confront the break-up of their country later in the 21st century. It also points the way toward the recovery of our traditional culture and the defeat of political correctness. Start reading here and order a copy from Amazon today!
What’s Behind Murray Vs. Trump?
Prominent conservative scholar Charles Murray has caused quite a bit of consternation on social media with his seemingly highly personal Facebook and Twitter crusade against Donald Trump. I suspect many people are not taking Murray’s opposition to Trump well because they don’t view Murray, who got in PC hot water for his book The Bell Curve, as your typical PC signaling think tank denizen and therefore, expect different from him.
Angry people make angry accusations, so many were quick to accuse Murray of signaling to his fellow AEI scholars and the rest of the respectable set, that, while capable of wrongthink, he is not far enough off the ranch to support Trump. I don’t know for certain that Murray is not signaling this, but I think his opposition to Trump can be understood based on another dimension. I believe this because I have observed the same tendency in others who policy wise seemingly have reasons to be sympathetic to the Trump campaign.
Certain political commentators, of which Murray is an example, undertake their commentary in a very high minded and serious manner, and they likewise take the political process very seriously. For these folks, Trump, who does not play by the normal rules of decorum, is an affront to the process and should be opposed on those grounds alone. Opposition to Trump seems to be to them a defense of the very system, and if it signals anything it is this seriousness and respect for the process aspect as much as anything else.
This sort of visceral opposition to Trump could come from the left, the right or the center. I believe it reflects to some extent the old money vs. new money distinction, both actually and metaphorically. While Trump did not come from a poor family, his family wasn’t that rich, so Trump behaves like new money – the brashness, the ostentatiousness, the conspicuous consumption, etc. As I mentioned in another article, I think a lot of Trump’s presentation and appeal is that he is in essence just a guy from Queens who made good for himself, and who may still have a bit of a chip on his shoulder. Trump’s Flyover Country supporters see a kindred spirit who happens to be a billionaire, but for those significantly concerned with propriety, they see an intolerably boorish lout.
While this opposition could come from all points on the political spectrum, it presents a particular dilemma for high minded sorts of a traditionalist and conservative bent. Traditionalists and conservatives have always placed great emphasis on manners and codes of behavior, for good reason. Such things foster good order and are inherently conservative in the most basic sense of the word.
From this view, comments about your female opponent’s appearance or alleged references to your female antagonist’s bodily functions are ungentlemanly. Repeatedly calling people stupid or engaging in back and forth with your critics on Twitter is pedestrian and below the dignity of the process and the office he seeks.
Charles Murray’s opposition to Trump strikes me as primarily coming from this perspective. John Derbyshire attributed it to Murray’s “Midwestern niceness,” but herein lies the disconnect between Murray and many of his usual fans.
Many of Trump’s supporters support him precisely because they no longer respect the process. They see the process as rigged and inherently hostile to them and their interests. For this reason, Trump’s brashness and willingness to say things the typical politician would not is not a liability, but an asset. While they don’t necessarily value rudeness, they’ll tolerate it or even consider it a necessary evil, in light of the current state of affairs, and they positively value his combativeness and willingness to engage the enemy. When Trump supporters are questioned, they consistently cite this aspect of his presentation as a major reason for their support. Trump’s previous celebrity and sheer force of personality allow him to get away with saying things that ordinary political candidates cannot.
Contained in this disconnect, is another related dimension. Trump’s supporters tend to view the current situation as dire and near the point of no return. For them, opposing a candidate because he engages in Twitter battles is akin to fretting about the arrangement of deck chairs on the Titanic. For many Trump supporters, our dire situation requires extraordinary measures, not appeals to the sanctity of the system that got us here in the first place.
While I appreciate Murray’s and others’ support for traditional norms of behavior, as a Trump supporter, albeit a somewhat nuanced one, I agree with my cohorts that it is much too late in the game to allow his at times less than decorous behavior to disqualify him. I would suggest that the process Murray et al are attempting to protect is no longer the sacrosanct process they suppose, but is in fact a largely rigged game of political theater. Perhaps what we need at this time is not a statesman but a performance artist who can engage the system on its own terms and maybe just beat the Powers That Be at their own game.
The View From Olympus: Learning Russians
There is an old saying that Russia is never as strong as it appears to be, and Russia is never as weak as it appears to be. According to the lead story in the October 15 New York Times, “Russian Military Uses Syria as Proving Ground, and West Takes Notice,” the pendulum is swinging from focusing on Russia’s weakness to seeing her again as strong and threatening. Much of the latter is threat inflation, an old Pentagon practice during the Cold War. (After lecturing on military reform many years ago at the Air Force’s Squadron Officers’ School, an Air Force intel captain came up to me and asked, “Does military reform mean we can stop inflating the threat?”)
But it does seem the Russians have learned. The Times story notes that Russian jets in Syria are now conducting as many airstrikes in a day as the U.S. and its allies have been carrying out in a month. Sortie rate is an important measure of an air force’s effectiveness, and ours has long been abysmal, except for the A-10. The newer our equipment, the worse the picture, because each new aircraft we buy requires more maintenance hours per flight hour than the one it replaced.
But the real importance of President Putin’s military reform program lies not in equipment but in ideas. As American military reformers used to say, quoting Col. John Boyd, “For winning wars, people are most important, ideas come second, and hardware is only third.” The Times noted that Russian reforms have included tactics and strategy, not just equipment. And they included the all-important “people” category:
Mr. Putin . . . began a military modernization program that focused not only on high-profile procurement of new weapons . . . but also on a less-noticed overhaul of training and organization that included reduction in the bloated officer corps and the development of a professional corps of noncommissioned officers.
As any visitor to an American headquarters quickly sees, Russia was not alone in having a bloated officer corps. But ours keeps growing.
We here witness an old military phenomenon: the loser learns while the victor goes to sleep on his pile of trophies. Russia was one of the twentieth century’s big losers, along with Austria and Germany. The defeat in World War I, the Red Revolution, Stalin, Communism’s murder of 60 million Russians, the immense destruction inflicted by World War II, and, with the fall of Communism, Russia’s retreat to roughly the borders she had when Peter the Great came to the throne, add up to a catastrophe Americans cannot grasp.
But Russia is now recovering under President Putin, and her defeats and failures have taught her some things. Among those learning are the Russian military. Several decades ago, the Soviet Army historian John Erickson said to me, “Do you want to understand the Russian army today? Ask yourself what it was like under Nicholas I.” I think that is no longer true.
The laggard now is the U.S. military, happily vegetating in the Second Generation of modern war, content to lose wars so long as the money keeps flowing, led largely by generals and admirals who are interchangeable in their skills and attitudes with Soviet industrial managers. The quality of the product is not important; what matters is acquiring and justifying resources.
That self-satisfied (at senior levels) and sleepy military is in turn employed by a foreign policy elite that lives in Disneyland, a place where the whole world is to be reduced to a nursery run by themselves and their European counterparts. All the children will play nice because they tell them to.
Among the consequences of this departure from reality is a failure to ally with both Russia and China in defense of the state system against Fourth Generation war. In Syria, while a reality-based Kremlin acts in support of the remnants of the Syrian state, we bleat about Russian air attacks on our “democratic allies” who do not exist.
As I said, this is an old, old story. It always has the same ending: yesterday’s winner is tomorrow’s loser. Regrettably, that’s us.