Greatest willingness to kowtow: Tim Scott
Overall pure shittiness: Elise Stefanik
Nonentity award: Doug Burgum
Willingness to pretend to be an idiot: J.D. Vance
Actual idiot: Ben Carson
Most pathetically ambitious: Marco Rubio
Strong right arm of retribution: Tom Cotton
Freedom Caucus true believer: Byron Donalds
This somewhat resembles my assessment, but also differs in other aspects, especially its evaluation of Vance. Drum appeared to believe that Scott, Burgum, Vance, Rubio, and possibly Stefanik were pure opportunists, Carson was completely unqualified, and Cotton and Donalds were the true authoritarians. Willingness to kowtow, willingness to pretend to be an idiot, and spineless ambition all sound very much like pure opportunism, almost to the extent that they can be hard to tell apart. Presumably Scott was showing his opportunist through flattery, Vance through insincere agreement, and Rubio by abandoning his former principles. Add Burgum's obscurity which spares him having any identity apart from Trump and interpret Stefanik's "overall pure shittiness" as shameless opportunism, and you have five different shades of opportunism. Dismiss Carson as too clueless to be worth taking seriously. That leaves Cotton and Donalds as the really dangerous ones -- Donalds as a true believer and Cotton taking Trump's desire for revenge seriously.
I shared the assessment that Burgum, Scott, Rubio, and Stefanik were opportunists telling politically expedient lies, that Carson was too clueless to matter, and that Donalds was a dangerous authoritarian. My main difference was on Cotton and Vance. I was ambivalent about Cotton. On the one hand, he seemed like a real authoritarian rather than a pure opportunist. On the other hand, he appeared to have real principles (particularly as a Russia hawk) that sometimes differed from Trump. He was definitely the only one of the eight who I could imagine ever standing up to Trump. As for Vance, he struck me as having all the worst traits of an opportunist and a true believer, with all the zeal of a convert.
When Trump picked Vance, Drum said, "So I guess that's what Trump values the most. He wants someone who shows his loyalty by a willingness to say anything, no matter how dumb or obviously untrue he knows it to be." Well, I disagree. I do not think Vance's distinguishing trait is his willingness to pretend to be an idiot. I think his distinguishing trait is his ability to offer an intellectual defense of the most indefensible actions on Trump's part. To the extent Vance is a pure opportunist, this is an uglier and more dangerous form of opportunism than mere flattery or abandonment of principle. It shows a deeper level of commitment to Trump's worst actions that makes Vance unlikely to change course if Trump is ever gotten out of the way.
Did Trump lie and say the election was stolen. Vance acknowledges it was exactly stolen, but also says, “What verifiably I know happened is that in 2020, large technology companies censored Americans from talking about things like the Hunter Biden laptop,” and that therefore “I think that Big Tech rigged the election in 2020," and that what is really important is not the election outcome, but that "censorship is bad." Needless to say, this would allow the loser of any election to find some sort of unfair story to blame it on and demand that the outcome be overturned.
Were stories about Haitians eating people's pets false? Vance was prepared to defend the lies, by saying, "If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that's what I'm going to do."
But above all that is Vance's defense of DOGE's destruction of USAID -- programs that ended the ravages of AIDS in Africa, feed starving children, fight Ebola, etc.
As an American leader, but also just as an American citizen, your compassion belongs first to your fellow citizens. That doesn’t mean you hate people from outside of your own borders, but there’s this old-school [concept]—and I think it’s a very Christian concept, by the way—that you love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then, after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world.
Well, yes, I don't think the basic concept is very controversial. Who would dispute that people who neglect their children to aid people halfway across the world are being irresponsible? And who would dispute that our primary duties are to the people closest at hand.
The flaw here is obvious. From the completely uncontroversial proposition that we should care more about the people closest at hand, Vance leaps to the wholly different proposition that we must value anyone who is not a fellow citizen at zero, and that the tiniest act on behalf of a non-citizen (seriously, PEPFAR is a miniscule portion of the federal budget and has saved millions) is a betrayal of one's fellow-countrymen.
I will add, just to be clear, that it was something similar that made me lose all respect for Jonathan Haidt's moral foundations theory. Some people were calling to close to lawless terrorist prison in Guantanamo and Haidt dismissed that as "liberal moral myopia." Liberals were so obsessed with harm avoidance, and with justice concerns that some of the prisoners did not appear to be actual terrorists that they totally ignored the larger picture -- the Guantanamo prisoners were not part of our in-group and any concern for their well-being, or even whether they were guilty or innocent, is a betrayal of our in-group. Apparently having normal, healthy, well-balanced values means dividing everyone into an in-group of people who morally matter and an out-group of unpeople who do not morally matter.
Certainly that appears to be Vance's philosophy as well. Granted, Vance sees no need to hate people outside your borders. But indifference is an absolute moral imperative.
No comments:
Post a Comment