Tom Gregg
Tom Gregg
Sep 6, 2018 · 2 min read

This strikes me as little more than a tortured and largely spurious attempt to identify mainstream conservatives with the alt.right & etc. It has no more credibility than its polar opposite: the attempt by some conservatives to identify liberals and progressives with Bolshevism and National Socialism.

The current liberal/progressive meltdown over the alt.right, neo-Nazis, fascists, white nationalists, etc. is comical in its hysteria. The radical Right in America is a tiny faction which commands no popular support whatsoever. And “white nationalism” is a figment of the liberal/progressive imagination. The promiscuous abandon with which such charges are hurled betrays their essential frivolity. Take the most recent example: the hilarious claim that a young woman sitting near Judge Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings made a “white power” hand gesture. One would like to think that the number of credulous idiots disposed to believe such a fairy tale is small but alas, the charge took off like an ICBM and was, apparently, embraced by tens of thousands of members of the Resistance. This despite the fact that Zina Bash, the woman in question, is of Mexican heritage on her father’s side and Jewish on her mother’s side (with grandparents who survived the Holocaust), making her an unlikely recruit for white nationalism.

An objective observer of the Resistance v. MAGA compels the conclusion that they’re two sides of the same coin: politically deranged, impervious to facts and reason, disconnected from reality. That, incidentally, explains why Democratic politicians pandering to the Resistance sound so dumb, e.g. Cory Booker in the Kavanaugh hearing: dumb is what the Resistance wants.

As for the election of Donald Trump, it has no nefarious roots in Nazism, fascism, white nationalism, etc. Populism is a recurring theme in American political history and he represents its latest iteration. MAGA’s greatest scorn is reserved not for immigrants, black, gays, etc. but for the elites, so called, on both sides of the aisle, Republicans as well as Democrats. Trump’s their champion, the guy who’s supposed to drain the swamp. What’s funny about that is that in most respects he’s governed no differently than any other Republican might have been expected to govern, the major deviation being his trade policies. On that score he’s closer to Bernie Sanders & Co. than he is to mainstream conservative Republicans.

Trump’s a doofus and a bully and a goon, no doubt about it, but after all American political life has never been short of doofuses and bullies and goons.

Tom Gregg

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Tom Gregg

I write & publish on Medium short stories, poetry, essays, commentary, reviews & more.