> Donald Trump spent his first term as the frustrated caretaker of the decaying Victorian mansion called the American conservative movement — floating plans to tear it down and build anew but mostly just knocking down a few walls, adding a gilded bathroom, doing some renovations that the residents had long desired (the Federalist Society Ballroom got a special shine-up) while letting mold and time do their work on the Limited Government Wing.
> His second term has been a different story. The smoke of demolition is everywhere, cranes are swinging wildly, and if the shape of the original building is still vaguely visible through the smoke, it’s clear that the final renovation is going to be radical. More of the original residents have fled to nearby properties (you can see a bunch of them clustered in the Mike Pence Gazebo), while others have barricaded themselves inside the True Conservatism Suite, where folks are pouring tea and wearing earplugs. A bunch of newcomers are throwing up competing additions (the A.I. Tower is a shiny spire overshadowing the Based Medieval Turret and the Garden of Cronyism), and the contractors are having a fistfight in the Hall of Christian Zionism.
> Out front, emblazoned with the Trump logo, a builder’s sign promises, “Future Home of American Nationalism Inc.”
> […]
> It’s not that Trump alone is the decider, since the overall process of destruction and renovation is linked to the deeper forces that have made nationalism potent the world over. Against that backdrop, we can predict that a nationalist right will be more intensely focused on American interests in foreign policy, less internationalist and idealistic than prior incarnations of conservatism. We can assume that it will be more open to government interventions in the economy than the laissez-faire or libertarian style of right-wing politics. We can take for granted that it will be more concerned with issues of immigration and national identity and less engaged with the cultural issues that motivated the religious right. And we can expect it to be more radical — more reactionary in some ways, more futurist in others than — than the Burkean conservatism it has seemingly displaced.
B-Z_B-S on
…And begun the Nazi regime era.
FloydBeatlesEagles on
Cue the fascism era.
TreeLooksFamiliar22 on
More NYT Opinion Page bullshit.
Trump is a fuck show and nobody including their brain-dead stable of Conservative columnists has any idea what will come of the chaos he unleashed.
The one thing we can count on is that the NYT and their stable of useless talking heads won’t do one Goddamn useful thing to help get the country back on its feet. Not one drop of sweat or one iota of courage will be expended by that shithole of a publication.
worthlessprole on
ross douthat is so fucking annoying
Independent-Reader on
MAGA has ruined the Republican party. It will never recover.
I used to be independent, but now I’m just anti-right.
There ain’t nothing right about the right.
The left holds back, they falter, they drag their heels to get shit done, they ain’t perfect either, but at the end of the day they have never ruined our country, our economy, our way of life, as much as the right.
National-Mistake-606 on
As if cognitive dissonance is not a thing lmao
You’re going to see all these people suddenly turn into ‘fiscally conservative, small government, constitutionalist’ voices in a few years.
twirlingmypubes on
We are well beyond conservative and firmly reactionary
YgramulTheMany on
Libertarians are just as guilty.
DancingWithAWhiteHat on
Lol there is no way conservatives are that smart
kaiiizen on
Conservatives have no ideas and are anti-everything; these concepts are alive and well while those in power grift, divide, and enrich themselves.
viewerfromthemiddle on
The second term is a continuation of the first, which was a continuation of the emotionally-fueled unprincipled tea party movement, which, let’s face it, was a group whose one uniting purpose was *hating* that a Black man was running for, then residing in, the White House.
The only difference has been the gradual casting aside of thinking, competent, and/or principled republicans and replacing them with yes-people. Rampant corruption + our billionaire class fuel this downwardly spiraling ship.
*Edit: wording*
Tschmelz on
I fucking hate the NYT. Bunch of morons. Trump *should* kill conservatism in this country for decades, but they’re a bunch of idiots with no real beliefs except making “liberals cry”. Unless the voters actually show up consistently, the Republicans will almost certainly hold onto more power than they deserve.
dingusmingus2222 on
“Donald Trump is not going to be the nominee of the Republican party. If he is, that’s the end of the Republican Party.”
Mar 30, 2016
“If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed…….and we will deserve it.”
May 3, 2016
– Lindsey Graham
caveman_6101 on
We (citizens) Need to get Rid of
MAGA, republicans and democrats. I’m 67. Since ‘68-began paying
Attention to politics- there have been 7 GOP presidents to 4 Dems. To be 67 and to have the country in such disarray, to have been attacked on 9/11…to be in two wars for 18 yrs…to have so much of the country destroyed by very poor leadership…wasting 14 trillion. Our country and society has been destroyed. Neither party has done what’s necessary for the Country or the citizens. Time to move on from them
J-edge on
He’s added 28% to the national debt and our interest payments alone are $1 trillion.
Kid_Serious on
Ross Douthat is a fervent but embarrassed fascist and this piece is just him trying to clean his own image and convince the uninformed that there’s a difference between conservatism and fascism.
Mycalescott on
It’s so bad now that even Rand Paul sounds like the reasonable guy
thatmarcelfaust on
This is the natural end result of conservatism.
BlackJediSword on
No it hasn’t. If we make it through this, and develop some level of normalcy, conservatives will just lower the temperature on their repulsiveness. Then, just like last time, liberals will welcome them with open arms and argue that we should love one another. Conservatives will re-learn to keep their reprehensible politics to themselves in chat rooms and back alley meetings, and people will think we’ve made progress before the mask slips as liberals have allowed the masses to be lulled into a false sense of security again.
ClosPins on
No, Trump is starting the conservative era. Right now, we are seeing what conservatism is all about. The training-wheels are off. They are getting everything they want. They don’t have to pretend anymore. They are just doing it.
gtpc2020 on
I wish. The SCOTUS appointments, Project 2025, and bringing the poor bigots and idiots into the movement with cult like fervor, it’ll take at least a generation to move the Overton Window anywhere near left of center compared to the rest of the world. I hope I’m wrong.
Timeformayo on
Trump’s second term is the *culmination* of the Conservative Era. 50 years of hucksterism, corporatism, militarism, attacks on workers, attacks on the middle class, and demonization of minority groups.
Ross, how did you think this would end?
banksy_h8r on
Really? Because for a lot of us this is what we’ve always thought Conservatism was, once you get past the surface.
MAGA in it’s unhinged madness is _exactly_ what I thought Conservatives would do once they had enough power to dispense with all the erudite bullshitting and pretense of old-timey civility. The NYT can go fuck themselves for providing cover to Conservatives by continuing to play along with the lie.
**MAGA is mask-off Conservatism.**
SerfTint on
This is entirely wrong, which is par for the course for the pompous simpleton Douthat.
Basically, he is one of the elites whose brands and egos depend upon this falsehood that there’s some true Conservatism out there that Trump has perverted into grifting, zealotry, nihilism and fascism. It’s not only the handful of Establishment Conservatives that believe this, it’s Democratic leadership also–it is the source of the “fever will break / McConnell will have an epiphany / Ultra MAGA vs. regular reasonable Republicans” talking point.
But Conservatism has fascism at its heart and soul, and has since Buckley. The predominant through-line is always that there’s some deserving group of Real Americans (typically White, straight Christian men) who are under siege from the undeserving rabble (everyone else), and this creep of darkness upon the land must be purged in order to conform to “common sense” / “Jesus’s hand of protection over the land” / American exceptionalism.” And the reason this isn’t happening is because the Liberal media (read: Jews) won’t correctly point out this necessity, and because government overreach (read: Democrats) is too concerned with the Pinko / Cultural Marxist notion of “equality” to favor the deserving people, so instead they give those peoples’ money to the lazy moochers and freaks.
That’s ALL Conservatism in the last several decades. Trump is just a blunt and stupid version of throwing the rabble out of the country and stealing the money and tearing down the government. Paul Ryan, the True Conservative avatar, wanted to do this through regular tax cuts and deregulation and slashing Entitlements, but it was basically the same agenda. Venezuela is the new Iraq, Voter ID is the new Birtherism, “Enemy of the people” is the new “Nattering nabobs.” Trump is an extension of Conservatism as it reaches it fascist final form, it is not a break from it.
But Douthat wants to be able to tell himself at night that he only supported the Conservative elements of Trump and not the N*zi elements, which are basically the same thing. You don’t have Trump with this amount of power and impunity unless you had the Patriot Act and zero consequences for Bush’s war crimes and the financial crimes that happened under him. For that matter, you don’t have Trump with this level of power unless you have Clinton and Obama normalizing everything Republicans do–aiding in it, often–and never making Republicans pay any price for anything. Once Obama signed the 2012 NDAA allowing for indefinite spying and detention of anyone, including Americans on American soil, at the sole discretion of the president, what did we think we were going to get?
EnragedBasil on
Conservativism has always been regressive. Humans strive for progressiveness and innovation, its in our DNA. Stagnating in Conservative values has always been the lesser option. I just dont get it.
armageddon_20xx on
They meant to write “has ended America”
Most of us have been on a roller coaster that’s gotten to the top of the big hill. We’re there. Except that this isn’t going to be a fun ride.
nhepner on
The conservatives haven’t been conservative since… at least the patriot act, but more likely since Carter.
ElChu on
Douthat is a dilettante. He thinks that he is smart, but talks about nothing.
All of his fantasies can be placed on any person in charge… He knows exactly what he wants and is DEEPLY ashamed of what that is…it’s why he doesn’t say a DAMN thing.
He is the reason I steal my NYT now.
PWL51 on
The Trump administration is now a full fledged Nazi organization . Every single citizen in America should be worried
31 Comments
Gift link. Excerpt:
> Donald Trump spent his first term as the frustrated caretaker of the decaying Victorian mansion called the American conservative movement — floating plans to tear it down and build anew but mostly just knocking down a few walls, adding a gilded bathroom, doing some renovations that the residents had long desired (the Federalist Society Ballroom got a special shine-up) while letting mold and time do their work on the Limited Government Wing.
> His second term has been a different story. The smoke of demolition is everywhere, cranes are swinging wildly, and if the shape of the original building is still vaguely visible through the smoke, it’s clear that the final renovation is going to be radical. More of the original residents have fled to nearby properties (you can see a bunch of them clustered in the Mike Pence Gazebo), while others have barricaded themselves inside the True Conservatism Suite, where folks are pouring tea and wearing earplugs. A bunch of newcomers are throwing up competing additions (the A.I. Tower is a shiny spire overshadowing the Based Medieval Turret and the Garden of Cronyism), and the contractors are having a fistfight in the Hall of Christian Zionism.
> Out front, emblazoned with the Trump logo, a builder’s sign promises, “Future Home of American Nationalism Inc.”
> […]
> It’s not that Trump alone is the decider, since the overall process of destruction and renovation is linked to the deeper forces that have made nationalism potent the world over. Against that backdrop, we can predict that a nationalist right will be more intensely focused on American interests in foreign policy, less internationalist and idealistic than prior incarnations of conservatism. We can assume that it will be more open to government interventions in the economy than the laissez-faire or libertarian style of right-wing politics. We can take for granted that it will be more concerned with issues of immigration and national identity and less engaged with the cultural issues that motivated the religious right. And we can expect it to be more radical — more reactionary in some ways, more futurist in others than — than the Burkean conservatism it has seemingly displaced.
…And begun the Nazi regime era.
Cue the fascism era.
More NYT Opinion Page bullshit.
Trump is a fuck show and nobody including their brain-dead stable of Conservative columnists has any idea what will come of the chaos he unleashed.
The one thing we can count on is that the NYT and their stable of useless talking heads won’t do one Goddamn useful thing to help get the country back on its feet. Not one drop of sweat or one iota of courage will be expended by that shithole of a publication.
ross douthat is so fucking annoying
MAGA has ruined the Republican party. It will never recover.
I used to be independent, but now I’m just anti-right.
There ain’t nothing right about the right.
The left holds back, they falter, they drag their heels to get shit done, they ain’t perfect either, but at the end of the day they have never ruined our country, our economy, our way of life, as much as the right.
As if cognitive dissonance is not a thing lmao
You’re going to see all these people suddenly turn into ‘fiscally conservative, small government, constitutionalist’ voices in a few years.
We are well beyond conservative and firmly reactionary
Libertarians are just as guilty.
Lol there is no way conservatives are that smart
Conservatives have no ideas and are anti-everything; these concepts are alive and well while those in power grift, divide, and enrich themselves.
The second term is a continuation of the first, which was a continuation of the emotionally-fueled unprincipled tea party movement, which, let’s face it, was a group whose one uniting purpose was *hating* that a Black man was running for, then residing in, the White House.
The only difference has been the gradual casting aside of thinking, competent, and/or principled republicans and replacing them with yes-people. Rampant corruption + our billionaire class fuel this downwardly spiraling ship.
*Edit: wording*
I fucking hate the NYT. Bunch of morons. Trump *should* kill conservatism in this country for decades, but they’re a bunch of idiots with no real beliefs except making “liberals cry”. Unless the voters actually show up consistently, the Republicans will almost certainly hold onto more power than they deserve.
“Donald Trump is not going to be the nominee of the Republican party. If he is, that’s the end of the Republican Party.”
Mar 30, 2016
“If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed…….and we will deserve it.”
May 3, 2016
– Lindsey Graham
We (citizens) Need to get Rid of
MAGA, republicans and democrats. I’m 67. Since ‘68-began paying
Attention to politics- there have been 7 GOP presidents to 4 Dems. To be 67 and to have the country in such disarray, to have been attacked on 9/11…to be in two wars for 18 yrs…to have so much of the country destroyed by very poor leadership…wasting 14 trillion. Our country and society has been destroyed. Neither party has done what’s necessary for the Country or the citizens. Time to move on from them
He’s added 28% to the national debt and our interest payments alone are $1 trillion.
Ross Douthat is a fervent but embarrassed fascist and this piece is just him trying to clean his own image and convince the uninformed that there’s a difference between conservatism and fascism.
It’s so bad now that even Rand Paul sounds like the reasonable guy
This is the natural end result of conservatism.
No it hasn’t. If we make it through this, and develop some level of normalcy, conservatives will just lower the temperature on their repulsiveness. Then, just like last time, liberals will welcome them with open arms and argue that we should love one another. Conservatives will re-learn to keep their reprehensible politics to themselves in chat rooms and back alley meetings, and people will think we’ve made progress before the mask slips as liberals have allowed the masses to be lulled into a false sense of security again.
No, Trump is starting the conservative era. Right now, we are seeing what conservatism is all about. The training-wheels are off. They are getting everything they want. They don’t have to pretend anymore. They are just doing it.
I wish. The SCOTUS appointments, Project 2025, and bringing the poor bigots and idiots into the movement with cult like fervor, it’ll take at least a generation to move the Overton Window anywhere near left of center compared to the rest of the world. I hope I’m wrong.
Trump’s second term is the *culmination* of the Conservative Era. 50 years of hucksterism, corporatism, militarism, attacks on workers, attacks on the middle class, and demonization of minority groups.
Ross, how did you think this would end?
Really? Because for a lot of us this is what we’ve always thought Conservatism was, once you get past the surface.
MAGA in it’s unhinged madness is _exactly_ what I thought Conservatives would do once they had enough power to dispense with all the erudite bullshitting and pretense of old-timey civility. The NYT can go fuck themselves for providing cover to Conservatives by continuing to play along with the lie.
**MAGA is mask-off Conservatism.**
This is entirely wrong, which is par for the course for the pompous simpleton Douthat.
Basically, he is one of the elites whose brands and egos depend upon this falsehood that there’s some true Conservatism out there that Trump has perverted into grifting, zealotry, nihilism and fascism. It’s not only the handful of Establishment Conservatives that believe this, it’s Democratic leadership also–it is the source of the “fever will break / McConnell will have an epiphany / Ultra MAGA vs. regular reasonable Republicans” talking point.
But Conservatism has fascism at its heart and soul, and has since Buckley. The predominant through-line is always that there’s some deserving group of Real Americans (typically White, straight Christian men) who are under siege from the undeserving rabble (everyone else), and this creep of darkness upon the land must be purged in order to conform to “common sense” / “Jesus’s hand of protection over the land” / American exceptionalism.” And the reason this isn’t happening is because the Liberal media (read: Jews) won’t correctly point out this necessity, and because government overreach (read: Democrats) is too concerned with the Pinko / Cultural Marxist notion of “equality” to favor the deserving people, so instead they give those peoples’ money to the lazy moochers and freaks.
That’s ALL Conservatism in the last several decades. Trump is just a blunt and stupid version of throwing the rabble out of the country and stealing the money and tearing down the government. Paul Ryan, the True Conservative avatar, wanted to do this through regular tax cuts and deregulation and slashing Entitlements, but it was basically the same agenda. Venezuela is the new Iraq, Voter ID is the new Birtherism, “Enemy of the people” is the new “Nattering nabobs.” Trump is an extension of Conservatism as it reaches it fascist final form, it is not a break from it.
But Douthat wants to be able to tell himself at night that he only supported the Conservative elements of Trump and not the N*zi elements, which are basically the same thing. You don’t have Trump with this amount of power and impunity unless you had the Patriot Act and zero consequences for Bush’s war crimes and the financial crimes that happened under him. For that matter, you don’t have Trump with this level of power unless you have Clinton and Obama normalizing everything Republicans do–aiding in it, often–and never making Republicans pay any price for anything. Once Obama signed the 2012 NDAA allowing for indefinite spying and detention of anyone, including Americans on American soil, at the sole discretion of the president, what did we think we were going to get?
Conservativism has always been regressive. Humans strive for progressiveness and innovation, its in our DNA. Stagnating in Conservative values has always been the lesser option. I just dont get it.
They meant to write “has ended America”
Most of us have been on a roller coaster that’s gotten to the top of the big hill. We’re there. Except that this isn’t going to be a fun ride.
The conservatives haven’t been conservative since… at least the patriot act, but more likely since Carter.
Douthat is a dilettante. He thinks that he is smart, but talks about nothing.
All of his fantasies can be placed on any person in charge… He knows exactly what he wants and is DEEPLY ashamed of what that is…it’s why he doesn’t say a DAMN thing.
He is the reason I steal my NYT now.
The Trump administration is now a full fledged Nazi organization . Every single citizen in America should be worried
It’s ended the American Era