THE SEARCH: It could be as bad as the critics say!

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2024

But it could also be worse: To judge from the fruit of a Google search, we had never heard of Van Jones until April 20, 2009.

On that evening, he guested with Robert Redford on CNN's Larry King Live, which was still a significant program. We'd never heard of Jones at the time, but he made a strong impression.

Jones has been involved in a search—had been involved in a search for some time, including even then. First, though, let's consider what Bret Stephens says at the start of his new column for the New York Times.

Headline included, this is the way the column starts. We highlight two key points:

Done With Never Trump

It’s been more than nine years since I first denounced Donald Trump as a “loudmouth vulgarian appealing to quieter vulgarians.” I’ve called myself a Never Trump conservative ever since, even when I agreed with his policies from time to time. I also opposed him throughout his run this year.

Could his second term be as bad as his most fervent critics fear? Yes. Is it time to drop the heavy moralizing and incessant doomsaying that typified so much of the Never Trump movement—and that rendered it politically impotent and frequently obtuse? Yes, please.

Who, and what, is Trump? He’s a man and the symbol of a movement. The man is crass but charismatic, ignorant but intuitive, dishonest but authentic. The movement is patriotic—and angry.

Some of that anger is intensely bigoted and some of it misplaced. That side of the anger gets most of the media’s attention. But some of it, too, is correctly directed at a self-satisfied elite that thinks it knows better but often doesn’t...

At this site, we don't vote the way Stephens has typically voted. This year, we both voted for Candidate Harris, though it must be said that neither of us was blown away, at least on balance, by her attributes as a presidential candidate.

Each of us voted for Candidate Harris. But as Trump has said this very morning, he managed to win "the biggest mandate in 129 years!"

He also seems to be out of his mind, as that lunatic claim might suggest. And we agree with the first key point Stephens makes in his column:

Donald J. Trump's second term could be just as bad as his most fervent critics fear.  In fact, we'll disagree with Stephens in this way:

It could be even worse!

This second term could be worse than his most fervent critics fear?  Yes, it could be that! 

It could be better than critics fear, but it could also be worse. As we watch the lunacy spread all through what's left of our "public discourse," we keep thinking of Professor Knox's horrific account of the fall of sacred Troy.

Achilles slays Hector before the high walls of that sacred city, then drags his body through the dust behind his speeding chariot. At that point, the fate of the city has been sealed. Professor Knox remembers:

PROFESSOR KNOX: The whole poem has been moving toward this duel between the two champions, but there has never been any doubt about the outcome. The husband and father, the beloved protector of his people, the man who stands for the civilized values of the rich city, its social and religious institutions, will go down to defeat at the hands of this man who has no family, who in a private quarrel has caused the death of many of his own fellow soldiers, who now in a private quarrel thinks only of revenge...And the death of Hector seals the fate of Troy; it will fall to the Achaeans, to become the pattern for all time of the death of a city. 

The images of that night assault—the blazing palaces, the blood running in the streets, old Priam butchered at the altar, Cassandra raped in the temple, Hector's baby son thrown from the battlements, his wife Andromache dragged off to slavery—all this, foreshadowed in the Iliad, will be stamped indelibly on the consciousness of the Greeks throughout their history...

Achilles "thinks only of revenge." Once he's dragged Hector's body through the dust, the fate of Troy has been sealed. 

We keep flashing on the highlighted "images of that night" as we watch what's left of our clownlike "public discourse." We also think of the citizens of Oran, as described by Camus in his famous novel, The Plague:

CAMUS: [O]ur townsfolk were like everybody else, wrapped up in themselves; in other words they were humanists: they disbelieved in pestilences. A pestilence isn't a thing made to man's measure; therefore we tell ourselves that pestilence is a mere bogy of the mind, a bad dream that will pass away. But it doesn't always pass away and, from one bad dream to another, it is men who pass away, and the humanists first of all, because they haven't taken their precautions. 

Our townsfolk were not more to blame than others; they forgot to be modest, that was all, and thought that everything still was possible for them; which presupposed that pestilences were impossible. They went on doing business, arranged for journeys, and formed views. How should they have given a thought to anything like plague...

Even after the signs of plague were visible in Oran, "the danger still remained fantastically unreal." Or at least, so Camus was willing to say about those fictional townsfolk.

The townsfolk of Oran just couldn't see the obvious signs of a plague. In recent years, many of us in Blue America have been unable to see the shape of our own onrushing defeat. 

This very morning, the panelists on Morning Joe were reassuring Blue America's viewers that things aren't nearly as bad as they might seem. That said, the host of that show kept telling us, in recent years, that the GOP couldn't possibly win this year's election. 

He said it over and over again over the past few years.

That brings us to the second key point in that passage from Stephens. He says that some of the anger behind Candidate Trump's "landslide" is "intensely bigoted."

For ourselves, we're inclined to stay away from such assessments. But that's what Stephens says.

That's part of what Stephens says. But he also says that some of the anger behind the candidate's narrow (but consequential) win "is correctly directed at a self-satisfied elite that thinks it knows better [than everyone else] but often doesn’t." 

As soon becomes clear, he's speaking there, at least in part, about the people those of us in Blue America—those of us in our own Oran—have been conditioned to trust. 

As he continues, he offers specific examples of what he specifically means. We ourselves don't agree with every word he types at that point, but he makes us flash on Camus when he explains the way the elite to which he himself belongs failed to understand the reach of Trump's appeal:

Never Trumpers—I include myself in this indictment—never quite got the point. It wasn’t that we’d forgotten Clinton’s scandals or were ignorant of the allegations about the Bidens. It’s that we thought Trump degraded the values that conservatives were supposed to stand for. We also thought that Trump represented a form of illiberalism that was antithetical to our “free people, free markets, free world” brand of conservatism and that was bound to take the Republican Party down a dark road.

In this we weren’t wrong: There’s plenty to dislike and fear about Trump from a traditionally conservative standpoint. But Never Trumpers also overstated our case and, in doing so, defeated our purpose.

It isn't that the NeverTrumpers were wrong. In some ways, it sounds like Stephens is saying that they simply "forgot to be modest."

Stephens goes on in some detail from there. As with the townsfolk of Oran, he says the conservative NeverTrumpers "never quite got the point" in various ways, until it was too late.

Eventually, he offers this self-indictment:

We also talked a lot about democracy. That’s important: The memory of Jan. 6 and Trump’s 2020 election lies were the main reasons I voted for Kamala Harris. But if democracy means anything, it’s that ordinary people, not elites, get to decide how important an event like Jan. 6 is to them. Turns out, not so much.

What ordinary people really cared about this year were the high cost of living and the chaos at the border. Why did Trump—so often deprecated by his critics as a fortunate fool—understand this so well while we fecklessly carried on about the soul of the nation?

What else did we not sufficiently appreciate? That, as much as Trump might lie, Americans also felt lied to by the left—particularly when it came to the White House cover-up of Biden’s physical and mental decline. 

Even in that telling passage, we ourselves wouldn't agree with every word. We do agree with two key points:

Our high-brow elites often seemed to have no idea what "ordinary people" cared about in this election. (It sometimes seemed that they didn't know, but also that they simply didn't care.)

Also, "ordinary people" often felt lied to by those of us in Blue America—not just by the very bad people who are known to be found Over There.

Stephens is a NeverTrump conservative. Van Jones has always been a Blue American liberal/progressive.

He grew up in Tennessee, ended up at Yale Law School. We well remember being impressed by how sharp he seemed in 2009. We'd never heard of him at the time, but he's been highly visible from there.

Last Saturday, when he spoke to Chris Cillizza, Jones gnashed his teeth at the blindness of his own tribe's failed elite. In Monday's report, we linked you to Rachel Dobkin's account of what Jones said in the lengthy discussion.

Basically, Dobkin got it right. This is the way she started:

Donald Trump Is 'Smarter' Than All His Critics—Former Obama Adviser

Van Jones, an ex-adviser to former President Barack Obama and current CNN political commentator, said on Friday that President-elect Donald Trump is "smarter" than all his critics.

Does Jones literally think that Donald J. Trump is "smarter" than the rest? Or was that a bit of hyperbole, emerging from the high frustration visible all through last Saturday's discussion?

We don't know how to answer that question. But Jones has been involved in a lifelong search, and his remarks about our own elites in Blue America were scathing.

We also think his remarks were basically accurate. To hear the key part of his critique, we'll suggest that you start at minute 28 of the Cillizza videotape. Tomorrow, we'll take it from there.

It could be as bad as Trump's critics fear—but it could always be worse! The fall of Troy was vicious, vile. To what extent has our imperfect human nature actually changed in the handful of years since then?

As you can see above, Stephens asks a painful question:

"Why did Trump—so often deprecated by his critics as a fortunate fool—understand this so well while we fecklessly carried on about the soul of the nation?"

That's precisely the question Jones asks in his colloquy with Cillizza. Perhaps in frustration, he says that Donald J. Trump is simply "smarter" than the rest.

We wouldn't put it that way ourselves. As he posts about his massive mandate, we'd be inclined to let "insane" take the place of "smart."

We wouldn't put it that way ourselves! But we think that Jones's search is on point within our own Blue Oran, a flailing community located just this side of what's left of sacred Troy.

Tomorrow: What Jones said about our own "elitism"

Friday: Explaining the persistent failure to see what's sitting right there