Basta La Vista, Baby. By JONAH GOLDBERG
Excerpt: The single most exhausting feature of the Trump era is the soul-crushing humorlessness of so many Trump critics and Trump defenders. For many Trump critics, particularly but not entirely on the left, everything is a crisis of existential proportions. For Trump defenders, any criticism of Trump is a direct attack on his supporters. I usually understand where it comes from, I think. Trump does represent a serious stress test not just for conservatism and “democratic norms” but also for many of the assumptions that liberals held dear about the arc of history. Few things are scarier than being knocked off the horse of your teleology. It’s a bummer when you think you have a rendezvous with destiny, and you end up waiting for Godot. For Trump defenders, it requires incredible effort to keep yourself convinced that he’s the man you want him to be rather than the man he actually is. Orwell was right when he said, “To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.” But the opposite is often true as well. It is incandescently obvious that Donald Trump is not the world’s best negotiator or an honest person, among other glaring truths. But for people either emotionally or professionally invested in Trump, any admission that the Trumpian eminence front is a put-on is a threat of one kind or another. Maintaining the fiction that the emperor’s new clothes are glorious and resplendent takes a lot of effort, too.
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