Much of this I could have written. I found it particularly interesting seeing that John Stuart Mill reached the same conclusion long ago that I reached myself, which is that most “liberals” NEED people to need them, and that if the need disappeared, they would be rudderless and empty. Their lives would be pointless.
This creates what we nowadays call codependent behavior, in which, for example, the “champions” of black people routinely pursue policies which hurt them. Why? One, they need the votes, but two, even I am not cynical enough (and I am very cynical) to believe that all bleeding hearts are only about votes. What happens is that there is an unconscious conflict, in which one part of them wants to help, but another wants to withhold help, so that blacks can retain their value as victims, and as the needy objects of their attention and effort. The right hand giveth, and the left hand taketh away.
This is one major reason they resist debate: it is not just that they can’t defend their policies, but that open discussion risks rupturing their self delusions, which in turn are foundational to their sense of place in the world, their sense of meaning, and their sense of purpose. Without their delusions, they are lost. Small wonder so much anger appears when they are challenged: it is an existential question, not a mere policy question, as it could, should, and would be, if the well being of blacks (or women, or gays, etc.) was truly at the root of their work.
I of course disagree with his treatment of Trump. Trump is the one who speaks the truth. Nothing less, nothing more. He was forced on us by the long term abdication of courage by substantially every politician in Washington.
In the same way Churchill refused to concede victory to the Nazis, despite it being the most obvious, and certainly the easiest short term route (by the way, my favorite scene, the one that got me and made me tear up, was when the King visited Churchill, alone in some spare room, up all night, worrying and worrying, and told him: I have your back. Odds be damned: we can’t let the bastards win.) Trump has refused to concede victory to the forces trying to control speech, to force lies on all of us, to make political cant the only acceptable language, to enshrine in our halls of power the right of de facto Commissars to inflict social violence on all people straying outside narrow lines.
Trump, in other words, is roughly to Political Correctness what Churchill was to Nazism. This is the reason he is so hated. His policies are ordinary. Defending the border was not a controversial issue as late as the 1990’s. Tax cuts, particularly for corporations, have always reliably generated tax growth eventually, and economic growth immediately.
No, it is his refusal to accept what we might term the “New Politeness”, which could easily be a Fabian term, which makes him such a danger. He isn’t cowed by howling. On the contrary, he seems to enjoy it. He is every bit the public gladiator that Churchill was, even if we grant that Churchill–a Nobel Prize winner for Literature–was vastly the greater wordsmith.
Still, Churchill did love the one liner, and it’s interesting to speculate what use he might have made of Twitter.
“An empty car pulled up and Clement Attlee got out”.
“I may be drunk, but you are ugly, and in the morning I shall be sober.”
Etc. He was no saint. Not by a long shot. If the task is a fight, don’t look for saints. Look for people who like to win, and who have a track record of doing it.
And for that matter, Churchill’s record of winning was scant to non-existent when he became Prime Minister, and his record of disasters was quite long.
In the long run, pugnacious but principled assholes are vastly more useful than polite, cheerful gentlemen, who lose with dignity, and ultimately make no difference, what-so-ever.