Washington

I experienced a teeny-tiny insight that I feel compelled to share. It was served up by way of visual image and came from recalling a tweet before I slammed the door behind me to that platform that does not work for me.

I'm talking about an item linked by Instapundit that I didn't even bother to read. Whatever it's worth to you, it altered my own thinking considerably.

It's titled Hugh Hewitt, Jonah Goldberg: The "core alt-right" needs to be driven from conservative ranks. With audio. Presently the link has 555 comments on Insty. And that's all that I know about it.

I like both of these people. They're both smarter than I am. Were I to tolerate them further I'd stand to learn quite a lot. But I don't think that's possible. And that's too bad for me.

First, "alt-right" is another of those epithets that means whatever the writer needs it to mean in order to make their point. Its original meaning lost to the individual who contrived it. The term is vacuous. But still useful to writers who must write. Vacuous and flexible as "tea party," contrived and flexible as "neo-con" that can mean anything that you want them to mean. And by using the terms then the writers try to bring their readers about to their own intended meaning.

So we're on pre-shaken ground right off.

I listened to Hugh Hewitt interviewing Trump, and honestly, I became a bit embarrassed by his obsequiousness. He was talking about imagined upcoming Hillary Clinton / Donald Trump debate and he said no less than three times that he'd like to moderate one of them. He made sure to press the idea upon closing.

Second, before leaving Twitter I was following Jonah Goldberg because I respect his knowledge that appears to me vast. I considered him worth following. He tweeted a lot about his dog, and I like that. He tweeted about jogging around Washington. He tweeted about life in Washington. So he wants us to know that his dog sure does amuse him, that he's athletic in jogging and he's chuffed about living in the city that is the center of real power. These things are important to him.

I don't know where Hugh Hewitt lives. His residence doesn't come up readily by searching and I'm not that interested enough to dig further. His biographies mention only radio, the Salem group, religious radio. I still always enjoy seeing him guest on television. I still appreciate both these people and their tremendous insights. They are both very smart people.

Goldberg seems to have a good deal of difficulty accepting that like it or not Trump is his candidate. Whereas Hewitt sucks up to Trump directly and embarrassingly, Goldberg seems to still wish Trump can disappear. But to what? Goldberg writes as if living and abiding in Washington is more important to him than Trump actually winning. As if his picking and pecking at Trump and Trump supporters serves to elevate himself at Trump's expense can have the slightest affect on Trump's success while securing his place in the city of power. As he must while living in Washington. As if he's trying to discourage voters and that's not going to happen.

Just reading the link, and nothing more than that, nothing worthwhile can come from pursuing it except for me to become angry. I'm thinking, "Look, Buddy, Trump is your candidate. Now get used to it. For good or for bad, you are not going back to establishment GOP. It's not there to go back to. That is dead. Do what you demanded of conservative voters all along and support your candidate voters have chosen, not your conceits. The choice has been made. That's done. That party, that expression of conservatism is quite dead.

Dead, dead, dead.

Dead!

It does not exist anymore. Trump is proof of that. And alt-right, whatever that is to you, is not going anywhere. Tea party didn't go anywhere either. You say it's been killed because you don't see it in that incarnation. They evolved. The result of corrupted government attempting to kill it. You don't see those words anymore and imagine they've been brought into line. They have not. They've evolved into something more mean. And now you have Trump as evidence to that. No more proof is needed.

I take alt-right to mean simply alternative right, alternative conservative, alternative to GOPe as we call the fossilized political dinosaurs, evolved conservatism. Once people evolve in their thought and their values they are not returning back to whence they came. They actually grew while you have not. It cannot happen. People do not reverse evolve. The vast swaths of conservative people having abided without representation and outside of Washington, outside New York and the beltway, and between the West Coast have demanded and received, their representation. And that is the way that it is. There is no going back.

The tea party didn't go anywhere. They delivered congress they changed the political map, and they're all still there and quite active and loud and forceful. And now they're no longer malleable. First they were humble and nice, as conservatives are, having the representatives they sent up refuse to represent them caused them to become actually angry and it shows. They've been abused by government corrupted throughout all of its departments and now they are actually mean and they're fully intent on taking executive branch and wrenching government back into the shape of its design. Like it or not. So the idea of alt-right being kicked out is ridiculous on its face. No. You are the one who must change. Change or join the dead, politically speaking.

The image served up was Jonah Goldberg as suffering Stockholm syndrome then as buttress to a ruined building. A flying buttress to a church already crumbled, with that building inside an actual bubble surrounding a city. A bubble that for all his sharp intellect and unusually large storehouse of knowledge and learning Jonah Goldberg cannot see beyond. A ruined and crumbled church, its beautiful stained glass removed and auctioned, its stones carted off and used elsewhere, and there the buttress still stands valiantly with all its brilliance still imagining the structure it used to support still intact. While it's not.

Reading Jonah Goldberg, at this point, on anything other than history, is the same thing as listening to a gorgeous flying buttress to a once beautiful church existing inside a bubble.

And my respect turns to pity.

This pity I feel extends to Hillary Clinton supporters, real pity for those still imagining their party is well intentioned. Still pure and still good. Blind to our country devolving into a one-party system and all the unhappiness that goes with that condition. Still thinking in terms of party as sports team. People who derive self-satisfaction through association and loyalty to the "good party." It isn't. It's among the most hideous saddest and most rotten entities in existence, every revelatory item about the Democratic party in its present form shows this. So that by their support they are made rotten too. And not knowing that is pitiful beyond words.

And my little insignificant self can do nothing about that. Their opinions so strong they're unmovable. I'd be foolish to even try. The single thing left is not give it any energy at all. Not that withholding energy will starve it. I can only direct my own humanity. Pity, a true pity they've already decided they must make everything political, even breathing air is political and that's no exaggeration either. Not when the pope announces we must atone for the sin of global climate change. That's a bridge beyond too far. Fifteen bridges beyond too far. Twenty-five very long bridges beyond far too far. So giving it no energy means giving them all no energy. None at all. It pains me to my heart to acknowledge and face this harsh truth. And that means a lot more than simply not following a link that I know in advance cannot inform me. Pity that all that comes from such intelligent people, well balanced and worthwhile in other areas. Because no energy means exactly that, no energy whatsoever. Or else I'm assisting its survival.

Man, sometimes these itty-bitty insights served up by visual image sure can be a real bummer.