When I first joined the Conservative Party as a teenager, many long years ago, the opening sentence of the rules read thus:
Membership of the Conservative Party is open to anyone who opposes Socialism and Communism ..."
And there you have it in a nutshell. Conservatism, and the Right in politics generally, isn't really any kind of ideology - it even has to define itself negatively, by what it's opposed to. It's essentially an unintellectual, not-very-articulate Burkean tendency. Genuinely articulate Rightists such as Roger Scruton are few and far between - and they don't have cults, cliques and followers. Leftists, who really are ideologues and can't envisage any other way of life, spit out words like 'capitalism' as if that, too, is a competing ideology - and that's an ignorant misunderstanding, too. 'Thatcherism'? Not really: Keith Joseph notwithstanding, Thatcher's was a forceful petite bourgeois tendency on HRT. 'Reaganism'? Not much up top, is there? - as Thatcher herself said. 'Gaullism'? Nah - just nationalism. 'Neo-liberalism'? If anything, an expression of the desire to clear the decks for some fairly aggressive money-making. Etc etc etc.
So if you'd asked me any time up until very recently, I'd have said that in my political lifetime the Right has been essentially non-ideological. Frustrating for the Left because, for all their fervour, ratiocination and well-written 5,000-word essays peppered with nicely-turned neologisms, they've nothing intellectual to grapple with except the splitters in the other Leftist factions.
Until very recently. Because now, it's quite evident from the voluminous output of what we might loosely call the 'Trumpite' camp, there is thinking going on that is identifiably ideological.
Of course, it's also messily bound up with some entirely mercenary motives; and as with any broad movement, one can readily discern several camps whose varying emphases in their pro-Trump enthusiasms are really quite different - the makings of fissures and splits yet to become a serious problem for The Donald's regime; but that will come. IMHO it's rather too early to attempt to systematise all this; but it's brewing up to a point where one will be able to.** There are some early attempts at articulation - here's one - but not perhaps very convincing yet. (This of course isn't to be marvelled at, because being essentially Right-ish, the whole Trump thing will have a strong tendency to inarticulacy.)
Meanwhile, as all this is slowly coagulating into something with defined contours we can pin down and gaze at, we face the sobering fact that many of its leading lights in the highest of high places are unhinged, messianic, in a massive hurry, drunk on power, and untouched by normal considerations of prudence. We need no better evidence than the truly amazing spectacle of grown men in high office, with all the resources in the world should they care to use them with due deliberation, conducting their communications like a bunch of doped-up teenagers on their mobile 'phones plotting a Friday-night fight with a neighbouring crew. The average County Lines drugs gang isn't as crass in its actions as these high-ranking promoters of the Trumpian Flame. FFS, what is to become of the 'Free World'?
ND
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** if anyone knows of a good early attempt to do this, or would care to try themselves in less than, say, 100 words, we'd all like to know!
27 comments:
When my wife was invited to stand for the Conservatives she said "But I'm a Social Democrat."
They said "That's all right, dear, as long as you're not National Front."
@dearieme I am surprised they didn't say "yes we know you are a social democrat, that's why we asked you to be the 'Conservative' candidate."
Much of our problems today stem from the bulk of the Tories being fairly wet on lots of important issues. E.g. crime and immigration.
Ah but you are talking about recently. I am talking about an era where the big thing was to defeat Michael Foot. And happily the old Moscow-gold-grabber was utterly defeated.
Does the 'Authoritarian' v 'Libertarian' have a say in this?
M.
Surely - that the right might be becoming "idoleological" - a response to the fact that the ideological left have seized the reins of power, regardless of the government in place.
"idoleological" .... to the extent of worshipping idols? Woke? Covid? Climate Change? It would seem that the "progressive" Left has progressed so far it has ended up morphing into Millennial cults. Progress? I don't think so...
I was less amazed by the content than I was with the incompetence about it - if you're going to do Blair style avoidance of record, don't get caught, and especially know who you're adding. The US is no longer somewhere you can share intelligence with and be confident it'll be handled well.
And we did get a glimpse of the Yes Men disagreeing with the boss in private though.
a glimpse of the Yes Men disagreeing with the boss in private
oh indeed, yes - highly illuminating and just one of the signs of fissures to come
the grounds for the disagreement are telling, too
@ND - I'm not the fissures will matter, we're dealing with Starmeresque people who will change their public views in exchange for power.
Trump hasn't drained any swamp, he's just switched the inhabitants to people loyal to him personally, and some of the cognitive dissonance over the pro-Trump crowd is highly informative.
I mean, we all make allowances for our favoured personalities, but to go from wanting to lock Hilary up for her emails, to excusing this?
From The Atlantic article;
"But when Waltz added a journalist—presumably by mistake—to his principals committee, he created new security and legal issues. "
Assume Waltz did it deliberately, not by mistake.
You could also assume that Waltz' bet was either charges are never laid, or that The Dear Leader would issue a pardon at crunch time.
The chat talks about sending a message - presumably, mainly to the Houthis and their backers.
On the other hand, there's the "Europe PATHETIC" bit. There's another message, made deliberately public. It isn't just Trump shooting his mouth off. That view is more widely held within (for want of a better term) MAGA.
The apparent difference of opinion 'tween Vance and Trump? Yeah, different camps coalescing.
So, who exactly is the Dear Leader going to be when the pardons are needed?
"We need no better evidence than the truly amazing spectacle of grown men in high office, with all the resources in the world should they care to use them with due deliberation, conducting their communications like a bunch of doped-up teenagers on their mobile 'phones plotting a Friday-night fight with a neighbouring crew. "
What, you mean like the UK government did during covid, as exposed by their Whatsapp messages that were eventually made public?
As for how Biden's crew behaved in private, well we don't know do we, because no-one even admitted who was making 'his' decisions, let alone how those decisions were arrived at.
The fact is those in power are no different to the rest of us, and behave exactly as we do. The general public stopped being serious decades ago, and politicians are made of the same cloth.
Remember the neocons, they were a similar bunch. The idea was to do things and by the time us oiks had worked out what was going on they had moved on to doing something else.
I suppose the US has worked out that replacing manufacture with services has not really worked out. The GDP leverage from making stuff exceeds the GDP leverage from cutting hair and pouring coffee. Smart people moved making stuff offshore - the beancounters said so. Then also a service economy is not much good for warfighting. The massed NDA batteries from the lawyer battallions do not scare Putin or Xi much. Similarly for the beancounter battallions.
Notions of Net Zero have not proved to yield much useful employment - plenty for lawyers and scribblers but nothing else. Similarly Woke has proved a rich source of timewasting and frustration making. The social science grads have not translated into useful economics and the physical sciences have run up against some hard barriers. Oh dear.
Cometh the hour, cometh Trump and friends. Will they solve these problems - nah - but they see advantage for themselves and have seen the checks and balances of civilised society are very feeble and easily exploited. Dangerous times.
The end result? The neocon's notions fell apart when they contacted reality and I think Trumpism will fall apart much the same. In the meantime fill your boots me hearties. Pirates they are, and will sink a few ships before they are finished.
I think the one constant in Trumpism is being pro-Israel - after all, he made his money in New York.
But Trump's a symptom, not a cause. Male real wages in the States have been falling since 1971. And male wages are important for family formation. When we were expecting #2 we extended the house - but I was still going to work on a Honda 125. And when we got a YUGE and unmerited retention bonus before Y2K arrived, it paid off half the mortgage.
Real wages haven't been falling quite as much as in the States, but real house prices have soared way above inflation. I could afford a small house in 1978 on £60 a week, a poor wage even then, but never went abroad. My kids have travelled the world but need the Bank of Mum&Dad to buy houses (and even with a big sub the one in Oxford's up the Swanee).
New Yorkers would say: Trump spent his inheritance in NY ...
(Might be the same thing, so far as your point is concerned)
"I could afford a small house in 1978 on £60 a week" Net or gross?
As for US real wages, I gather that the figures are a bit misleading because they ignore the fact that even wage-earners in the US often get a large part of their "compensation" not as wages but as "benefits", especially medical benefits. Alas, the cost of medical insurance has (I believe) rocketed, which presumably partly explains why the wages part of compensation has fallen.
I'll take your word for it that the wages comparison is otherwise fair: full-time worker vs full-time worker, people of the same age being compared, etc etc. But I must say that my experience is that such comparisons are rarely fair: indeed, if they come from, say, the Guardian you might be wise to assume they are likely to be bent.
"I think the one constant in Trumpism is being pro-Israel"
And this is the man who, the Dems and their lickspittles assured us all, was anti-semitic, xenophobic, racist; indeed another Hitler. How quickly the tune changes.
More comedy gold from the members of the chat.
Accusations that Goldberg is lying, followed by Goldberg stating "okay, I'll releasing more info then", followed by the CIA scrambling to ask him not to release X or Y despite their boss apparently stating it as not confidential...
I am curious how they got some of that stuff in Signal, the US government and military have two networks, one for "regular" business, one for secure business - and devices for one are blocked from working on the other, nor can you transfer data from one to another easily due to the grade of encryption and how locked down devices are.
Text, you can copy, but documents and images? Someone has been ordered to do something they shouldn't have somewhere along the line.
Some among us might enjoy a read of https://time.com/7269166/dark-enlightenment-history-essay/
because the tariffs scheme is likely to fall apart and something new be required.
"Dark Enlightenment" - haven't heard that phrase for years. Takes me right back to the days of Ricky Vaughn, "Game Theory" and all that.
But there is a 2013 graphic showing the various strands and connections. I only note that Taki, who had a Speccy column for decades, and Steve Hsu, the Chinese/American physicist who was hosted in Downing Street by Dominic Cummings, both appear.
https://web.archive.org/web/20130424022247/http://habitableworlds.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/darkenlightenment2.png
OT, marvellous comment at Unherd
https://unherd.com/2025/03/britains-defence-strategy-is-pure-cakeism/
"It cannot help all those responsible for formulating the UK’s defence strategy in the 21st century that they do so in buildings whose high-ceilinged ornamented rooms once witnessed the deliberations of Victorian and Edwardian statesmen conducting the affairs of an empire that ruled over palm and pine and a great deal else in between.
A more realistic view would settle on them if they were housed in portacabins in Mablethorpe and empty commercial buildings in Ramsgate.
Instead of lunching in Westminster pubs boasting connections with Wren, they could breathe in the present condition of the country as they walk along the Mablethorpe seafront amid the closed businesses bearing faded marks of their past history, and chalets now serving as permanent housing, while trying to find a chip shop that was still trading.
The large bins outside houses whose yards are nevertheless rubbish-strewn, and the absence of human activity even at midday, would remind the strategic planners of what resources they have to draw upon. The brave display of just hanging on in the neighbouring resorts of Chapel St Leonards and Sutton-on-Sea the extent of the capacity of resilience even in the state of peace known as the welfare state.
Instead of walking to their place of work along central London thoroughfares where on turning a corner one can be surprised at meeting a statue of a Victorian military hero, and under classical facades displaying commercial and intellectual wealth of generations whose ghosted images only remain in Edwardian postcards, the planners had to perambulate through the desiccated Ramsgate town centre, what a sobering dose of present-day reality they would experience.
There, among the art deco remains of the promenade garden set up by a titled lady in the 1920s that now resemble ancient Greek ruins on Sicily, the planners could join the other DFLs (Down From London) who, like the small strata of the very rich in Third World countries, are the only ones who can afford the high-end apartments now sited where the magnificent 1930s lido used to welcome hordes of holidaymakers.
The planners could move among those they plan for; the Thanet youth whose unemployment is at 10%; the children a third of whom are defined as living in poverty; the JAMs whose pre-Covid economic fragility was increased by one third in number of Universal Credit claims thereafter.
Living and planning in such places, the planners would be very clear about what jealous power should want to covet such a powerful, rich, and global country."
Trumpism as ideology: as Disraeli said, all is race. Trump's father was a German, his mother a Gael.
So Trumpism will consist of meticulous feyness.
Apropos darkenlightenment - seems as if this idea goes back to Morlocks and Eloi and even Ancient Greece/Rome. Snag is making such a scheme work - and have some stability. Perhaps new age workers (such as are needed) can labour away in the factories and sleep in company dormitories, reproduction if allowed to be on company terms etc etc. Nice people can drive cars and look after the AI systems. Nicer people can kick all the others around. Can't see it working myself.
As for a defence strategy, really a freeby to get one's kids educated at other's expense and accumulate a large pension. If you avoid the mid career chuckout. Push comes to shove we run up the white flag and the submarines bu*(er off to the Southern Hemisphere where they might be of some use to the Ozzies - or beached.
Locally we have a 1930s Art Deco garage being converted into posh flats and retail. Meanwhile heavy traffic thunders past on the ring road as it has since before Widdicombe's time. 400 yards further on starts the street slated for widening 40+ years ago continuing to crumble. Interspersed with a few tyre fitters, fly blown vape shops and cafes. Can't see it working myself.
The quality of commentary BTL is on a par with the worst BBC HYS circle jerk where TDS is proudly displayed as a badge of ignorance with frankly (properly) racist remarks about the Americans.
Not so long ago everyone pointed out that the US debt was unsustainable and something needed to be done. Trump is doing something about it - removing excess wasteful spending (DOGE) and getting the rest of the world to stop living off US consumer spending via tariffs. But we don't like that, so Orange Man Bad despite the reason most Remoaners give for wanting back into the EU is the "frictionless trade" which is acknowledging being outside results in trade being subject to expensive regulation and tariffs.
Simultaneously the European model of spunking the Cold War peace dividend up the wall on "social" spending is falling apart. Telling everyone that a woman can have a penis doesn't increase productivity nor produce armaments. Germany can't afford to run its industry on expensive energy caused by Green fuckwittery so a new bogeyman is required to appease the plebs rather than concentrate on who caused the problems (weak and useless politicians and the lazy electorate who voted for them).
Step forward our old enemy the Russians. We'll piss them off even more just as the NATO safety blanket is pulled from under us and it becomes evident that the EU has no ability to project any hard power.
Matt, I don't actually see that much TDS here. Total Despair Syndrome, perhaps.
Trump or no Trump, the US is a continental sized nation, self-sufficient (if they want to be) in pretty much everything. They will still be there when Trump steps down.
The UK is a little different. Remember the UKIP/Leave poster of a huge queue of "refugees" and the big caption "Breaking Point"?
It seems we have passed that, perhaps thanks to Boris and Rishi with their huge imports of warm bodies. Just adding bodies hardly touches GDP, and reduces per capita GDP.
Who would have thunk it? I suppose anyone looking at the GDP of Burkina Faso?
There's a deal of ruin in a nation, and we've tested that to destruction. We kept adding straws, and finally the camel's back broke.
“But the plans were on display…”
“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”
“That’s the display department.”
“With a flashlight.”
“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”
“So had the stairs.”
“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Such is the world of Trump and Venezuelan prisoners whisked out the country. Pinched from a legal discussion about disclosure of documents.
Can't help feeling there may be something good to come out of Trump's thrashing around - eventually. Our political world does seem ossified and filled with supernumeraries timewasters and complete ****s. In the past a nice little war might get rid of a weak kingdom or ginger up a sleepy one. The big players seem set in stone atm and nucs and comfortable citizenry put a stop to any action. Some other way to induce creative (and not so creative) destruction may be needed.
Only another 46 months to go though and in case you were wondering J D Vance would probably be a more vigorous catalyst.
£60 a week gross. The house cost 9.5k, and the local authority gave me another 1k to insulate it and replace the earth/flags kitchen floor with screed and quarry tiles on top of polystyrene. 1978.
"The big players seem set in stone atm and nucs and comfortable citizenry put a stop to any action. Some other way to induce creative (and not so creative) destruction may be needed."
I've said for some time the Western social democratic model has become impervious to democratic change, and is able to resist all attempts to reform it peacefully. Thus it can only be altered by forced outside it imposed upon it, almost certainly by force.
When 50%+ of the population are in net receipt of State funds it becomes impossible to change that by democratic means. No one votes for their own impoverishment. So we will not vote ourselves out of this.
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