Trump Democrats Explain Themselves to the Conservatives Who Insult Them. By Rush Limbaugh. RushLimbaugh.com, April 4, 2016
Aron:
From Alabama to Denmark and Nevada to the Netherlands, and from Arizona to Sweden and Germany, Hungary and Poland, voters are flocking to right/left populist, nationalist, isolationist and nativist demagogues, parties and movements.
The
trend sweeping Europe and the United States is broader and deeper than
politics. The attraction of these suddenly popular phenomena appear to stem in
a larger measure from an enormous gap between the beliefs of the “post-modern”
and largely post-Christian Western elites (political, media, cultural,
academic), on the one hand, and their countries’ hoi polloi on the other.
This
chasm is not merely ideological. It is ethical, linguistic — almost
anthropological.
For the
elites, nothing, or almost nothing, is “written in stone.” Everything is fluid,
situational, pragmatically determined. As the founder of existentialism,
Jean-Paul Sartre put it, “existence precedes essence.” With “God dead,” as
Nietzsche famously proclaimed, ethical absolutes are no more. Values are a
matter of personal choice — and one is just as good as another. Nothing and no
one is better or worse. Just “different.” There is no “truth” but multiple
“truths.” And, following another postulate of post-modernism articulated by
Nietzsche, “there are no facts, only interpretations.” Hence the
on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand approach of elite media which gives equal
credence to, say, democratically elected governments and unelected
dictatorships.
Similarly,
there are neither “just” defensive wars nor “unjust” wars of aggression. All
are “conflicts” and “violence.” Hence, any “peace” (aka, “political solution”),
no matter how strained, short-lived, or outright fraudulent, is preferable to
the battle for the victory of good over evil.
Borders
and national sovereignty are atavisms. Hence such quintessentially elite
bureaucratic projects as the EU, the Schengen “Europe without borders,” and the
single European currency. The military is just as obsolete both as an
instrument of geopolitics and a means of defending one’s values or those of
one’s allies or clients. Ideologies, and the hatreds they inspire, should not
exist and, in any case, can be resolved by a “dialogue.”
On the
other side of the chasm are millions who crave certainties. They believe that
there is an absolute hierarchy of values. That there is “right” and “wrong.”
Their moral credos or “essence” shape and guide their “existence,” not the
other way around. To them, God is not dead. In President Obama’s words, they
cling to their guns and their religion.
They
believe that there is truth and that some facts are irrefutable and not open to
interpretations. One such fact is that some hatreds are inexpiable, that
conflicts they lead to are unappeasable and cannot be resolved by negotiations
or concessions but only by a victory of the one side over the other. And in
such cases they believe one should strike first. They also believe that borders
are sovereign and that militaries exist to be used to defend principles and
territories.
They
seem to feel that political correctness is rendering their countries incapable
of conducting conversations on matters they consider vital. It took a series of
simultaneous attacks by Islamic militants in Paris last year for the French
president to identify their credo as islamisme
radical. But President Obama could not bring himself to define the
terrorists in these terms. He called them “a bunch of zealots” and he refused
to acknowledge the religious and racial hatred as he described the killing of
the shoppers in a Jewish deli as “randomly shoot [ing] a bunch of folks.”
The
“cultural” difference between the elites and the “people” has always existed.
The
deep weariness of such euphemisms and obfuscations may account for the almost
reflexive, near-cathartic enthusiasm (no matter how misguided) for those who
are “telling it like it is” – something that a plurality of Donald Trump’s
primary voters cite as the key to their support.
This is
not to argue for or against each of these Weltanschauungs. The “cultural”
difference between the elites and the “people” has always existed. But the size
of the gulf today may have rendered populist demagogues on both the right and
left dangerously more attractive.
Let us
hope that the Western establishment sees the danger and starts adjusting its
vocabulary and values to the point where it can talk to its people in ways that
the latter will find credible, respectful, and understandable.
