Take a photo of a barcode or cover
kurtpankau 's review for:
A prominent GOP strategist and first-gen Never-Trumper vents his spleen for 300 pages and it’s awe-inspiring.
Let’s get this out of the way first: no matter what you think of his politics, Wilson is one hell of a writer, and he is here to spew vitriol. There are no arguments here, just a litany of insults and rage that culminate in an unexpectedly warm vision for the future. And I mean that sincerely. This is the first book about politics in the Trump era that I’ve read that made me feel legitimately optimistic. But the bulk of the book is spent hurling insults at a long cadre of Trump acolytes, from Carter Page to Sean Hannity to Richard Spencer and everything in between. They all get burned in effigy.
Wilson’s main charge is that Trump has cannibalized the Republican party to form his own cult, and that his not only puts the country at risk, but it has destroyed the Republican Party. Not “is destroying” but “has destroyed”. He cites special elections as evidence of a coming blue wave and chastises his party members for campaigning in Trump’s idiom rather than running away from it. To his mind, that strategy can’t work for anyone not named Trump, and it only barely worked for Trump.
He blames Republicans for this—not so much the Trump voters, whom he is quick to dismiss as morons, but the strategists who saw him coming and did nothing. There are some mea culpas thrown in for good measure since he was one of those strategist. His excuse: "We always thought of conservatives as having a certain rational underpinning. We were so, so wrong." He talks about how the pundit class took the Tea Party movement and cultivated it into something that was supposed to be hungry for old-fashioned conservative values but was instead hungry for a strong-man. "In short, those voters we groomed since 2010 were perfect marks for Donald Trump, political con-man of the century."
There’s a skeeziness under this that never gets fully addressed. A sense of “I got you drunk so you’d come home with me, not THAT guy.” He spends so much time calling Trump-supporters fools, but only tacitly admits to helping celebrate foolishness, especially around conspiracy theories and distrust in the media. But he also blames the media for not knowing better than to fall for Trump’s antics, and he’s got a fair point there. I would have liked more contrition. He mentions Gorsuch a number of times without ever acknowledging that Gorsuch’s seat was stolen. Hell, I would have liked more arguments as to why Trump is a terrible businessman—a point Wilson asserts but never really justifies with evidence, and it’s not like the evidence is hard to find. But I’m not going to dock him points just because the book I wanted isn’t the book he wrote. He’s here to commit an act of iconoclasm.
Most of Wilson’s ire is directed at Republicans for either not realizing how toxic Trump would be or for enabling him. He dissects them with precision and elegance. He off-handedly calls Trump’s proposed border-wall “Douchehenge” and I laughed out loud. He refers to Don Jr and Eric Trump as Qusay and Uday (which is hilarious—look it up if you don’t get it). He calls out the Evangelical right for their hypocrisy in supporting Trump and basically suggests ousting them from the conservative movement. He gleefully recounts helping craft ads to defeat Roy Moore and effectively torpedo Steve Bannon’s post-Breitbart political career (a quid-pro-quo after Bannon had made threats about Wilson’s family). His most often-used insult is to call a man a virgin, which begins to feel tired until he draws a parallel with incels and jihadists, as if to assert that all violence is perpetrated but sexually repressed angry young men, and if that isn't one hell of a burn to likes of, well, Stephen Miller, then I don't know what is.
This is not to say that he doesn’t have bile for Democrats as well, it’s just broader. Things like "The political correctness culture… is all about punishing wrong thoughts." (no it isn’t) and “Democrats are objectively bad at politics” (okay, I can’t argue with that one). And it’s not to say that all of his clever jabs land. One line that invokes Billie Holiday feels particularly tone-deaf: "His father, who was once arrested at a Klan rally in Queens, famously red-lined New York apartments to prevent African-Americans from renting them. And the STRANGE FRUIT of Trump-the-elder's racism didn't fall far from the tree." (emphasis mine)
Finally, and most importantly, Wilson lays out a vision of conservatism that’s pragmatic and thoughtful. And while I don’t agree with his vision (or his assertion that "We've always been a party with our eyes cast to the far future”), it demonstrates a dreamy-eyed idealism and a legitimate love of country, and dammit, I’m here for smart people I don’t agree with!
Let’s get this out of the way first: no matter what you think of his politics, Wilson is one hell of a writer, and he is here to spew vitriol. There are no arguments here, just a litany of insults and rage that culminate in an unexpectedly warm vision for the future. And I mean that sincerely. This is the first book about politics in the Trump era that I’ve read that made me feel legitimately optimistic. But the bulk of the book is spent hurling insults at a long cadre of Trump acolytes, from Carter Page to Sean Hannity to Richard Spencer and everything in between. They all get burned in effigy.
Wilson’s main charge is that Trump has cannibalized the Republican party to form his own cult, and that his not only puts the country at risk, but it has destroyed the Republican Party. Not “is destroying” but “has destroyed”. He cites special elections as evidence of a coming blue wave and chastises his party members for campaigning in Trump’s idiom rather than running away from it. To his mind, that strategy can’t work for anyone not named Trump, and it only barely worked for Trump.
He blames Republicans for this—not so much the Trump voters, whom he is quick to dismiss as morons, but the strategists who saw him coming and did nothing. There are some mea culpas thrown in for good measure since he was one of those strategist. His excuse: "We always thought of conservatives as having a certain rational underpinning. We were so, so wrong." He talks about how the pundit class took the Tea Party movement and cultivated it into something that was supposed to be hungry for old-fashioned conservative values but was instead hungry for a strong-man. "In short, those voters we groomed since 2010 were perfect marks for Donald Trump, political con-man of the century."
There’s a skeeziness under this that never gets fully addressed. A sense of “I got you drunk so you’d come home with me, not THAT guy.” He spends so much time calling Trump-supporters fools, but only tacitly admits to helping celebrate foolishness, especially around conspiracy theories and distrust in the media. But he also blames the media for not knowing better than to fall for Trump’s antics, and he’s got a fair point there. I would have liked more contrition. He mentions Gorsuch a number of times without ever acknowledging that Gorsuch’s seat was stolen. Hell, I would have liked more arguments as to why Trump is a terrible businessman—a point Wilson asserts but never really justifies with evidence, and it’s not like the evidence is hard to find. But I’m not going to dock him points just because the book I wanted isn’t the book he wrote. He’s here to commit an act of iconoclasm.
Most of Wilson’s ire is directed at Republicans for either not realizing how toxic Trump would be or for enabling him. He dissects them with precision and elegance. He off-handedly calls Trump’s proposed border-wall “Douchehenge” and I laughed out loud. He refers to Don Jr and Eric Trump as Qusay and Uday (which is hilarious—look it up if you don’t get it). He calls out the Evangelical right for their hypocrisy in supporting Trump and basically suggests ousting them from the conservative movement. He gleefully recounts helping craft ads to defeat Roy Moore and effectively torpedo Steve Bannon’s post-Breitbart political career (a quid-pro-quo after Bannon had made threats about Wilson’s family). His most often-used insult is to call a man a virgin, which begins to feel tired until he draws a parallel with incels and jihadists, as if to assert that all violence is perpetrated but sexually repressed angry young men, and if that isn't one hell of a burn to likes of, well, Stephen Miller, then I don't know what is.
This is not to say that he doesn’t have bile for Democrats as well, it’s just broader. Things like "The political correctness culture… is all about punishing wrong thoughts." (no it isn’t) and “Democrats are objectively bad at politics” (okay, I can’t argue with that one). And it’s not to say that all of his clever jabs land. One line that invokes Billie Holiday feels particularly tone-deaf: "His father, who was once arrested at a Klan rally in Queens, famously red-lined New York apartments to prevent African-Americans from renting them. And the STRANGE FRUIT of Trump-the-elder's racism didn't fall far from the tree." (emphasis mine)
Finally, and most importantly, Wilson lays out a vision of conservatism that’s pragmatic and thoughtful. And while I don’t agree with his vision (or his assertion that "We've always been a party with our eyes cast to the far future”), it demonstrates a dreamy-eyed idealism and a legitimate love of country, and dammit, I’m here for smart people I don’t agree with!