How times have changed.
Love him or hate him, everyone and anyone who is genuinely interested in achieving “transparency” owes President Donald J. Trump an eternal debt of gratitude, for had it not been for his meteoric political rise, it would still be possible for some to doubt the existence and profound corruption of the Government-Academic-Media-Entertainment complex (GAME).
Courtesy of President Trump, this phenomenon is now axiomatic.
In the Age of Trump, those who not long ago labored inexhaustibly to convince their respective constituencies that they were mortal ideological enemies have pulled back the curtain on this act so as to fulfill their sole objective:
Stopping the Great Disruptor, Donald J. Trump.
For example, Max Boot has long been recognized by friend and foe alike as the quintessential neoconservative, a tenacious military interventionist whose support for George W. Bush’s “War on Terror”—and every American military engagement for which this has served as the pretext—has been uncompromising. Yet Boot, doubtless because he is an outspoken Never Trumper, now appears in the pages of the unapologetically anti-Trump Washington Post.
And in his most recent editorial, Boot accuses Trump of “normalizing racism.” Man, Economy, and Stat... Best Price: $23.43 Buy New $29.95 (as of 08:10 UTC - Details)
In December of 2017, in an essay published by Foreign Policy, Boot claimed that for years he had been “a smart-alecky conservative who scoffed at ‘political correctness,’” but “the Trump era has opened my eyes” on the reality of “white privilege.”
Boot represents the GOP-Neoconservative Media Axis—what I call “Big Conservatism,” or “the Big Con”—insofar as he is a self-styled conservative who spares no occasion to ingratiate himself to recognizable leftists by renouncing Trump and his supporters as “racist.” George W. Bush, John McCain, Megan McCain, talk radio host Michael Medved, Mitt Romney, the writers at National Review, and a whole lot of other self-described conservative (neoconservative) politicians and commentators have seized every available opportunity to do the same.
For reasons that I’ve listed repeatedly, I am usually the last person to hurl the “R-word” at others. The main reason that I refrain from doing so is that the term, perhaps from overuse, has become all but meaningless. However, if a white “racist” is not someone who habitually endorses actions that lead to the destruction of millions of non-white men, women, and children, then there is no white racism.
The point, though, is that Max Boot and every one of his Never Trumping neoconservative fellow travelers have repeatedly appropriated their substantial resources for the express purpose of waging war.
Almost without exception, these wars have been waged against Third World peoples of color.
Although Boot and his comrades labor inexhaustibly to convince The New York Times and The Washington Post of their unmitigated contempt for the “bigotry” and “racism” of those to their right, it is the latter who have no moral alternative but to unequivocally condemn the racially and religiously charged imperialism of neoconservatives like Boot.
Boot claims to have belatedly arrived at the revelation that he has “white privilege.” Whether this is an expression of sincerity or but another attempt on Boot’s part to posture for the left is anyone’s guess. At any rate, that the hundreds of thousands of dead, maimed, orphaned, and displaced brown and Islamic peoples whose fate was sealed by the very wars for which he was the loudest of cheerleaders didn’t suffice to awake Boot from the dogmatic slumbers of his ethnocentric ideology, makes it all but a foregone conclusion that Boot remains a champion of the same neo-imperialism that he’s always favored.
Max Boot is the proverbial textbook illustration of the Big Con in another critical respect:
He is morally unserious.
The Boots of the world compete with one another over who can come up with the greatest number of adjectives in condemning the allegedly “racist” remarks of a public figure on whom the left has set its sights. Yet they continue to advocate on behalf of literally homicidal policies, of actions, that result in seas of blood for legions of non-white men, women, and children.
If “racism” and “Islamophobia” have any meaning at all, then surely Max Boot and his fellow neoconservatives, given that their imperialist ideology is almost invariably directed toward Muslims and people of color, are guilty of these moral transgressions in spades.
Back in January, Joy Reid, of MSNBC, accused National Review writer David French of arguing that nuclear war was worth risking because “it will only kill Democrats and minorities.” Reid is a disreputable person whose intellectual dishonesty renders her unfit to be a public figure. She radically misread French. That being said, given that French is an Iraq War veteran, and since he does indeed write for a publication that not only vigorously advocated for this war that by now virtually everyone recognizes for the catastrophe that it is but which, to this day, refuses to apologize for its part in promoting it, can it be any surprise that some would interpret French as viewing the loss of non-white lives as a price worth paying for a war that he and his neoconservative colleagues regard as “just?”
When National Review writer Kevin Williamson was hired by left-leaning The Atlantic, the leftist rag Mother Jones blasted Williamson and NR for their “race problem.” To make the point, Kevin Drum alluded to a 2014 piece of Williamson’s in which the latter, in an ostensible critique of the Democratic governor of Illinois, superfluously offered a depiction of black underclass existence that featured an anti-white black kid using ghetto-slang, a kid who Williamson said made “the universal gesture of primate territorial challenge.”
By the lights of this Mother Jones commentator, Williamson’s “primate” reference in his description of the conduct of a black youth convicts him and, by implication, his editors at NR of having a “race problem.”
The Road to Serfdom: T... Best Price: $3.06 Buy New $1.99 (as of 03:40 UTC - Details) Mother Jones, but one more clog in the vast machinery that is the Racism-Industrial-Complex (RIC), has zero credibility on questions regarding race and “racism.” However, given NR’s extensive track record of advancing preemptive invasions of foreign lands, the Third World countries of peoples of color who, most recently, tend to be overwhelmingly Muslim, it is not surprising that Williamson and his benefactors are susceptible to charges of racism (and Islamophobia).
So as to avoid any misunderstandings, it should be noted in no uncertain terms that the neocons’ leftist critics are disingenuous. That they are concerned only with defeating those Republicans who happen to be in power at the moment should be obvious from two facts:
First, leftist Democrats have favored the very same imperialist war-mongering for which neocon Republicans are known. Barack Obama, for instance, launched over 100,000 drone attacks on seven (Third World, non-white countries) over an eight year period. No other American president has launched war in that many places over that long a period of time.
Second, for decades, leftists spent all of their time demonizing George W. Bush, John McCain, and every other Republican national figure for their imperialism and racism (and everything else). Now, though, and through the prism of Donald Trump, leftists like Bill Maher claim to have discovered “a new found respect” for those who they once reduced to the status of devils or things.
The bottom line is this: No one, least of all those libertarians and traditionalist conservatives who, at considerable cost to their own livelihoods and reputations, have long resisted the unnecessary and unjustified destruction of the lands of people of color, should be subjected to lectures on racism by Max Boot, National Review, and like neoconservatives.
Relative to neoconservatives, the hands of those on the old right are as pure as the driven snow. Moreover, the old right has defined itself to a significant extent by its efforts to spare the lives of countless numbers of non-white, often non-Christian, men, women, and children who neoconservatives threatened with their militarist, imperialist policies.
No, neither Max Boot nor any of his ideological ilk have an ounce of moral capital with which to pontificate on matters of race, religion, and “racism.”