[M]ost people living in the United States today—certainly more than half—are not Americans in any meaningful sense of the term.
My blood ran cold when I read those words.
It was in the New York Times that I came across that assertion (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/26/opinion/trump-republican-party.html). That article linked to another article in Vox (https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2021/4/1/22356594/conservatives-right-wing-democracy-claremont-ellmers), which in turn linked to the fons et origo of the quote, an essay by Glenn Ellmers entitled “‘Conservatism’ is no Longer Enough” in a publication of the Claremont Institute, The American Mind (https://americanmind.org/salvo/why-the-claremont-institute-is-not-conservative-and-you-shouldnt-be-either/).
In an earlier post, I pointed out that those entities known as “think tanks” are places where anything but thinking is rewarded. What the tanks spew out is propaganda in support of their political or economic bias. I recall reading several years ago about a miscreant being booted out of a conservative tank for deviating from the party line. I wish I had bothered to save the page.
The party line of the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy (to give it its full name) was clearly stated by Ellmers in his essay:
Claremont was one of the very few serious institutions on the right to make an intellectual case for Trumpism.
Whether Claremont elsewhere was able to amass enough brainpower to make such an “intellectual” case is not important at the moment, as we focus on Ellmers’ article. Actually, one can dispose of the intellectual pretense of the piece by red-flagging two fallacies that its argument has at its heart: The “No-True-Scotsman” fallacy and solipsism.
The “No-True-Scotsman” fallacy is an attempt to preserve the purity of one’s prejudices by defining out any examples that are contradictory (https://drnormalvision.blogspot.com/2011/06/drop-puck.html). Thus, Ellmers alleges that his political opponents do not share the beliefs and attitudes which he claims are those of “True Americans”:
They do not believe in, live by, or even like the principles, traditions, and ideals that until recently defined America as a nation and as a people.
What are the beliefs of “True Americans”? Why those that Ellmers solipsistically has established as reality in his own little mind.
In truth, Ellmers does not bother to exemplify what separates the “True” from the “False” Americans. All discussion is conducted on a plane of miasmic abstraction and vagueness. He claims,
[a]uthentic Americans still want to have decent lives. They want to work, worship, raise a family, and participate in public affairs without being treated as insolent upstarts in their own country. Therefore, we need a conception of a stable political regime that allows for the good life.
What in hell does that signify? Do Ellmers’ opponents not want to “work, worship, raise a family, etc”?
But somehow it all comes down to “[t]he U.S. Constitution no longer works.”
So what to do?
Accept the fact that what we need is a counter-revolution. Learn some useful skills, stay healthy, and get strong. (One of my favorite weightlifting coaches likes to say, “Strong people are harder to kill, and more useful generally.”)
This counter-revolution (“true” patriots revolting against their own country?) is to prevent “the victory of progressive tyranny.” “See you in the gulag,” says Ellmers.
Need we point out that from the Trumpian chants of “Lock her up!” and “Hang Mike Pence” to the erection of a gallows on the Capitol grounds it has been the rightwingers who have threatened punishment and death? And it is Ellmers who brings killing into the equation.
*
And so when Ellmers ends his piece with the call: “It’s all hands on deck now,” my blood runs cold. What would ensue in the wake of a triumph by Ellmersian forces? How do you rule over an America where more than half the population are allegedly unAmerican and would stand as a threat to those “True” Americans who want to work and (need we be reminded) worship? Ellmers has gulags on his mind (better us, he’s probably thinking, than the other guys setting them up). But how are you going to contain 81 million people who voted for Biden?
Surely they'll come up with a better way of nullifying non-American Americans.
My blood runs cold.
