A Good, Clean Sparring Match

Duking it out with a reader

Rocky Marciano beating the snot out of Jersey Joe Walcott, 1952. - Getty Images

To all my paid subscribers, I know I intimated last week that I was working on a Robbie Robertson/Band appreciation, which plenty of you expressed enthusiasm about. (The others, who only listen to Taylor Swift and the like, said, “What the hell are you talking about? Does The Band know how to play ‘We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together’?” I pity them. They are sad people.) And honest to God, I am working on that aforementioned piece. I’ve been putting in real time. Too much, actually. I’ve re-read Robbie’s memoir, and Levon Helm’s, and re-watched all the documentaries on both.  And I’m swimming in The Band right now. Which is never a bad place to swim, actually. I regard that place as the center of the musical universe, as I care to know it. So more to come at a later date.

Except that I keep getting interrupted by blasted politics, driving me to distraction. Which I suspect probably applies to a lot of you, as well, and is why I’m telling you so. Life interrupts our best intentions, always. The debates, the arraignments, you know the drill.  When Substack first announced their Notes in April – basically their equivalent of Twitter, or as Twitter’s demented boss Elon Musk calls it, “X,”  or as I now call Twitter, “MySpace,”  since that is the irrelevance Elon is driving Twitter to -  I was skeptical. I have been, since social media was invented, a virulently anti-social-media guy. (Ignore the Washington Examiner links, who stores our archive, those were Weekly Standard pieces). I’m a firm believer that social media mostly destroys people, coaxing out their worst exhibitionistic instincts.  Which is why if you’ve tried to follow me on Twitter, you can’t.  I have never offered so much as a single post on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. I hate them all with my whole heart, though please re-Tweet this if you read it. (Hypocrisy, thy name is Matt Labash.)

But Notes, which has no word-count limit, and which feels a lot more like writing real emails to people you might want to actually talk to (email to friends and frenemies alike, being a place where I have long figured out future pieces, an essential ingredient of my writing life), seemed  like a place where I might hit an audience bullseye, since everyone on Notes tends to already be Substack subscribers. Also, a guy has to make a living.  So chalk it up to a greedhead marketing ploy. I realize plenty of you free riders might think I look like I’m having so much fun (and I am!) that I might write this site just for fun. (I would not!) I assure you I wouldn’t be writing it at all if I weren’t getting paid for it, as I’d rather be fly fishing or walking my dog or kayaking or chopping wood or spending time with my kids, in that exact order. (Sorry kids, you’re still fifth place – not too shabby!) But for the aforementioned reasons, I decided to experiment with Notes a bit now and then, when I have something to say, but don’t want to wrap a full essay around it.  Maybe I’m just selfishly hoping for the occasional paid subscriber conversion.  (Sorry for all the naked transparency, will try to be less honest going forward.)  But Notes occasionally takes me to interesting places.

All of which is a preamble to say that after posting this on Notes right before last night’s debate, which you’ll have to click through to read the whole thing…..

…….a fellow Substacker challenged me on my approach.  And I am not afraid of challenge. I’m a firm believer that we are made better from being forced to clarify our own beliefs. And I still believe in me, over his challenge. (Sorry, I’m biased. I recently spelled that out in my full-on Vivek Ramasmarmy hitpiece.) But I thought it might be instructive to reprint our conversation here, for those of you not on Notes. Because I think it’s where a lot of us are living at the moment. In that in-between tension, trying to figure out how to go forward with the people who disagree with us, but who we don’t actually hate, and sometimes even love. And we should keep on loving them. Because we should never let hate be the answer to any question. When hate becomes the answer, we are sunk.

My co-combatant’s name is David Atkinson, a Slack Tide subscriber. I have not fully vetted him, and so if he turns out to be a kook, don’t hang it on me. I just know that he posed real, articulate, hard-minded questions, and so I tried to provide equally hard-minded answers. This is what our discussion looked like, which I’m reprinting with light editorial clean-up, as we were spitting fire in the heat of a moment:

David Atkinson: I agree Ramaswamy googled “MAGA beliefs” when creating his platform, but disparaging the voters is a poor strategy to convincing them. You're a farmer cursing the soil on his land instead of doing the work to improve it.

Matt Labash: Oh, I don’t know about that. I’ve done plenty of work to cultivate the soil. But the soil is rocky and barren, if you haven’t noticed. So never underestimate the cathartic effects of a good cursing. Or, put another way, it’s hard to reason with cultists. And whatever semi-legitimate frustration it might have originally grown out of, that’s all MAGA now is. I don’t say that from a distance, but sadly, as someone with plenty of friends and relatives in the cult. When their cult leader has been impeached twice, indicted four times, tried to overthrow his own government and the will of the people, and nearly got his own vice president hanged, and he’s still leading the field by 40 points? You begin to get the hint that they aren’t susceptible to reason. They’re not interested in it. So when reason fails, we use the tools at our disposal: light ridicule. Because I’m also a fan of placing blame where it’s due. A cult leader’s only power is derived from his followers. And so the problem isn’t merely that Trump lies incessantly, it’s that they want to be lied to. Which is why Ramaswamy has made such cynical calculations. He might be a dishonest man, but he’s not a stupid one. If you watched the debate last night, you’ll notice Vivek didn’t get booed for lying. Christie got booed for telling the truth.

David Atkinson: I agree with your debate assessment, and I am infuriated that Fox didn't hold Ramaswamy to answer the J6 question all others were firing-squadded with. But why is Trump believed? Distrust in the system is well-earned, and we'll never correct excessive distrust if we just ridicule those who aren't sufficiently balanced and critical. They are analog, they are right-brained, they are going with a simple narrative because they feel under threat. Which they are, and so are we, if we are still in academia, have kids at large in the culture, or dare to speak-out against PC nostrums.

Catharsis can be overdone, just ask an Ex-Lax abusing bulimic. Preaching to the choir doesn't seem harmful, unless it makes the choir more certain that they must become extremists living among the infidels. The political equivalent of The Benedict Option seems quite tempting, until you figure out it leads to becoming politically irrelevant.

Light ridicule closes the minds of the convinceable, I like the way Mary Katharine Ham put it in a recent interview {editorial interjection: I am old friends and former colleagues with and love Mary Katharine Ham}… “you're not gonna convince these people while expressing how much you hate them.” I also don't think you can be like Andy McCarthy and just wait for this to blow over, we need to find a way to reach these people. A third party run by somebody might do it, but it has to be more than a Nader-style protest, it has to convince the unconvinceable.

No ill feelings toward you, and you are not off-base about everything, I just think you've got frustration boiling over from watching the unprincipled profit. It's easy to get angry, but hard to get angry in the right way to make it effective.

Matt Labash: I hear what you’re saying, but as someone who has spent many, many, many hours arguing with Trumpsters who I am close to, I can assure you that most of them aren’t motivated by some grand policy design or to fix a flawed system. In fact, Trump embodied most of the flaws he pretends he was sent to Washington to fix: just as arrogant, just as corrupt, just as inept as the worst of the Inside-the-Beltway types. He didn’t drain the swamp. Because he IS the swamp.

But to your point, I’ve long believed the system was flawed. And I was critical of the Republican establishment long before Trump came around. (Whatever the hell The Establishment is anymore, most of the pretend-revolutionaries were comfortably ensconced in the establishment back then, just as they are in the new establishment now. Weird how they always find a way to keep their bread buttered.) But most of the Trumpsters are ultimately motivated by spite, as evidenced by the fact that there’s really not a dime’s worth of policy difference between most of the people on that debate stage and him. (Except on Ukraine.) And yet, primary voters can’t quit him. They refuse to quit him. Even with all his dysfunction, legal problems, and his blatantly obvious narcissism disorder.

Because the attraction - maybe a better word would be the addiction - is that Trump hates their ideological enemies as much as they do, if not more. And he punches them in the face every time he opens his mouth. And they love that! It’s what they love most. Is there any doubt that if Trump performed a late-term abortion on a stage at a MAGA rally while saying “what we really need is 20 million more illegals a year to save the restaurant industry,” they wouldn’t find a way to be for it? So long as he keeps scratching their anger/resentment itch. Anger about a few things that are real, maybe (like the border crisis), but lots and lots of manufactured culture-war anger that they’ve been firehosed nonstop by the likes of Fox. Which, ironically, has been THE establishment for a quarter of a century. They boosted Bush and McCain and Romney just as they boosted Trump. So they’re all benefiting from a collective case of amnesia in their anti-establishment cosplay. Meanwhile, pure ugly spite is good enough for the lion’s share of Trump voters, even if none of the problems they pretend to want to fix ever get addressed. I’m not some wokester and never have been. In fact, in nearly 25 years in conservative media, I wrote one piece after another lampooning wokeness, back when it was still called political correctness. But what’s happening now is a lot darker than you give it credit for. And giving people neck-rubs to help them feel better about their delusions isn’t doing them any favors. As my old colleague Jonathan Last sketched out in gory detail the other day, you’ll recall all the wingers who pretended there was nothing to worry about when he got elected. More responsible people would be his guardrails, so they said. And that was two impeachments, four indictments, one insurrection, and a nearly overturned election and five dead people ago. So how’d that work out? Did they change Trump, or did Trump change them?

At a certain point, we have to be more interested in saving the republic than someone’s feelings. We’re now going on Year Number Eight of trying to “understand” and coddle and justify such behavior. Now, we just have to knock off the behavior. To tell our Trumpster buddies to grow a sack, and actually stand up for the things they used to pretend they cared about, like democracy and rule of law.

David Atkinsson: I just don't think the current strategy is moving the needle.

They are projecting onto Trump, and a blatant politicization of prosecutions is helping Trump considerably. Even conservatives worship victimhood.We don't need to respect their feelings for their sake, we need to get them to believe in a new way forward. It is for the sake of the Republic that we can't keep insulting them and asking them to change.

I took a harsher tone than you did in 2016 with my friends, it just earned applause from people who would call me an extremist and wacko 3 years later for suggesting social media was driving an outbreak of trans among girls… by which I mean tween girls thinking they are boys

Trump's nomination in 2016 was a disaster, and his election just prolonged it, agreed.

I hear your frustration from trying to convince your loved ones. Yes, Trump is a spectacularly monolithic portrait of hypocrisy, which is why we need to probe the elements of his counter-intuitive appeal. They are projecting on him the strong leader they feel they need to protect themselves, their loved ones and a future for their values/vision.

Matt Labash: You seem like a thoughtful guy, David, who is engaging in good faith. And I’m not fighting you. I do believe in the power of persuasion, at least theoretically. “Come, let us reason together,” is in The Good Book. (The Bible, not The Art of the Deal.) And I used to consider myself a pretty good debater, and fairly persuasive as those things go. Though I don’t recall changing a single person’s mind on this subject since this entire ordeal started. Even those who have a lot of personal history/investment with me. And the same, of course, is true the other way - as in these people who are close to me, but on the other side, aren’t changing my mind, either. The primary difference in our testy discussions being I offer lots of facts, and they offer lots of emotion.

I guess, though, I’ve spent enough years in church - not to turn this into a theological discussion (God, please don’t let it become that) - that my various ministers drilled it into me that salvation and redemption are a gift for the taking, but you have to receive it. So I can’t receive the truth for the people who read my writing. (Which, not to go all lofty on you, but I regard as truth, or I wouldn’t be writing it.) But I have an obligation to tell it. To put it out there, and give it a chance to take root. Whether that truth comes in the form of earnest persuasion, or putting a rubber clown nose on the ridiculous. I do a fair amount of both, but I don’t regard the latter as an inferior form in the least. Just as Mark Twain or Tom Wolfe didn’t. (Not that I’m in their company.) Sometimes, I personally find the latter more persuasive when my own mind needs changing: “Oh yes, that is ridiculous, and I want no part of it.” We all have the capacity to be ridiculous, me included, I don’t mind admitting. And we’re often the last to know when we are.

And I’m all for off-ramps and reconciliation. If Rwanda could do it, we sure as hell can. But before Rwandans could achieve anything like reconciliation, the killing had to stop. You don’t give an off-ramp to some guy who is still chopping heads off with his machete. And Trump, and by extension, Trumpsters, are still doing that. Which is why I take strong issue with your characterization of these as “politicized” prosecutions. Maybe New York’s is pretty Mickey Mouse. But the others are prosecuting a guy for behavior that we all know he engaged in. He did try to fix an election in Georgia. He’s on tape, doing so. There’s no other way to read it, unless your name is Eric or Donald Trump Jr. They’re not even putting up much of a defense, other than to cry “witch hunt and liberal bias,” the same way every winger does when he gets his schwantz caught in a vise. It’s an easy appeal: “Oh, the big bad libs are being unfair again.” And sometimes they are. Sometimes they’re just as dishonest as the right is being on Trump. But I’m not a lib. And I sincerely hope Donald Trump isn’t any more above the law than I am. If I tried to steal an election by lying and bullying, threw a riot party to do so, got several people killed along the way, and kept doubling down on the very behavior I’d already engaged in by re-peddling the same lies and intimidating witnesses and vowing revenge, well I sure as hell hope if my justice system was worth a damn, that they would prosecute me, too. When Trump says, “If they can come for me, they can come for you.” I’m like: “Yeah, exactly! That’s how it should be, jackass, if I committed the crimes you have.”

People who truly want war will never settle for peace. That doesn’t mean I have any desire to go to war. I think all the civil war talk is grossly irresponsible and dangerous. But it does mean that I have every desire to see people punished for their crimes. And Trump has committed lots and lots of those. But even if you don’t recognize them as prosecutable crimes, as Chris Christie has pointed out, the behavior that prompted the prosecutions is disqualifying in itself. And is indefensible.

So we can’t move on, until people actually move on. They have umpteen choices to do so in the next election, without voting for Joe Biden. And yet, Trump still has a 40 point lead, which suggests they’re not moving on. And so as long as the dog is willing to return to its vomit again and again, there aren’t a lot of ways to make a clean break from the filth the dog keeps wallowing in. (I’m a dog guy, so I don’t say this lightly.) If the system is to work, it has to actually work. And just because some people don’t like it, and might get their feelings hurt by it, doesn’t mean it should be suspended.

Bonus Tracks: David brought up soil, and I brought up The Band, so here’s splitting the difference. The late, great Levon Helm singing “Wide River to Cross” off his wonderful album, Dirt Farmer:

And since I gratuitously slagged all you Swifites, here’s a song I quite like of hers with Ed Sheeran,“Everything Has Changed.” Good songs can come from anywhere. Even from the people we think we dislike. Don’t forget it. Be open to music, wherever it happens. It might surprise you.