“America, in the aggregate, seems just as stupid as it was four years ago,” Philip Kennicott, The Washington Post’s Pulitzer Prize-winning art and architecture critic, declared over the weekend.
Last week’s election was not, Mr. Kennicott correctly concludes, “a repudiation of Trumpism.” He finds “horrifying” the fact that six million or so more Americans voted for Trump over last go-around.The problem? “White supremacy,” which he says is “existential, precognitive and pervasive”; Trumpism is its “colloquial alternative.”
Yet the critic omits the evidence.
“I’ll leave his policies and his politics — to the extent that he ever had policies or coherent politics — to the pundits,” Kennicott punts.
A master of mere assertion, he declares the MAGA crowd filled with “not just avowed racists who have publicly supported the president but also those who downplay the problem, or align with it for personal gain, or are simply unwilling to acknowledge its history and persistence.”
Trumpeting “our unique brand of ugliness,” Kennicott can’t see the city for the slums.
Moral uglinesses are evident here and worldwide. But the U.S. is uniquely recognized around the globe for freedom and human rights.
“Trumpism is embedded in America and can be fought only through rigorous self-discipline, through constant surveillance of the thoughts we think, the words we use and the assumptions we make,” writes Kennicott. “Now we know it not as a perverse blemish on American culture but as foundational to American culture. That’s progress.”
Not true. Not progress. But the Post scrivener does sum up progressivism’s current cultural revolution: “constant surveillance of the thoughts we think.”
He didn’t like this past election or the one four years ago. He won’t like 2022 or 2024 any better.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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7 replies on “Landscape, with Trumpians”
The man’s a music critic with the Washington Post. That’s all one needs to know. He knows nothing about real Americans, even if he currently holds the post of ‘art and culture critic’. It must be hard to breathe in that bubble he lives in.
“White supremacy,” which he says is “existential, precognitive and pervasive”; Trumpism is its “colloquial alternative.”
I suppose he can see it all creeping out from behind the trees of a dark forest. It makes me sad to realize how many people are suffering from delusions in this country.
Assigning stupidity, and worse grave moral fault, to those who disagree with one’s personal opinion is not a reasonable means of resolving differences.
With that attitude there can be no reconciliation.
He should stick to art and architecture, and learn to listen.
Joe Biden is the President!
He works for the paper that we usually call The Washington Compost.
As of 11/23, some of your emailed links are wrong.
He appears to be nothing more than an inveterately boneheaded progressive, unwittingly exposing his own biases…and with surprisingly little recognition of the precepts that drive a constitutional republic. He is obviously, way outside his area of expertise.