"Very conservative messaging... once you violate the natural law, that has infectious effects. The idea that human beings are greedy and venal."

"You see that in the scene with Circe where the men are turned into pigs.... These men get addicted to eating and then she physically manipulates their bodies into the bodies of pigs.... thematically pretty interesting. And the idea is that he has to violate Zeus's law essentially one last time....  The thematic, I think, is kind of great...."

Says Ben Shapiro, strongly praising "The Odyssey," and not just because it has "very conservative messaging."

Midway through the long review, Ben turns to the supposed flaws conservatives have been talking about.

"If ideological consistency can’t explain the enduring loyalty of Trump’s base, what does?"

I'm reading "The Four Types of Trump Supporter/The president’s political power depends on his ability to play different roles for different parts of his coalition," by Daniel Yudkin and Stephen Hawkins" (The Atlantic)(gift link).

1. "MAGA Hardliners" — 29% — "mostly composed of white Gen Xers and Baby Boomers," "animated by the belief... in America’s existential struggle between good and evil."

2. "Anti-Woke Conservatives" — 21% — "a more secular and affluent group of voters deeply frustrated by what they perceive as the takeover of schools, culture, and institutions by the progressive left."

3. "Mainline Republicans" — 30% —  "a more racially diverse group of middle-of-the-road conservatives who prioritize border security, a strong economy, and cultural stability."

4. "Reluctant Right" — 20% — "ambivalent" people who thought Trump "seemed 'less bad' than the alternative." (I'm laughing at "the alternative" — the name Kamala doesn't even appear in the article.)

Those are the 4 types of Trump supporters, we're told. Then there are 4 roles that Trump plays:

"You hear that language of personal choice, not only on the left with regard to abortion, but for conservatives in opposition to things like SNAP benefits for unmarried women..."

"Well, you chose to have this baby while you were poor, and everyone knows you could have chosen differently — when that could entail not having sex or killing the baby in the womb after sex has been had. So there is this sense that the base-line person does not have someone to depend on in this way. I think pregnancy is the starkest example, and it’s the gendered example, but the sense that the fundamental nature of the human person is someone who isn’t constrained by someone else’s need isn’t just a problem for women — it’s a problem for all of us. Each of us has people who depend on us, even if we go through our whole lives childless...."

Said Leah Libresco Sargeant, in an interview in the NYT with the provocative title "Did Liberal Feminism Ruin the Workplace? And if so, can conservative feminism fix it?" That's a free-access link to the transcript of the new episode of Ross Douthat's podcast. Also in the interview is Helen Andrews. As Douthat puts it, the guests are "both conservative writers, both critics of feminism, but they have very different views of what a right-wing politics of gender should look like."

"If the White House must be remade, let there be a plan; let it be debated; let the financing be transparent and free of kickbacks and corruption."

"It isn’t complicated, and it’s the very principle at the heart of the American Revolution: following rules is not weakness.... Architecture embodies values; it is not merely a receptacle of them. Simple proportions and human-scale spaces don’t just suggest the spirit of a democratic nation. They are that spirit in three dimensions, with doors and windows. Reverence for the past, and reluctance to destroy until the risks of destruction are fully known, is not timidity but wisdom, in architecture as in life. To conserve, after all, is the essence of conservatism. The shock that images of the destruction provoke—the grief so many have felt—is not an overreaction to the loss of a beloved building. It is a recognition of something deeper: the central values of democracy being demolished before our eyes. Now we do not only sense it. We see it."

Writes Adam Gopnik, at the end of his New Yorker essay, "Why Trump Tore Down the East Wing/The act of destruction is precisely the point: a kind of performance piece meant to display Trump’s arbitrary power over the Presidency, including its physical seat."

Reverence for the past and reluctance to destroy until the risks of destruction are fully known — but is that your general principle? If it is, you are a committed conservative. 

***

As long as we're talking about rules... the traditional rules of punctuation would reject those those commas after "the past" and "fully known." It's easy to see if you put it this way: Reverence and reluctance is not timidity. Not: Reverence, and reluctance, is not timidity. And, obviously, "is" is wrong! I suspect that at one point the sentence was "Reverence for the past — along with reluctance to destroy until the risks of destruction are fully known — is not timidity but wisdom, in architecture as in life." 

Punctuation and grammar embody values; they are not merely a receptacle of them. I remember when the great tradition of The New Yorker was scrupulously tending to these matters. Is my grief an overreaction to the loss of a beloved publishing tradition?

"We were just kind of living in some turbulent times.... It’s almost turned to a rebellious act to have those right-leaning views."

"And I thought, you know, owning a T-shirt like the 'Reagan Bush ’84' one was kind of a cool way to join the movement of the antiestablishment younger generation of conservatives... [It's less confrontational than] wearing the red MAGA hat around, triggering the libs, so to speak. It’s kind of a peaceful, respectful way to say that, you know what, it’s okay to have a different opinion than you and disagree. I’m going to wear my Reagan shirt — it’s a more respectful way to voice my opinion.... I’ve been even criticized from the right for wearing the Reagan stuff...."

Says Kieran Laffey, George Washington University college student, quoted in "Why Gen Z conservatives love the ‘Reagan Bush ’84’ tee/They weren’t alive in the ’80s, but to them, 'Reagan is still a vibe'" (WaPo).

The article notes that you can easily buy these shirts on line. They just look vintage. We're told it's "the conservative take on a band shirt or the once-ubiquitous Che Guevara tee."

ADDED: Why not get ahead of the trend? Here, on Amazon (commission earned!):

What if you had to argue this Georgia O'Keeffe painting is not "conservative"?

 I'm reading "To Sell Prized Paintings, a University Proclaims They’re Not ‘Conservative’/Valparaiso University is arguing it should never have acquired two paintings, including a Georgia O’Keeffe, in the 1960s. It hopes to sell them to pay for dorm renovations" (NYT)(free-access link).

The school bought the painting with money from a gift that restricted the purchase of art to work "exclusively by American artists preferably of American subjects' and "of the general character known as conservative and of any period of American art." Now that the school wants to sell the painting, it's saying the painting should never have been bought.

In a court petition, the university says that because the paintings are from modernist art movements and are not representational, they are not conservative and therefore can now be sold “At the time those paintings were purchased in the 1960s, the committee knew that it was straying from Sloan’s directive to acquire conservative art,” the petition reads.

Valparaiso's own website describes the painting as representational: "While Rust Red Hills offers a generally realistic view of the hills near Abiquiu, it is O’Keeffe’s invention, stylization, abstraction that makes the painting especially exciting to view and study."

I got interested in Georgia O'Keeffe in 1968 when Life Magazine published "Georgia O'Keeffe, on the Ghost Ranch." I thought she was so inventive. My idea of her radically changed in 1991 when I drove across the real world landscape they call New Mexico.

"But I’m fascinated by tradwife life... It’s less the campy, colour-saturated, submissive 50s-housewife cosplay...."

"That feels like fantasy or fetish, designed, I suspect, to appeal mainly to men.... But the other kind – families forging a wholesome, homesteading existence – taps into a longing for things it’s objectively reasonable to long for. It’s stuff I long for: a slower, simpler, more intentional way of life, making do and mending, a hands-on relationship with nature, the seasons and food production. The world is chaos, cruelty and despair, but in a peaceful corner of the internet, a woman in sprigged muslin is meditatively pickling beets in a shaft of sunlight or pouring raw milk into a pitcher. A knock-kneed lamb is warming by the Aga, there are freshly podded peas on the table and there is sourdough cooling. They make it look so lovely, this 19th-century drudgery...."

Writes Emma Beddington in "Sometimes I long for the life of a tradwife. Then I remember it’s a reactionary fantasy" (The Guardian).

We're told that it's possible to have a "pared-back life" that's not "trad" but "radical, diverse, engaged and outward-looking." Beddington points us to 3 Instagram accounts: @poppy.okotcha ("growing food ecologically"), and @Blackyardchickenz (a "hen-keeping experiment"), and  @farmlifeiceland ("a lesbian sheep-farming couple")...

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Pálína Axelsdóttir Njarðvík (@farmlifeiceland)

"A raunchy celebrity-filled party in Moscow has drawn the ire of Russian politicians and fervent Christian Orthodox activists..."

"... who are urging law enforcement to punish the event’s guests and organizers for violating laws prohibiting 'gay propaganda' — the latest testament to the country’s sharp shift toward a closed-off, conservative society at the behest of President Vladimir Putin."

From "Raunchy celebrity party in Russia draws outrage over ‘nude illusion’ theme" (WaPo).

The party, a costume ball with a “nude illusion” theme hosted Wednesday night by one of Russia’s most popular Instagram influencers, Anastasia Ivleeva, was attended by some of the most prominent Russian celebrities who have remained in the country since the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, including some who have not supported the war.

The guests paid a hefty entrance fee of about $11,000 to frolic in outfits of flesh-colored mesh, lace and lingerie, with Ivleeva wearing a diamond body chain worth about $250,000 and one guest, the rapper Vacio, paying homage to a 1980 Red Hot Chili Peppers record cover featuring the band members wearing nothing but a sock.

Some of the outrage comes from a desire to maintain a somber demeanor during wartime, and some of it, we're told, is about disapproval of homosexual behavior. What does the illusion of nakedness have to do with homosexuality? Perhaps it's just the appearance of sexual liberation, but we're told that men were seen kissing.

WaPo provides some background, which I think is written to encourage readers to disapprove of American politicians and commentators who argue for traditional values (they're like Putin):

"I believe that scripture, the Bible is very clear that God is the one that raises up those in authority."

Said Mike Johnson, orating just before taking the oath as Speaker of the House:

Transcript. 

Excerpt:

"This being a classical virtual-reality school, Optima’s environments include settings in ancient Greece and Rome...."

"We teleported past a Roman official’s house, decked out with red-clay roof tiling, up some stairs to an open patio of black-and-white-checkered marble floors, surrounded by Ionic columns and an ivy-covered railing. Here, a teacher might spawn a set of bleachers for students to sit during a lecture on a subject such as history or Latin.... Toward the end of the school year, I joined a sixth-grade science class on a field trip to an Everest base camp. The scene was elaborately staged: our group was surrounded by gray tents held up by bright orange poles.... A whiteboard stood to our left in the snow, covered with colorful Post-its bearing scientific terms. The teacher had taken a selfie of his avatar wearing an orange mountain-explorer jumpsuit and put it on the board. Wind whistled quietly somewhere in the background of my headset....

I'm reading "Virtual-Reality School Is the Next Frontier of the School-Choice Movement/The conservative education activist Erika Donalds envisions a world where parents can opt out of traditional public school by putting their kids in a headset" (The New Yorker).

"It seems Ice Cube has become quite the conservative media darling lately, sitting down with not just Carlson, but Joe Rogan and Piers Morgan as well."

"He’s joining a long list of rappers – Kanye West, Da Baby, Kodak Black, Lil Pump – who have all put themselves in dangerous proximity to conservative politicians even as rightwing populism threatens to destroy their communities.... So what do these rappers have in common with rightwingers who wouldn’t otherwise touch them with a 10ft pole? Shared values. In discussions about money, gender identity, public health and a variety of social issues, rappers and rightwingers have a lot more in common than you’d immediately think. Many people from both groups share hypermasculinity, conservative Christian values, and a distrust of social institutions (justified or not); and on this common ground sits a messy and dangerous alliance full of people who ordinarily would hate each other, but have come together to make vulnerable people their enemy...."

Writes Tayo Bero in "Why are Black rappers aligning themselves with the right? Ice Cube has joined a long list of rappers who have cuddled up with conservative pundits and politicians" (The Guardian).

"I actually believe, if you’re transgender, one of the most conservative things you can actually do is live your authentic self."

"But to do that, the government should not be in your business. They shouldn’t be in our bedrooms. They shouldn’t be trying to tell us who we can be, who we can live as, who we can go to school as. That’s not Republicanism."

Said Jennifer Williams, a member of the Trenton, N.J. City Council, quoted in "Why a Trans Republican Keeps Engaging With Conservatives" (NYT).

"Every time another conservative homeschool mom appeared in a dress I loved, it was [Son de Flor]...."

Writes Bethany Mandel in "Is my favorite dress company the new Bud Light? Son de Flor makes ‘traditional’ clothing — yet decided to use a 'gender-fluid' bearded model" (Spectator).

I really wish I could have been a fly on the wall of the meeting the marketing team had when they made this decision.... For Son de Flor, the target is women interested in timeless fashion and modesty. Overwhelmingly, that is going to translate to religious (read: conservative) women. While a partnership with an individual with over 150,000 Instagram followers might seem appealing on its face, Son de Flor doesn’t seem to understand that an individual is only an influencer for a brand if they actually influence potential customers in a positive way. 

"[S]ome conservatives, unable or unwilling to adopt the type of horny-bro aesthetic that embraces sports, sex and generally letting 'you do you'..."

"... have resorted to a paint-by-numbers anti-feminism. Conservative women are hot, The Federalist says! Single women are pathetic cat ladies, too ugly to love, say two actual members of Congress! It’s a strange interpretation of masculinity, as if learned from old issues of Maxim and a particularly bitter next-door neighbor.... [I]t seems as if attracting the horny bro to the Republican Party is increasingly more important than sating the conservative, particularly when it comes to getting voters. When the Bang Girls (of Bang Energy drinks) threw cash at conservative teenagers at a Turning Point USA youth conference in 2020, some elders argued that it was embarrassing and deplorable, far removed from 'conservatism.' But one Twitter user [said]... perhaps the message was actually incredibly effective: 'hot women and money. Being conservative will help you achieve those things. that’s what it has to do with it, that is the implication. Join us and get those things.' William F. Buckley would be horrified. Hugh Hefner would be proud."

Writes Jane Coaston in "The Debate Hugh Hefner Won and William Buckley Lost" (NYT).

"Some might think that this pervasive progressivism would encourage conservative students to change their views."

"But in fact it has the opposite effect. Graduates of schools like Loyola University Chicago, George Washington University and Mount Holyoke have described how the rampant leftism on their campuses pushed them to the right.... [F]ormative years at elite institutions that have gone woke are convincing right-leaning students and heterodox thinkers that society’s most august institutions — from media outlets to universities — are fundamentally broken and need to be set on a different path. If colleges don’t want to produce a new generation of conservative firebrands, they need to pump the brakes on campus progressivism. Campuses that are more welcoming to conservatives are in universities’ own interest."

 
Writes Adam Hoffman, a senior at Princeton, in "My Liberal Campus Is Pushing Freethinkers to the Right" (NYT).

"The significant ideological gap between Justices Thomas and Alito, on the one hand, and the Trump nominees, on the other, can be seen in their Martin-Quinn scores..."

"... a measure of judicial ideology developed by political scientists. Based on their rulings during the court’s last term, Justices Thomas and Alito earn scores of 2.949 and 2.458, the higher number signifying greater conservatism. Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett earn scores of 1.019, 0.791 and 1.318, respectively — fairly close to one another, but markedly different from the two scores of the staunch conservatives anchoring the right wing of the court. Nor do the Trump justices march in lockstep with one another. In fact, Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh disagreed more with each other in their first term together than any other pairing of justices appointed by the same president since the Kennedy administration.... They have found themselves on opposite sides of such issues as the death penalty, defendants’ rights, immigration law and Indian law.... 'The conservative wing of the court is not a monolith.'... And understanding these nuances is critical, especially for lawyers and legal organizations on the left who are 'playing defense'...."  

From "Trump’s Supreme Court Picks Are Not Quite What You Think" by David Lat and Zachary B. Shemtob (NYT).

"Her brief tenure should be remembered as the hyphenate premiership: all-in on supply-side, laissez-faire, trickle-down economics."

Writes Eugene Robinson, in "Liz Truss’s fall is a warning to populists everywhere" (WaPo).

Is supply-side, laissez-faire, trickle-down economics populist?

Robinson ends with this warning:

When you hear Republicans in this country say “secure the border” or “crack down on crime” or “America first,” keep in mind how easy it is to write a bumper sticker and how hard it is to actually govern in a complex, interconnected world. GOP leaders, pay attention: Britain’s Conservatives have pandered their way into ruin.

Well, “secure the border” or “crack down on crime” and “America first” sound populist, but every single one of those things is not supply-side, laissez-faire, trickle-down economics.

Seems like Robinson is mixing up the categories of right-wingers. You could easily blend left-wing economics with securing the border, cracking down on crime, and putting America first.

"Do you think that Donald Trump made everybody go crazy?"

The interviewer Meghan Daum asks the therapist Dea Bridge in "What a Conservative Therapist Thinks About Politics and Mental Health" (NYT).

Daum: Do you think that Donald Trump made everybody go crazy? 

Bridge: What do you mean by “made everybody go crazy”?

Josh Hawley "is positioning himself, and therefore his movement — his far-right, White-guy movement — as, 'If you’re a man, then you believe in these things.'"

Said Jason Kander," an Afghanistan War veteran who in 2018 stepped away from rising success in the Democratic Party to tend to his mental health," quoted "Josh Hawley’s problem with masculinity" (WaPo).

The column is by Jonathan Capehart, who continues:

"In a style that mixed a kind of faux-caveman brutishness and message-board pidgin with classical references, Bronze Age Pervert informed his readers..."

"... that 'you don’t see yourself as you really are' because 'spiritually your insides are all wet, and there’s a huge hole through where monstrous powers are [expletive] your brain, letting loose all your life powers of focus.'... The book... was significant because it spoke directly 'to a youthful dissatisfaction (especially among white males) with equality as propagandized and imposed in our day: a hectoring, vindictive, resentful, leveling, hypocritical equality that punishes excellence and publicly denies all difference while at the same time elevating and enriching a decadent, incompetent and corrupt elite.' Bronze Age Pervert regarded the founders’ idea of rights, the very bedrock of the American political tradition, as false.... Conservatives didn’t have to agree with any of this, but they did need to acknowledge that 'in the spiritual war for the hearts and minds of the disaffected youth on the right, conservatism is losing. BAPism is winning.'"

From "How the Claremont Institute Became a Nerve Center of the American Right/They made the intellectual case for Trump. Now they believe the country is in a cultural civil war" (NYT). The article is by Elisabeth Zerofsky, but she's quoting Michael Anton, a Claremont Institute fellow who wrote an essay about the Bronze Age Pervert book.