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The 2024 campaign has hardly started, but the air is already filled with noxious fumes, most of it from desperate cable TV hosts and anonymous social-media posters. Don Lemon’s sexist comments about Nikki Haley are the latest example, but the vitriol has spread much wider. It reveals a dank corner of American politics, filled with mud-slinging and name-calling, degrading our public square.
Donald Trump specializes in these attacks.. He has already launched several, unsuccessfully, on the man he sees as his most formidable competitor. Calling Florida’s popular governor “Meatball Ron” and “DeSanctimonious” isn’t an argument. It’s an epithet. It has the intellectual heft of giving someone the middle finger.
Lemon’s sour attacks on Nikki Haley have attracted the most attention because he has long been a prominent media personality. Why was it sexist to say she was “past her prime?” Because Haley, now age fifty-one, is actually in her sweet spot as a rising politician. What Lemon undoubtedly meant, without actually saying so directly, is that she is past her sexual prime. That is not usually considered the best reason to pick a president. Nor has it been applied to men seeking the office. When people say Biden is “past his prime,” as they frequently do, they aren’t talking about his sex life. They are worried about his mental confusion and physical frailty.
Lemon’s rant was hypocritical, as well, because he didn’t apply that same standard to his preferred female leaders. He didn’t mention it when he backed Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson for the Supreme Court. She was fifty-one at the time. He didn’t mention it when he backed Hillary Clinton for president in 2016. She was born in 1947. He never used it to criticize Kamala Harris. She’s fifty-eight. The list goes on and on.
At least Lemon didn’t resort to racism. But others have, mostly the usual bottom-feeders and hustlers on cable TV. Their rage is amplified by thousands on social media, egging each other on. Their language is not only vile, it’s instructive. When leftists rely on racial attacks to disparage blacks, Hispanics, South Asians, Chinese Americans, and others, what they are really saying is, “If you don’t share our ideology, you are betraying your race. You are supporting ‘white supremacy.’” Although these attacks may be aimed at a specific person — this week, it’s Nikki Haley — they also serve as a warning to others: if you stray from the true path or support anyone who does, you will face our wrath.
These attacks have been launched repeatedly against prominent minority conservatives, including Justice Clarence Thomas, Dr. Ben Carson and Senator Tim Scott. All conservative black intellectuals have endured them. They have been called “Uncle Toms,” whites in black faces and more. Out the window go basic standards of decency, along with coherent arguments. It’s just cursing, flailing, and name-calling.
Criticism of Asian Americans has a different tone. They are vilified as a “model minority,” as if their academic achievements, family cohesion, and rising economic status are worthy of shame. They aren’t. They are traditional bourgeois values, which have provided social stability and lifted millions out of poverty. They are worthy of praise and emulation.
The targets may differ, but there’s a shared political logic behind these attacks. The overriding goal is to sustain a progressive coalition. That coalition is grounded in identity politics, shared hatreds, and a commitment to redistributive justice, which really means transfer payments and positive discrimination for preferred groups. The coalition relies on self-identified victims and those who feel that they are, somehow, to blame.
This loose coalition is especially clear and active on college campuses. The leading victims are African Americans, whatever their socioeconomic background. Among international students, the top spot goes to goes to Palestinians and Muslims in general. Socialists of all stripes are the voice of the coalition’s vague economic ideas. Progressive gays and lesbians are active, though they are finding it harder and harder to identify ways they are discriminated against.
Given the central role of Palestinians, this loose coalition would fracture if it publicly insisted on equal treatment for gays in, say, Gaza or Pakistan. Feminism might be a slight problem there, too. Far better for the group to concentrate on shared hatreds. Israel is a particularly attractive target because it embodies everything they loathe. It is capitalist, prosperous, militarily effective, and willing to defend its territory.
Israel irritates them for another reason, too. Since its founding in 1948, one of Israel’s basic precepts has been its refusal to embrace victimhood. It is unapologetic about its existence and its success. Although it was born in the shadow of the Holocaust, its people know something that America’s progressive coalition never learned. If you define yourself as a victim, however justified that may be, you condemn yourself to lingering in that position, not rising above it.
Given progressives’ focus on victimhood and guilt, the real crimes of black conservatives are that they:
- Don’t think of themselves primarily as victims and
- Don’t think of America primarily as a machine of oppression, at home or abroad
Those are the unforgivable sins of Clarence Thomas, Ben Carson, Tim Scott, Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, John McWhorter and so many more. Their refusal to embrace victimhood doesn’t mean they ignore racial injustice or slink away from the fight against it. It certainly doesn’t mean they are apologists for white supremacy. That’s malign nonsense. Rather, it means they believe they have real “agency”— an ability to act — and refuse to deny that agency to themselves by living as perpetual victims. It also means they are proud to be Americans. Of course, they recognize the scars of slavery and Jim Crow, but they also recognize the country’s long, hard struggle to achieve equal rights, as promised by the Declaration and Constitution. They believe, as all conservatives do, that equality means “equality of opportunity,” not equal outcomes.
The apostasy of black politicians, judges, and intellectuals, together with their personal success, is why their adversaries cover them with epithets. They must be stopped before their heresy spreads. The larger goal, then, is to hold together and animate a coalition based on progressive, identity politics, victimhood, guilt, and redistribution. The same attacks have now started on Nikki Haley. They are vicious, personal, and shameful.
This racist, sexist mudslinging should be condemned and rebutted — not with more name-calling but with cogent arguments and serious analysis. Our nation is already angry and divided. More vile rhetoric, blasted from all media, only makes it worse.
