Undoing Civilization: The Degeneracy of America’s Political Elites
“With Vice President Vance as President Trump’s heir apparent, it is difficult to envision a restoration of principled conservatism any time soon. Meanwhile, the country’s political class is plagued by general senescence and by kakistocracy among the younger politicians (think Congresswoman Alexandr
“With Vice President Vance as President Trump’s heir apparent, it is difficult to envision a restoration of principled conservatism any time soon. Meanwhile, the country’s political class is plagued by general senescence and by kakistocracy among the younger politicians (think Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez).”
In October of 2024, conservative pundit Ben Shapiro offered an interesting observation about the American presidential election of 2000. In the final days of the campaign, the big bombshell had been the revelation of then-candidate George W. Bush’s arrest for drunk driving in 1976. “Can we just point out what an innocent country this was?” remarked Shapiro. “Seriously, [in] the year 2000, the biggest scandal they could drop on George W. Bush [was] that, like, twenty years prior, he’d had a DWI.” Shapiro went on to juxtapose that episode with the widespread indifference to Minnesota Governor Tim Walz’s drunk driving arrest and unseemly allegations against First Gentleman Doug Emhoff. Conversely, the story of Governor Bush’s drunk driving had “tighten[ed] the polls fairly significantly.”
Predictably, Shapiro picked only Democrats to contrast with President Bush’s relative upstandingness and utterly ignored how current President Donald Trump and his entourage contribute to the decay of civil society in America. Of course, so do former President Joe Biden, former Vice President Kamala Harris, and other recent Democratic leaders. But the Trump team is arguably more brazen in its disregard for the norms of respectful civil discourse and honorable behavior. Its members show a serious lack of impulse control, foresight, and moral restraint.
Plenty has already been written about why the Trump administration’s policy on the war in Ukraine has been obtuse, malicious, and a betrayal of the Budapest Memorandum. However, one detail in particular stands out. Following his disgraceful meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in February, President Trump justified his confrontational stance toward Kyiv by saying that President Zelenskyy “feels our involvement gives him a big advantage in negotiations. I don’t want advantage; I want peace.” Exactly. President Trump does not want to ensure that any peace achieved be durable, nor that it leave the Free World in the strongest possible position. He wants to make the problem go away as swiftly and easily as possible and thinks it is easier to browbeat an ally into submission than to defeat an enemy.
Timeless reading in a fleeting world.
