Uncertain was started as our way to process the chaotic state of everything, and to try figure out what new beast is slouching toward Bethlehem to be born. Sometimes it’s easiest to do so in writing. So on occasion we’ll be jotting down impressionistic notes from recent days/weeks, maybe as cliff notes or as inchoate ideas to be to be referred to or expounded upon at a later date.
Last week the House GOP took a vote on whether to boot Liz Cheney from her leadership position on account of her electing to impeach Trump. They voted by secret ballot. Cheney won 145-61. Predictions by Trump toadies like Matt Gaetz that Cheney will be routed were shattered. But regarding those who ultimately rallied behind Cheney, as Jonah Goldberg said on The Dispatch Podcast last Friday: "It's a sign of how cheaply they hold their conscience when they only give voice to it in a secret ballot."
It reminded me of something that Jonah’s colleague (and a former guest on Uncertain Things) David French had alluded to before: the American right has a twisted concept of bravery. Think of the innumerable times Messrs. Cruz, Jordan, and Gaetz chest-thumped about taking “dangerous” and supposedly unpopular positions in recent years, touting their courage to stand up to big tech censorship and woke mobs. Pretending to be a lone Jeremiah risking everything to drop truth bombs in the middle of deadly, decadent, doomed Jerusalem has become a favorite posture of every right-leaning pundit, YouTuber, podcaster, and lawmaker trying to build an audience or a donor base. The truth of course is that much of it is little more than pandering. Real honesty is never popular, and real integrity rarely makes for a sustainable business model. But playing the would-be martyr does. Except that instead of being persecuted, arrested, or fed to lions, these modern-day prophets get book deals, lucrative TV contracts, and a monetizeable social media following. (What they don't get is any legislation done, but as Gaetz, Marjorie Greene et al have all but said, true statesmanship is about trolling the libs.)
The right’s rhetoric supplies not just heroes, but cowards: Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, and the smattering of Republicans who voted to impeach have committed “craven betrayal” ; Mike Pence is a coward for not breaking his oath; Never Trumpers are lickspittle frauds desperate to be invited to The Swamp™’s cocktail parties. All those people risking their friendships, funding, and reputation to challenge their own team’s groupthink are spineless, lib-washed, martini-sniffing fifth columnists.
The projection at play is too on the nose to point out. After all, the extent to which many on the right seem to be above all else motivated by cultural resentment screams inferiority complex.
But when it came to actually voting on Cheney’s position, this conference of self-proclaimed intrepid truth-tellers called for a secret ballot, a veil of ignorance to keep their true beliefs — their judgment of what's right — hidden from their constituents.
Also bravely speaking out against big tech censorship is RT, the glowing face of Russia's international propaganda. If you haven’t been following RT on Twitter, give it a quick scroll. It won’t be a minute before you stumble across a couple (or a dozen) tweets lambasting Silicon Valley or liberal elites or Mainstream Media for their cancelling of this or that conservative voice1. Now, allow me my own Cruzian chest thump: hipster Millennial that I am, I’ve been criticizing the left’s variant of cancel culture before it was cool (yes, before it got saddled with this ugly moniker). But when RT brazenly playacts the free speech absolutist, I get queasy.
This week’s favorite was a rushing to condemn Twitter for banning the founder of Gateway Pundit, ground zero for delusional Trump worship with a touch of magical realism.
Without getting into the merits of Twitter’s decision (their banning policy has certainly been heavy-handed, incoherent, and stacked against the right, but regulation isn’t the solution), it tells you something that this is what gets RT’s knickers all bunched up. You know, it takes true daring to champion the freedom of journalists, as long as they’re not criticizing you. When not bemoaning the demise of free speech in America, RT is busy casting aspersions on anti-Kremlin activist Alexey Navalny and agitating for investigations against journalists and vloggers who support him. Stories about the poisoning of Russian opposition figures and journalists who went a little too hard on daddy get covered only in order to be shut down as “hoaxes.”
RT will bravely back Jim Holt, but won’t spare a breath for whistleblowers prosecuted by the Trump administration. Those were only mentioned to either discredit their claims or as a whataboutist-springboard to valorize previous whistleblowers who reported on the Obama administration. In one absurd op-ed, RT argued that liberal media only cares about whistleblowers who spill the tea on Trump. What’s with these people and projection?2
I can go on for hours about the risk-free postures, moral vacuousness, and galling hypocrisy of these people. But what’s really important is to keep pushing through all the acrid sludge shooting out of this firehose and stay alive to what's really happening here: the warfare waged by the Republican conference and RT isn't and never has been about free speech, it's about boosting loyalists, slinging mud at MSM, and maybe making some money in the process.
One last thing3: just because Jim Jordan, Josh Hawley, and RT decry cancel culture, doesn't mean there's no there there. And pointing to the cynical scumbags who croak about it as proof that cancel culture is fake, is no less intellectually fraudulent and cheap than RT pretending to defend journalistic freedom.
Of course, liberal media does play favorites with whistleblowers, but nothing that comes close to the nihilistic cynicism of RT.
Yes, this is a slide into a different issue, which maybe I’ll develop further another time. For now I just want to make sure to keep watch on both fronts.