Bits and Bobs

A few notes about this and that

#1/ Who is conservative? Not V.I. Trump

“Conservatism starts from a sentiment that all mature people can readily share: the sentiment that good things are easily destroyed, but not easily created.”

Roger Scruton looking rumpled and weary, as a good conservative should.

Roger Scruton wrote that. Scruton, who died in 2020, was a conservative philosopher. Among the sort of conservatives who know Burke from Strauss from Hayek — people like J.D. Vance — Scruton was legendary. And his maxim was not controversial in the least. It is conservative bedrock.

Now let us consider Donald Trump and recent developments in MAGA-world.

The glee and excitement when Trump announces yet another major appointment or policy crazier than the last is palpable. It’s also familiar if you know the history of revolutions: It’s the giddy stage in which the revolutionaries have seized control and realize they can do what they like, so they radicalize — their talk grows more extreme, their proposals more sweeping, until they are renaming cities and changing the calendar and erecting statues the size of buildings. It is France 1791. It is Russia 1919.

What it is not is conservative. In fact, it is the polar opposite of conservative. Donald Trump has far more in common with V.I. Lenin than Edmund Burke.

Now, when I made this observation in a note on Notes this week, some Trump voters — sensible people, not die-hard MAGA-nauts — objected that Washington was so corrupted, decayed, and inept that it needs to be “torn down to the studs,” as one put it. Or simply burnt down, as so many others have said. Maybe it is crazy to put a conspiracy monger in charge of Health and Human Services, or a Fox weekend host in charge of the immense American military, or a Putin apologist in charge of American national intelligence. Maybe it will bring chaos and carnage. But something better may emerge from the ashes.

I have to admit they may be right. Something better may come out of it.

But anyone with any appreciation for Scruton’s maxim has to think the probability of that is so tiny you need a microscope to see it. It’s rather like pushing a dozen broken-down cars out of a C-130 flying at 20,000 feet and hoping that when you get to the crash site you will discover a fleet of smoothly running cars. I suppose that could happen. Technically. But you will almost certainly find something a whole lot uglier.

But that’s me thinking like a conservative, in the Scrutonian sense. I can see how someone would think I am being unduly pessimistic. But — and this is the point — my pessimism is in line with that most basic insight of conservatism. Optimism that Trump’s angry-bull-in-a-china-shop behaviour will produce something better than the status quo, however flawed that status quo may be, is simply not conservative. You could call it reactionary. Or revolutionary. But it is not conservative.

Of course the counter to that would be to point to the founding of America itself. The nation was born of revolution. And it worked out pretty well. Doesn’t that belie conservative timidity around revolutionary change when the times call for it?

No. Because the “American Revolution” wasn’t really. It was a rebellion that severed America’s connection with Britain but left American society and hierarchy mostly intact. And the American constitution that replaced British rule was mostly modelled on the existing British constitution, with an elected president in place of the king. In this way, “the American Revolution” is a misnomer, at least arguably. What is indisputable is that the American Revolution was radically different than the French and Russian varieties. You could even say it was a very conservative revolution, if that’s not an oxymoron. The Founding Fathers were decidedly not Bolsheviks.

So, no, what Donald Trump is doing does not fall within American tradition, not in this or any century. Nor is it conservatism in any fundamental sense.

When the chaos and destruction inflicted by V.I. Trump and his Bolshevik vanguard creates only chaos and destruction, I won’t gloat. But I will repeat Scruton’s maxim — “good things are easily destroyed, but not easily created” — in hopes that self-described conservatives will re-learn what they once understood.

#2/ On Notes

I mentioned “Notes,” above. For this who don’t know, Notes is Substack’s Twitter-like alternative to Twitter, or “X” as the world’s richest man-child has dubbed it. Like many refugees from Musk-world, I have found it a congenial new home. Please join me.

#3/ “Gangster Isolationism”

Over the past year, I wrote several pieces about Donald Trump’s so-called isolationism and why it’s better described as “gangster isolationism.”

Was it unfair to compare Trump to mob boss running protection rackets? I don’t think so but reasonable people could disagree. But recently the connection between Trump’s approach to international affairs was compared to a mob running protection rackets by a surprising source.

That source was Donald Trump.

It happened in Trump’s interview with Joe Rogan. The subject was Taiwan. Trump said this: “They don’t pay us money for the protection, you know? The mob makes you pay money, right?”

Don’t call Trump’s approach “isolationism.” Call it “gangster isolationism.” Or if you prefer a shorter handle, “gangsterism.” He couldn’t be clearer about this.

But perhaps even more astonishing than Trump’s statement was the reaction.

There was none.

Rogan’s podcast is the most popular in the world. (That’s one of the more depressing sentences I’ve written in this depressing year.) Trump’s interview had a gigantic audience. But Trump’s explicit comparison of his approach to foreign policy to a Mafia protection racket was barely even reported. Pundits didn’t get upset. Social media ignored it. And after the interview, Rogan endorsed Trump.

We now live in a world where barely a ripple of concern rises when the President-elect of the United States cites Mafia policy as a model for international relations.

Let that sink in.

At the beginning of this year, I wrote a piece looking at the history of the term “leader of the free world” and how it was inspired by a foreign policy that Trump utterly repudiates. Now that Trump is returning to power, I think it’s time to retire the term, my American friends.

#4/ Your Moment of Zen

In How Big Things Get Done, Bent Flyvbjerg and I extolled the virtues of simulation and iteration as an experiential learning way to develop a tested, reliable plan that delivers. That’s good news for the future of big projects because our ability to digitally simulate has exploded — and thanks to AI, promises to soar spectacularly in the years ahead.

Here is a gorgeous illustration: An exquisitely detailed rendering of St. Peter’s Basilica that allows you to take a guided tour through every nook and cranny without leaving home.

You’re welcome.

#5/ Some Things I Like And You May, Too

The Rest Is History: There are lots of history podcasts. But to be truly great, a history podcast must combine historical depth, range, and accuracy with a light touch, sheer entertainment, and a soupçon of humour. No one comes close to doing that as well as The Rest Is History. Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook are just absolutely brilliant. I don’t understand the whole Taylor Swift thing but I would squeal like a pubescent girl in their presence.

Sinclair Lewis: Certain events, ahem, got me re-reading Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here, his 1936 novel about an American senator elected to the presidency who marginalizes Congress and gradually emerges as a true American dictator. I love Lewis for a reason that some literary sorts hate him: His writing is so very much of its time. Whether it is It Can’t Happen Here, Elmer Gantry (1927), Babbitt (1922), or Main Street (1920), Lewis’s books don’t transcend time and place with universal themes. Hence the disdain of literary sorts. Instead, Lewis is very much of the time and place in which he was living and writing. So much so that even a hundred years later, he takes the reader to that time and place so we can see, smell, and feel what it was like to live then. His novels are also enormously entertaining. And occasionally terrifying. (The final big event of the presidential campaign of the senator who becomes a dictator is held in — wait for it — Madison Square Garden. I had to pour myself a drink.)

#6/ Housekeeping

Early this year, I turned off paid subscriptions because I wasn’t writing often enough to justify charging the delightful, wise, and much-appreciated people who take out paid subscriptions. As I’ve been able to crank up production again recently, I turned them back on. A big thank you to those who put bread in my jar, as Billy Joel sang in Piano Man. I promise to put it to good use.

What use will that be? Well, the book I’m currently co-writing is coming down to the final months of production. I’m thrilled with it. I think it will be important and timely. (Too timely, unfortunately. I really would have preferred that events had gone in a different direction and made it much less timely…) Much more on that to come.

Once that’s in the can, I’ll be doing a major re-think of my work and I have tentative plans to pretty radically change how and what I write here. Mostly, that means more. Much more.

One thing I will, however, write less about is politics.

Given the potential for this year’s presidential race to change America and the world, I don’t regret having spent a great deal of time following and writing about American politics. How could I not? But there’s a whole big world out there beyond politics and I want to explore it. And I have to admit it would be a mental relief to spend less time thinking about That Man.

So please, readers, stick with me. New and interesting things are coming in 2025.