Dear Mr. Brooks:
I was briefly sympathetic to the argument in your recent piece, The Rise of Right-Wing Nihilism, in which you asked the reader to imagine that they were surrounded by Christian nationalist propaganda. After all, I grew up Jewish in a pre-Vatican II Catholic working-class neighborhood, back when the priests taught that the Jews killed Christ and we said the Lord's Prayer every morning in school. As a boy, I was a Jew beggar, taunted with rhymes like Moses, Moses, King of the Jews, wipes his ass with the Daily News. Wouldn't I silently seethe at the high-voltage version of such propaganda that is Christian nationalism, and then, like Curtis Yarvin, eventually conclude that, if Christian nationalist ideals are false, then all ideals must be false?
But I did not, in fact, seek refuge in nihilism. Instead, I came to understand that the real message of Jesus was one of radical inclusion. I came to understand that the Good Samaritan was actually a member of a tribe that was hated and held in contempt by Jesus's target audience. And, of course, many of Jesus's close disciples - Mary Magdalene, a sex worker, Matthew, either a tax collector or a tavern owner, etc. were taken from the lower strata of society. (Perhaps because it was harder for a rich man and his self-importance to enter the Kingdom than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.) I also came to understand that this message of universal brotherhood was only the preface to an even more radical core teaching, that the Kingdom of Heaven really is within.
In other words, my problem was not with the exalted message, but with the messengers' flawed understanding of it.
So, too, with the stifling political orthodoxy of the Left. We, too, want to Make America Great, though I would argue that we should just leave off the Again because we have always been a great nation. The Founding Fathers bequeathed us with a system of government that has lasted longer than that of any other major country, peacefully enfranchising non-property holders, women, blacks and other minorities. In the 19th century, more Americans died ending slavery than in all of our other wars put together. Our participation in the world wars of the last century ended German and Japanese militarism, won with significant help by our technological developments, from radar to penicillin to the atomic bomb. More recently, in spite of experts predicting in early 2020 that it would take years to develop a COVID vaccine, I, personally, got the first of my COVID shots in February 2021. Etc., etc., etc.
But, yes, in their passion to get our nation to actually deliver on the promise made in the Pledge of Allegiance: with liberty and justice for all, progressives have gotten carried away, just as the Good News inspired the zeal that led to the excesses of Christianity. I don't think that there is much disagreement that the promise was made to every one of us white, non-white, straight, gay, etc. The challenge is figuring out how to make good on that promise. Just as we were among the first modern countries to create a democratic republic, we are among the first modern countries to attempt to open our society to previously excluded minorities. Simply put, we don't know how to do it.
What we do know is that it is going to be a heavy lift. For example, my understanding of what woke really means is that anti-black racism has been so deeply embedded in American culture that it can be remedied only by anti-racism, a constant, unsparing self-criticism. A similar conscious effort needs to be made to see how ridiculous it is that we need to forgive gay or trans people for simply being who they are. Yet some of us, me included, are sometimes unwilling to even extend that level of phony forgiveness. Jesus could have been speaking about us, when he said, Forgive them, Lord, for they know not what they do.
So, upon further reflection, I don't buy your argument that it is the carping of progressives that is driving the MAGA crowd to nihilism. It is, admittedly, one possible response, just as one possible response to the cries of your baby is to ignore them. And, just as such a response to your baby's cries is soul-closing, so the collective decision of the MAGA crowd to ignore the reality of the progressive agenda does indeed lead to nihilism. The MAGAs could, instead, listen to the better angels of their nature, find the nobility in the progressives' goals, exhort the progressives to find the nobility in their goals, and, in that spirit, find common ground. Yes, that's asking a lot, but that is what it really means.
