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'The decline of The New Criterion'


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https://thebaffler.com/latest/decline-of-the-new-criterion-ganz

Or: How do you go from witty reviews of books on Hegel and Kierkegaard to recommending a book by The Veritas Project’s James O’Keefe?

 

This is a meal of an article, so I felt it deserved its own thread. Something that's really interesting -- and chilling -- is how it's not just this nativist base that Trump is able to connect to, it's the elites of the conservative guard that have actually gone all in. And how it's both shocking and maybe not so surprising. This piece focuses on New Criterion editor Roger Kimball, who for example years ago chastised the "left-liberal establishment" for being too craven to accept the glory of the "strong America regnant" that was George W. Bush. 

 

Quote

Obsessed with the decline of the West, Kimball and The New Criterion have themselves become examples of Western decline, peddling a reality in which Trump, who looks like a senile moron to anyone with common sense and a would-be tyrant to anyone with a bit of imagination, and Pericles occupy the same spiritual plane. Doesn’t Kimball see that by making this absurd juxtaposition he’s actually having the very thought he attributes to the chattering classes he professes to loathe: the notion that Western civilization has never really been so great, after all?

 

It's a neat perspective from an author who grew up reading, even admiring the magazine.

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