For several years, Donald Trump was America’s protagonist. No aspect of our culture was immune to his gravity. Everything, one way or another, was about him, caught in his narrative orbit, dwarfed by his awesome ego. Love it or hate it, the dramaturgy of this spectacle was beyond dispute: Trump was centerstage. And we couldn’t take our eyes off him.
It is only natural, then, that Democrats, myself included, longed for the arrival of a vanquishing hero, a sword or subpoena-wielding contender for our attention. Various figures auditioned for the part; none could carry the show. Their earnest performances suffered from a tonal mismatch with the material. Dutiful bureaucrats like Jim Comey and Anthony Fauci had rehearsed for melodrama; Trump was starring in a farce. Moral solemnity finds little purchase in a world ruled by irony, camp, and shamelessness. So Trump endured: a gaseous orange giant encircled by puny moons. (Puny moons with book deals.)
For my latest in the New York Times, I reviewed three new books book by Never Trump conservatives — former Illinois congressman Adam Kinzinger, former DHS official Miles Taylor, and former Southern Baptist leader Russell Moore. Each of them disappoints in different ways; only Moore’s — a book about evangelicalism, written in an evangelical idiom, for evangelicals — feels like a real contribution. As I conclude my review:
Moore resists the impulse to try to beat Trump at his own game. So many prophets of Trumpian doom respond to the former president’s howling narcissism with a narcissism of their own, implicitly ratifying Trump’s most noxious conceit: that he alone can fix it. But our moment calls for less heroism than humility; fewer grand self-portraits and more intimate self-searching.
I haven’t kept up with my resolution to alert you, dear subscribers, to all of my new writing; so I’ll get you up to speed now. In reverse order:
Over the summer, the Times book review asked me to contribute an “essential guide” to the works of John le Carré. I chose seven of his best works and wrote about why they endure.
Earlier this month, I resumed my column at New York Magazine. For my first new entry, I wrote about the phenomenon of “statementese” — the opaque language of affinity and disavowal major institutions, and many individuals, have adopted to address the brutal war in Israel/Palestine.
If you want to hear more of my thoughts about the Hamas attack of October 7 and Israel’s brutal retaliation in Gaza, listen to the latest Know Your Enemy podcast; discussion of the war begins at 15:55.