The truly mystifying thing about William Kristol-cum-NY Times columnist has nothing to with the fact that he's a serial liar. Or that he writes banal copy. Or even that he is a transparently partisan writer. Nor is it even the mystery of why the Times hired him in the first place. Rather, the true mystery is who Kristol's audience is -- who, precisely, is going to glean insight from his mendacious, banal, partisan and, in a word, awful, columns. I think this week's installment -- which posits that contemporary American domestic politics are best understood in terms of 19th century imperialist rhetoric -- might help us shed some light on the subject. While commenting on a George Orwell essay about Rudyard Kipling, Kristol notes that Orwell identified Kipling with "the ruling power and not with the opposition," which Orwell goes on to describe as the essence of conservatism, something that didn't really exist anymore in Orwell's time as he saw it. Kristol doesn't comment on Orwell's definition of conservatism. Nor does he comment on the following passage, appearing at the end of the essay in question:
Kipling sold out to the British governing class, not financially but emotionally. This warped his political judgement, for the British ruling class were not what he imagined, and it led him into abysses of folly and snobbery, but he gained a corresponding advantage from having at least tried to imagine what action and responsibility are like.
The fact that Kristol would choose this essay as an organizing vehicle for his column is so auspicious that it's almost eerie. If we take Kristol's advice at face value -- that Democrats should be acting more like Kipling and less like "the opposition" -- then he is suggesting that Democrats should sell themselves out emotionally, and let themselves be swept up in "folly and snobbery." That is, they should start behaving more like William Kristol, who despite this warping, at least has the advantage of imagining "what action and responsibility are like." Viewed through this prism, Kristol's natural inclination towards intellectual dishonesty -- on full display in the rest of his column, on everything from successful governance to FISA -- comes into focus. It's not that he's simply a partisan hack or a smug liar, it's that he feels so comfortable with wielding power that he has never taken any steps to update his worldview. (See this fascinating video clip from Jonathan Schwarz of Kristol debating Daniel Ellsberg shortly after the 2003 Iraq invasion to witness his epistemological intransigence in action.) Kristol's neoconservatism (or neo-imperialism) is simply a political manifestation of that comfort with power. He grew up believing, as his father came to believe, that Democrats were uncomfortable with using military power in Vietnam or countering Soviet aggression. And domestic politics, he believes, is no different -- raw will to power. Kristol's columns are a product of his arrogance (and the Times' largess) and their target audience would appear to be nothing more than ... Kristol himself.
--Mori Dinauer
