Krauthammer’s fundamental law turned on its head
'The distinction in political viewpoints is less clear cut than at first it may seem'
The 2024 presidential election brings to completion a full decade (2015-2024) since Donald Trump’s venture into American presidential politics on June 16, 2015, at Trump Tower in Manhattan.
Five weeks prior to Trump’s escalator ride that changed everything, the late, great Charles Krauthammer announced his formulation of a “fundamental law” of American politics, the oft quoted: “To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are STUPID. Liberals think conservatives are EVIL.” (Emphasis mine).
The Decade of Trump has not merely repealed, but has fully reversed Krauthammer’s fundamental law, which he had published on May 12, 2015, only a month prior to Trump’s escalator moment, in his bestselling book, “Things That Matter: Three Decades of Passions, Pastimes and Politics.”
If Krauthammer’s law accurately described American political culture during the three decades (1985-2015) of his stellar career of political commentary – the Reagan / Bush1 / Clinton / Bush2 / Obama presidencies – the chaotic heat brought by Trump has rescinded and reversed it, like a magnet reversing polarity when heated to its Curie point.
After a single decade of Trump, it seems now the liberals who see conservatives as STUPID, and conservatives who see liberals as EVIL, Krauthammer’s fundamental law flipped like a Kamala Harris policy position on fracking or the border, two of the many farces of political pandering earning her the split-faced Aug. 12 New York Post cover, KAMA KAMELEON.
As for liberals increasingly regarding conservatives as merely stupid, my WND commentary published on Aug 2, “Progressive Church Leaders’ Summer of Self-flattery,” analyzed liberal clergy reactions to two July events: Trump’s near assassination in Butler, Pennsylvania, and the Paris Olympics’ drag/trans mockery of traditional Christianity. I described the reaction of woke mainline clergy to both events as oozing with self-flattery of the “We’re-so-much-smarter-than-you” variety.
In response to conservatives expressing disgust over the Lord’s Supper-like display, liberals offered Olympic-sized chiding amounting to, basically: “Calm down, Christians! Don’t be STUPID! Take an art class! Read Greek mythology and get to know Dionysus! If you were only educated, you could celebrate the Olympics with us.”
Liberals in the Decade of Trump seem to be abandoning their diagnosis of conservatives as EVIL, choosing instead to see in conservatives (even MAGA conservatives) a not-necessarily-terminal case of STUPID, a malady treatable with lifestyle changes. The Orwellian cure for STUPID is Thought Police, finding a way to expose the STUPID conservative mind only to the legacy media’s approved narrative of DNC talking points. “O, for power to outlaw misinformation as harmful, First Amendment be damned! Never again will you STUPIDS be enticed into being dumb consumers of Fox or Newsmax, or WND, nor certainly of the new Musk-X.”
If the impact of a single decade of Trump on Krauthammer’s three decade law as it respects liberals viewing of conservatives is unexpected (“EVIL is saying too much, let’s reduce our diagnosis of conservatives to merely STUPID”), the concurrent reversal in conservatives regard of liberals (“STUPID won’t suffice, we see pure EVIL”) seems unavoidable.
The Decade of Trump has convinced conservatives – tiring of being labeled xenophobic for their belief in a secure border, homophobic for their opposition to same-gender marriage, transphobic for their alarm at men competing in and ruining female sports, racist for their opposition to DEI’s weakening of institutions both government and private, and MAGA radicals for their support of a man the left has labeled as Hitler – that they are dealing with evil.
Conservatives, knowing themselves not to be any these things, have come to realize that stupid won’t suffice to explain how thoroughly they are castigated by the left.
Stupid won’t suffice to explain liberal attachment to lies easily debunked yet continually parroted by legacy media to be consumed as fact by those easily duped. The “Dictator from day one” hoax. The “Bloodbath” hoax (repeated by Biden last week in a CBS interview with Robert Costa). The “Very fine people” hoax (finally exposed as such by the liberal Snopes site).
Stupid won’t suffice to explain Adam Shiff and his Democrat colleagues guiding the Hillary Clinton financed Steele dossier, inventing Russian collusion, into dominating the political narrative for two years until proven to be the hoax they always knew it was.
Stupid won’t suffice to explain a two-tiered justice system raiding Mar-a-lago to stage incriminating-looking photos, nor the DOJ’s subsequent lawfare tactics to either break Trump or incarcerate him.
When I hear a Democratic politician level the “danger to democracy” line to describe MAGA, I think that stupid won’t suffice, simply because no one could be that stupid. How can they fail to see that Democratic-led efforts to take Trump off the ballot for an insurrection with which he has never been charged is the real danger to democracy? How could they fail to see the danger to democracy vomited out last week by Rep. Jamie Raskin, predicting civil war if Trump wins, since Congress must (in his view) invalidate the election and disqualify Trump, due to the J6 so-called insurrection?
Stupid won’t suffice. Evil is the proper word.
As a student of the Hebrew Bible, pondering Krauthammer’s fundamental law brought to mind a passage from Jeremiah in which the prophet offers his own Stupid/Evil analysis, assigning BOTH to a rebellious generation: “The Lord says, ‘My people are foolish. They do not know me. They are STUPID children; they don’t understand. They are skillful at doing EVIL, but they don’t know how to do good'” (Jeremiah 4:22, New Century Version, emphasis mine).
The Judeo-Christian perspective, then, is that STUPID and EVIL aren’t really that far apart, so that whether one is liberal or conservative, we must strive for a higher ideal.
Perhaps that is what Krauthammer’s “fundamental law” of American politics was admitting, that the distinction in political viewpoints is less clear cut than at first it may seem.
Recognizing that, it seems, is one of the “Things that Matter,” (to borrow the title of Krauthammer’s book), for America’s body politic to survive and to thrive.
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Originally Published at Daily Wire, World Net Daily, or The Blaze
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