Left Coast Exobiology
A San Franciscan Ponders Alien Species that Don’t Defecate on Sidewalks
From his home in San Francisco, a friend of over fifty years sent me a query, titled, “Question for you as a staunch conservative”:
“I understand that many Republicans feel the Democratic party is a danger to our democracy. I am interested in knowing if you agree and (whether or not you agree) what you understand this threat to be. … Thanks for your thoughts.”
He could have titled his email, “Question for you as a polygamous 17th Century Cossack warlord,” for that description fits me just as accurately as his appellation, “staunch conservative.”
A “STAUNCH CONSERVATIVE”? MOI?
I reject his categorization—first, because I have no idea how one defines “staunch conservative” in 2024, and, second, because I have never fit any current or prior definition of the term. My friend is smart, well-read, highly accomplished, kind, and thoughtful. I deeply admire the work he has done over the course of his career and his willingness to engage in civil discourse. But he lives in San Francisco, where “staunch conservative” is defined as “anyone who lives in a place that has no need for Snapcrap.”
Outside of San Francisco, what does a “staunch conservative” today believe? In my work, I encounter conservatives of both the Reagan and Trump flavors. They share disdain for progressives and warm feelings for patriotism, religion, business, public order, and the military, but otherwise have remarkably little in common with one another.
A Reagan Era conservative would support all or most of the following:
(1) small government, (2) a shift of power from Washington to the states, (3) balanced budgets, (4) free markets, (5) free trade, (6) international capital flows, (7) Federal Reserve autonomy, (8) proactive national defense, (9) muscular foreign policy, (10) relatively open immigration, (11) free speech, (12) a polite demeanor, (13) personal probity, (14) traditional marriage, and (15) strong limits on abortion.
In contrast, a Trump-era conservative might well favor:
(1) big government, (2) a shift of power from the states to the federal government, (3) deficit spending, (4) industrial policy, (5) protective tariffs, (6) limits on “globalization,” (7) presidential control over the Fed, (8) an instinctive wariness of overseas military activity, (9) an inward-looking foreign policy, (10) severe limits on immigration, (11) stronger libel laws, (12) bombastic take-no-prisoners rhetoric, (13) nonchalance concerning personal morals (e.g., Trump’s marital history), (14) gay marriage, and (15) middle-of-the-road abortion laws.
Many or most of these Trump Era positions have been previously, recently, or currently seen as left-of-center. Bernie Sanders, for example, long railed against the impact of immigrants on American workers. Erstwhile Democratic House Leader Dick Gephardt blamed Asian countries for the woes of American industry and endorsed protectionist trade restrictions. Some pre-2016 conservatives warned their followers that Trump was a centrist ex-Democrat, and on many issues, their intuition has proven correct. Donald Trump came to office with no objections to gay marriage—contrary to Barack Obama, who entered office insisting that marriage “is the union between a man and a woman.”
Matthew Schmitz co-founded Compact magazine, which, one can argue, mirrors the Trump Era’s syncretic conservatism. Stephanie Slade, a libertarian writer for Reason, said Schmitz and his co-founders combine “intense religious conservatism” with “a whiff of socialism.” In his December 2023 New York Times essay (“The Secret of Trump’s Appeal Isn’t Authoritarianism”), Schmitz wrote:
“during his presidency, Mr. Trump’s often intemperate rhetoric and erratic behavior ended up accompanying a host of moderate policies. … Mr. Trump’s moderation can be easy to miss, because he is not a stylistic centrist—the sort who calls for bipartisan budget cutting and a return to civility. His moderation is closer to that of Richard Nixon, who combined a combative personality and pronounced resentments with a nose for political reality and a willingness to negotiate with his ideological opposites.”
Long ago, I was a moderate liberal—perhaps a “staunch” one—but that was back when American liberalism favored freedom of thought, freedom of speech, suspicion of authority, adversarial journalism, the elimination of racial preferences, pride in Western Civilization, admiration for Israel, and wholesale rejection of antisemitism. In stark contrast, a sizable swath of today’s “staunch progressives” advocate or tolerate cancel culture, censorship, lapdog journalism, racial essentialism, raging like phobia oikophobia, and fawning admiration for the rapists/murderers/kidnappers of Hamas. It is progressives who intimidate and assault Jews on American campuses.
At times, I’ve harbored some spiritual kinship with the whimsically named “South Park conservatives.” In 2001, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, co-creators of TV’s South Park, were often perceived as politically conservative, but Stone said such perceptions were incorrect—that his true philosophy could be summed up as:
“I hate conservatives. But I really fucking hate liberals.”
Parker and Stone said they were really more libertarian than conservative. But I’m not a “staunch libertarian,” either, as I don’t smoke pot, am not isolationist, do not admire the Confederacy, and would rather read 600 pages of software Terms and Conditions than anything by Ayn Rand.
How about calling me a “staunch iconoclast,” a “proselytic agnostic,” or a “fervent heterodox?” My friend’s mistaken perception of my political philosophy is understandable, for he lives in San Francisco—a remote, oxygen-deprived moon of Pauline’s World.
THE GRAVITATIONAL FIELD OF PAULINE’S WORLD
San Franciscans can only observe conservatives and conservatism as astronomers observe exoplanets—from the confines of their tiny orb, using electronic devices to gather, organize, and interpret fragmentary data from worlds they can never visit or even observe directly. San Francisco is a far moon of Pauline’s World.
After 1972, conservatives came to view New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael as the ultimate clueless liberal—thanks to an apocryphal quote attributed to her:
“I can’t believe Nixon won. I don’t know anyone who voted for him.”
Kael was, indeed, a provincial—encapsulated within and defined by the compact world of New York City’s arts community. But she was not an urban rube lacking self-awareness. What she actually said was:
“I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don’t know. They’re outside my ken. But sometimes when I’m in a theater I can feel them.”
That is precisely the level of understanding that San Franciscans have for conservatives and conservatism. In 2024, every meal in San Francisco comes with a side order of Kael.
IN THE PROGRESSIVE PROJECTION BOOTH
The archetype for modern progressivism is Harry Kellerman. In the 1971 film Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me? (great premise, crappy movie), Dustin Hoffman plays Georgie Soloway, a successful rock music songwriter growing despondent as his life is ruined by a mysterious character assassin named Harry Kellerman. Kellerman spreads vicious falsehoods about Soloway by way of out-of-the-blue telephone calls to Soloway’s old girlfriends and other acquaintances. As the movie ends, Soloway contemplates suicide-by-airplane-crash—at which time it is revealed that Soloway himself is making the phone calls, maligning himself via the pseudonym “Harry Kellerman.”
To refresh our memories, my friend’s email asked:
“I understand that many Republicans feel the Democratic party is a danger to our democracy. I am interested in knowing if you agree and (whether or not you agree) what you understand this threat to be.
This query represents what psychologists refer to as “projection,” defined by Britannica as “the mental process by which people attribute to others what is in their own minds.” To understand my assertion, here’s an experiment you can try at home. Do a Google search on “danger to our democracy.” When I did, I got pages and pages and pages of arm-waving links to pieces shouting that Donald Trump and the Republican Party pose lethal dangers to “our democracy.” (It’s almost always “our” democracy.) I saw a few links to conservative sites, but when I went to them, they were not warnings that Democrats are a threat to democracy. Rather, they were stories on how the left perceives Trump and Republicans to be threats to democracy. I tried some variations on the search terms and finally came up with precisely two links suggesting that Democrats are a threat to democracy. One was a short statement on some unknown guy’s Instagram page. Another was on the conservative National Review site—but when I looked at that one, it was merely a single comment—one of 544—posted by some random reader below an article that made no such argument. There are probably some Democrats-are-a-threat-to-democracy stories out there, but I haven’t the time or patience to find them.
Certain Democrats whom my wife and I know and love enter our house and, immediately after clearing the doorway, inform us that:
“Donald Trump and the Republicans are a THREAT to Our Democracy™.”
Then, after wiping the foam from their lips, they take their coats off, say hello, and ask how we are. (I exaggerate slightly—but only slightly.) We also know and love a great number of Republicans, not one of whom has ever informed us that Democrats are a threat to democracy. To be sure, plenty of conservative friends have informed us that Democrats are a threat to civil order, national cohesion, economic well-being, race relations, energy independence, equal opportunity, constitutional norms, Israel’s existence, Jewish safety, etc., etc., etc. But in my personal experience, “danger to our democracy” is exclusively a leftist Tourettism.
Some of our conservative friends specifically point to San Francisco as the quintessence of everything wrong with contemporary progressivism. Homeless addicts defecating on sidewalks. Tent cities clogging once-beautiful thoroughfares. Playgrounds littered with hypodermic needles. Roving gangs ransacking retail establishments. Convenience stores with toothpaste and pencils and lotions and everything else locked within plexiglass vaults. Businesses fleeing crime and taxation. Lax laws that treat industrial-strength thievery as a trivial misdemeanor. Real estate laws that make it impossible for anyone but high-tech plutocrats to secure housing. But never, ever have these conservatives (Reagan or Trump variety) told us that San Francisco poses a “threat to democracy.” Just the opposite. San Francisco is an example of democracy gone mad—the very embodiment of H. L. Mencken’s observation that:
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it … good and hard.”
Thus, I must tell my friend in San Francisco that I will neither agree nor disagree with his assertion that “many Republicans feel the Democratic party is a danger to our democracy,” because it seems to be a straw man argument—an accusation emerging from the fevered minds of kombucha-drinkers in Haight-Ashbury, projecting their own perceptions about conservatives onto people of whom they know nothing. Hence, speculating on “what [I] understand this threat to be” is no more useful or meaningful an exercise than arguing over what lies 157 miles due north of the North Pole or (as was done by a panel of “historians” on a long-ago SNL skit), speculating about:
“What would have happened at the Battle of Waterloo if Napoleon had possessed a B-52 Stratofortress?”
NORTON I: EMPEROR OF THE UNITED STATES
One of the most colorful characters in San Francisco’s Technicolor history was Joshua Abraham Norton (c.1818-1880), who immigrated to San Francisco in 1849 from Britain, by way of South Africa. For a brief time, he was a successful commodities trader and real estate speculator, but ultimately lost everything in 1852 by trying and failing to corner the rice market during a famine in China. Afterward, he unsuccessfully sued the merchant who had sold him the rice. In 1858, he announced plans to run for Congress and then filed for insolvency. In 1859, perhaps mentally ill, he proclaimed himself Norton I, Emperor of the United States and in 1863 (after Napoleon III’s invasion of Mexico), added the secondary title, “Protector of Mexico.”
As “emperor,” he (in edicts and correspondence) formally abolished Congress, proposed marriage to Queen Victoria, sent diplomatic posts to foreign governments, sought to depose elected officials, abolished the Democratic and Republican parties, and imposed financial penalties on anyone committing the proto-microaggression of referring to his adopted city as “Frisco.” (Presciently, he also called for the establishment of a League of Nations and the construction of a bridge or tunnel connecting San Francisco with Oakland.) Norton printed up worthless currency bearing his own likeness and received free meals from restaurateurs who thought his presence in their establishments would attract customers. After private security guards sought to commit him to a mental institution, the city’s police chief ordered him released and issued a public apology—after which policemen saluted Norton whenever they encountered him.
In 1880, he collapsed and died in the street, after which the San Francisco Chronicle ran the headline “Le Roi Est Mort” (“The King Is Dead”). Reportedly, 10,000 people came to view his body, but only a smattering actually attended his funeral. Today, fans still celebrate Norton and regularly propose renaming bridges and buildings in the city after him.
In the progressive San Francisco of 2024, Norton’s delusions of grandeur, poor business acumen, engagement in lawfare, extraconstitutional edicts, production of fake currency, and acceptance of free meals would make him a shoo-in for mayor … and beyond. In New York, George Soros weeps for his absence and for dreams of what might have been.
Great column. The one missing piece is the damage that Democrats HAVE done to democratic norms and institutions — usually in the name of “saving democracy.” Free speech is the center of the bomb crater, but in every sphere — Supreme Court “reform,” repealing the filibuster, abolishing the Electoral College, undermining public order and safety, weaponizing the law for political gains — Democrats are battering down the institutions that we all rely upon to keep the US functioning and balanced. Their slogan could be, “We had to destroy democratic government to save it.”
My pretty progressive former residency instructor messaged me a few years ago to ask me to explain QAnon. He assumed that my conservative views put me squarely in step with Q. I answered that I knew vaguely what it was, but really had no idea of anything else. In point of fact, I consider myself a pretty moderate conservative, and more so with every passing year as I try to see the world through the lens of orthodox Christian faith rather than politics.