Dear Friend,

Trump’s relentless personal insults and attacks on liberals may seem crude and childish, but they are based on an idea that’s generations old: a belief that liberals somehow rule America—even when holding minority political power.

The New Republic’s Osita Nwanevu reminds us that “Donald Trump himself is likely to stick around one way or another.… With fully half of the Republican Party subscribing to the belief that ‘top Democrats are involved in elite child sex-trafficking rings’ according to YouGov, the QAnon phenomenon—in its inanity, reach, and roots in cultural animus—seems like a direct successor to the birtherism that sent Trump to the top of conservative politics in the first place.”

Conservatives can count on culture warriors like Sean Hannity to promote these views on Fox. But there’s an alternative: The New Republic’s coverage of the conservative movement is serious and fearless. TNR isn’t afraid to draw conclusions or offer solutions.

And we have a special offer to let you try our brand of journalism during this important election season: Get three months of unlimited digital access to The New Republic for just $5!

Nwanevu presented the historical perspective: “The idea of conservative helplessness in the face of liberal culture has powered the right for generations⁠: William F. Buckley Jr. began his long career as a crusader against liberals on college campuses; the Moral Majority fought against the depraved totalitarians it saw in Hollywood and the media. Until recently, culture war material sat alongside a fairly full economic policy agenda—dismantling the American welfare state, dramatically limiting the federal government’s capacity to rebuild it, weakening regulations, and destroying the labor movement. That’s an agenda that the right mostly succeeded in implementing—with the Democratic Party’s eventual assistance. But now perhaps most of the public believes the conservative economic project has been a disaster.”

So what’s left for conservativism? Nwanevu thinks that “until the movement reaches a new settlement (or revives the last one) on where to go next, cultural resentments and anxieties will be the whole game—the thin tissue from which something passing for a policy agenda will have to be built.”

This election season is the perfect time to follow Osita Nwanevu and the best investigative reporters, opinion writers, and cultural critics in America. 

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Sincerely,

Kerrie Gillis, publisher

Read Osita Nwanevu’s Cultural Resentment Is Conservatives’ New Religion