Ron DeSantis: "All action and no talk"

How much talk is required to defeat wokeism?

I’ve praised Ron DeSantis by contrasting him with Donald Trump and certain high-profile GOP governors who talk a good game against wokeism but haven’t consistently delivered on that talk. DeSantis is delivering for Florida.

But Glenn Ellmers sees fault where I’ve seen virtue. He complains that DeSantis is “all action and no talk.”

Ellmers is quick to add that (1) he’s exaggerating for the sake of argument and (2) Trump’s “opposite vice” is just as problematic. However, he insists that “in politics rhetoric matters” and that DeSantis’ anti-woke rhetoric, though good as far as it goes, doesn’t go far enough.

DeSantis’ lack of soaring anti-woke rhetoric is understandable. Much of wokeism is so jarring to the mind of a normal person that it seems susceptible to being dispatched with very little talk.

“Latinx.” Tampon dispensers in the men’s room. Boys competing in girl’s sports. Defund the police. George Washington as an “enslaver” whose statues should be torn down. Shouldn’t we be able simply to laugh these absurdities into the dust bin?

Yes, we should. But John Fonte and Thomas Klingenstein argue that behind the absurdities lies an attack on America that can’t be laughed away.

They write:

America is in the middle of a Cold Civil War between woke revolutionaries—who believe America is and has always been systemically racist (evil), so that it must be deconstructed, de-legitimized (i.e., destroyed)—and those who believe that America is good, that its principles are the greatest antidote to racism ever created, and that preserving America and its principles is the highest and most urgent political calling.

If that’s the case — if woke absurdities are the tip of large-scale anti-American iceberg — then soaring rhetoric must be summoned to counter wokeism.

The problem, say Fonte and Klingenstein, is that although the public is increasingly aware of the horrors of woke tyranny and is repelled by many of its pieces, “it’s very hard to see the entire puzzle.” The role of anti-woke rhetoric is to “put the pieces together and build the public sentiment necessary to fuel a victorious counter-revolution.” It’s to “give a reasoned account of the woke regime—its principles, tactics, adherents, and aims and. . .give a reasoned account of the American regime, why it is worthy of the last full measure of devotion, and what must be done to save it.”

This seems like too much of a task for DeSantis, as smart and as talented as he is. Indeed, it may be too much for any potential GOP standard bearer.

Rep. Jim Banks has announced the formation of an anti-woke caucus. Fonte and Klingenstein hope that this caucus can “put anti-wokeism at the center of Republican politics, which today has no center.”

In their estimation, this will require the following elements:

First:

The public must understand that America is at war. It must be made clear that the woke revolutionaries wish not to reform America along the lines of, say, the New Deal or Great Society but ultimately want to destroy the American way of life. The woke revolutionaries do not hide their objective; indeed they flaunt it. They keep telling us their actions are designed to “fundamentally transform” the American way of life.

Citizens desperately need to hear their elected leaders saying in public that the American way of life, the American regime, cannot possibly coexist with the woke regime, because the two regimes have utterly irreconcilable understandings of what constitutes a just society. This is what makes it a war.

Second:

Having identified the composition of the regime and its goal (equality of result for racial, ethnic, and gender groups), the caucus must explain how the woke revolutionaries are going about reaching that goal. Their first critical step is making Americans deeply ashamed of themselves and their past, thereby making them inclined to trade in the merit regime for the group quota regime. This requires a big lie. Every totalitarian regime, hard or soft, has one. The woke regime’s big lie is that America is systemically racist and about to be overrun by racists, a.k.a. Republican voters.

Caucus members and other Americanists should call this the “Big Lie.” When addressing the woke revolutionaries, they should dismiss it without apology or qualification.

Third:

Caucus members also need to make a spirited defense of the nation-state (a sovereign political community in which citizens share traditions, customs, language, and values such as patriotism). The woke revolutionaries must destroy the nation-state if they are to destroy the American way of life and replace it with the woke way of life. Reliance on transnational institutions, climate change, open borders, and energy dependence are among the ways the woke revolutionaries seek to destroy the American nation-state.

Fourth:

Woke revolutionaries believe America should be rebuilt from the ground up, whatever the cost. The anti-woke caucus members must repeatedly point out that it is just this—attempts to build from the ground up—that has brought us the most horrific, blood-letting regimes of the 20th century. It is a virtual truism that the road to utopia terminates in Hell. 

Finally:

There is one last but very important bit of advice. Come up with a name for the enemy and an associated nomenclature. We don’t see how you can beat an enemy you cannot name. 

We offer the following for the caucus’s consideration, most of which we have already introduced. The enemy is the “woke regime.” The word “regime” is important, because it suggests an all-out, comprehensive assault on the American way of life. . . .

Why “Americanists” vs. “woke revolutionaries” and not, say, “conservatives” vs. “progressives”? These latter names suggest we are in a normal policy dispute within the traditional context of American politics, in which both sides accept the legitimacy of the American regime. We are not in such a context. We are not living in the bygone world of Reagan vs. Mondale. We are in a war.

If the anti-woke caucus can accomplish just the first two of these tasks, each of its members should be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

I believe victory over wokeism can be achieved by a combination of bottom-up and top-down successes. By bottom-up, I mean victories on discrete matters at the state and local level like the ones Glenn Youngkin and DeSantis are achieving. These wins do more than just overturn mischief. They mobilize voters.

By top-down, I mean the kind of thing Fonte and Klingenstein describe — big picture analysis that puts the state and local battles in context. This keeps voters mobilized.

The left has always known how to do this. The old left radicalized workers by combining bottom-up battles over working conditions with top-down, ideologically-based rhetoric about class struggle. The (not so) new left leveraged bottom-up hatred of the Vietnam War using top-down rhetoric about U.S. imperialism and racism to radicalize a generation of students.

The left’s top-down rhetoric always has a Marxist-Leninist flavor, but it filters through to the masses (as the left would put it) in a simplified, bite-size form. The same should be true, I think, of anti-woke rhetoric. The public needs explanatory rhetoric to see the puzzle, but may not need the full explanatory analysis Fonte and Klingenstein lay out.

Rhetoric can only soar so high when it’s weighed down by too much analysis.