Robin was Right All Along

My father started reading National Review before I was born. I started seriously reading NR and other conservative magazines in my mid twenties. I stopped reading when President Trump came along and exposed conservative “intellectuals” for what they really are.

Hindsight being 20/20, we should have known there was something seriously wrong with these people when they introduced themselves to us as “intellectuals.” I mean really. Anyone who would describe themselves as an intellectual is, excuse my French, a dick. We knew this, but many of us chose to overlook it. My brilliant father, who never graduated high school, encouraged me to overlook things like that: my brilliant late husband, who never graduated high school either, absolutely refused to overlook things like that. Maybe my Dad was more charitable than Robin, maybe Robin understood these “intellectuals” far better than my Dad did. My Dad was a working class guy: he rarely actually met anyone who described themselves as an intellectual, and on the occasions he did, it was brief. Robin attended an upper crust school, and spent his adult life as a businessman. Robin had more opportunities to actually meet and deal with self described “intellectuals”, and oh my God, he hated them. When I first met Robin, I tried to bring him into the conservative fold, but he was totally repulsed by conservative “intellectuals.” He never really came on board until Trump came down the escalator. Until Trump came along, whenever I would try to sell Robin on some supposedly conservative politician or writer, he would just shake his head, and he would say, “These people are dicks, Judy.” Once Trump came along, Robin was all in, but only when Trump came along-and at about the same time, when so many conservative thought leaders, whom Robin said were dicks, became Never Trumpers, I stopped paying attention to them. Robin and I always had a similar outlook, but he and I were never totally on the same page until Trump ran for President.

Before Trump, I dismissed Robin’s rejection of conservatism: I just told myself that even though he wasn’t a liberal, he had nonetheless been brainwashed by the liberal media into thinking that conservatives were dicks. But he married me, and he adored my parents, knowing that we considered ourselves conservatives. Obviously, he wasn’t that brainwashed, but I pushed such thoughts from my mind. At the time, the idea that Robin might have been onto something was too horrific to contemplate.

Now, there is no denying that Robin was onto something: I can’t prove it, but if memory serves, every single solitary prominent conservative whom Robin told me was a dick went on to become a Never Trumper. Robin spotted them from a million miles away, years before Trump even came onto the political scene.

Say what you will about leftists, but they are loyal to their supporters: they stand by the people who put them where they are. The way conservative “intellectuals” have betrayed those who have been supporting them all their lives takes my breath away. There is, I think, a special place in hell for Never Trumpers. And Robin is in Heaven, smiling down on me, because I have finally admitted that he was right all along. 🙂