Man, That’s a Hell of a Mote
JVL at The Bulwark published a missive today on how batshit insane the Democratic Socialists of America are, and the Dude has some noted
The DSA has some lunatics. Sure. The Dude would just like to discuss the telephone pole sticking out of the other guy’s eye.
(this will make a lot more sense if you read this Is the DSA a Republican Psy-Op? first - PDF of the post since it is behind a paywall)
Walter has something in his eye.
Not metaphorically. There is an actual piece of wood sticking out of Walter’s face.
The Dude points this out.
Walter says it’s nothing.
It is not nothing. It appears to be a section of dimensional lumber. Possibly pressure-treated. Whatever it is, OSHA would probably like a word.
Meanwhile, Walter is very concerned about the tiny speck in the other guy’s eye.
“Look at that, Dude. Look at that fucking thing.”
Walter, man.
You have a two-by-four sticking out of your skull.
This is approximately where the Dude finds himself after reading Jonathan V. Last’s latest dispatch from The Bulwark, “Is the DSA a Republican Psy-Op?”
And here’s the annoying part:
JVL has a point.
Those Are Some Pretty Fucked-Up Cherries, Man
The Democratic Socialists of America have said some extraordinarily stupid shit.
Not Chad from the Brooklyn chapter after three beers.
Not @DialecticalDaddy69 posting from a phone at 2:17 in the morning.
The actual organization.
JVL makes a point of establishing this distinction. The material he cites consists of official DSA statements—written, edited, approved and published in the institutional voice of the organization.
And some of it is fucking awful.
The DSA recently commemorated Fidel Castro as an enduring symbol of anti-imperialist struggle while accusing Marco Rubio of waging “genocide” against Cuba.
After Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race, the organization called him a warmonger, a corporate shill and a “perpetrator of genocide,” then went on to suggest Kamala Harris was sufficiently indistinguishable from Trump that members could reasonably abstain or vote third party.
Its statement on Russia invading Ukraine managed to condemn the invasion while also taking the scenic route through NATO expansion, American imperialism and the proposition that Washington helped “set the stage” for Putin’s war.
Okay.
The Dude does not feel compelled to defend any of that.
Castro was a dictator. Putin invaded Ukraine. “Genocide” is not a synonym for “foreign policy I really, really dislike.”
There. Easy.
And the DSA itself says it has more than 100,000 members, so this isn’t six Trotskyists arguing over possession of a mimeograph machine. It is a real political organization with real influence on the American left.
So when Hakeem Jeffries was asked whether he endorsed the DSA agenda and said, basically, no, the Dude does not see the problem.
He isn’t in the DSA man.
Why the fuck would he endorse its entire agenda?
That exchange is literally where JVL’s piece begins.
So far, so good.
Then JVL brings out the tape measure.
And this is where things get interesting.
Fine. Don’t Put the Tape Measure Away.
Near the end of the piece, JVL lays down a rule.
You can’t judge a political organization only by the ideas you like. If you affiliate yourself with it, you’re on the hook for the ugly stuff too.
You know what?
Fair.
The Dude accepts these terms and conditions.
No need to scroll.
Click AGREE.
Now leave the fucking tape measure on the table.
Because we’re going to use it on everybody.
And suddenly the Republican side of the room starts getting awfully nervous.
For decades, American conservatism has had its own collection of cranks, paranoids, theocrats, racial obsessives, constitutional cosplay enthusiasts and guys who have Very Important Thoughts about what the Federal Reserve is hiding.
The John Birch Society did not invent right-wing conspiracism, and right-wing conspiracism did not disappear when respectable conservatives stopped inviting the Birchers to dinner.
Small-l libertarianism has produced its own delightful collection of ideas that poll somewhere between “mandatory root canal” and “let raccoons administer the fire department.”
Then came the Tea Party.
Then MAGA.
Then QAnon.
Then January 6.
Then election denial became less a weird thing your uncle posted on Facebook and more of a credential in Republican primaries.
In 2026, Republicans who played roles in challenging or trying to overturn the 2020 election are competitive for governorships in several major battleground states. A Washington Post examination found at least 30 Republican gubernatorial candidates advocating election-system overhauls, with prominent contenders in states including Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin having participated in challenges to the 2020 result.
That is not a guy handing out pamphlets behind the bowling alley.
Those people could be governors.
Walter?
Still with us?
“Those Guys Don’t Count, Dude”
This is where the exemptions begin.
The Birchers?
Not real conservatives.
The militia guys?
Fringe.
QAnon?
Internet nuts.
Christian nationalists?
Come on, Dude. That’s complicated.
Election deniers?
Just pandering to the base.
Trump?
Well.
Trump is Trump.
At some point we have exempted so many people from the Republican coalition that the Republican coalition apparently consists of David French, three Bulwark subscribers and a ghostly image of George Will floating above a stack of back issues of National Review.
Meanwhile, DSA releases one deranged communiqué about Fidel Castro and suddenly the laboratory results are back:
Yep. Leftism. We found it in the tissue sample.
This is the asymmetry that bothers the Dude.
Not that JVL is wrong about DSA.
Not that the Never Trump right has failed to condemn MAGA. Quite the opposite. The Bulwark crowd has spent a decade telling Republicans that Trumpism is authoritarian, corrupt, dangerous and fundamentally incompatible with the conservatism they thought they belonged to.
They lost friends over it.
Careers.
Institutions.
A political home.
The Dude gives them credit for that.
But there is a little intellectual trick hiding in the rubble.
When extremism appears on their side, it is an aberration from the tradition.
When extremism appears on the other side, it reveals the tradition.
That dog will not hunt, man.
There’s a Board in Your Eye, Walter
Take Christian nationalism.
You can argue all day about definitions, and you should be careful with the term because it gets thrown around too casually.
But PRRI’s 2025 American Values Atlas classified 21 percent of Republicans as Christian-nationalist “Adherents” and another 35 percent as “Sympathizers.” The second category is broad and does not mean 56 percent of Republicans are itching to establish Gilead on Tuesday.
Still.
Fifty-six percent is an awfully fucking large “fringe.”
And then there’s the small matter of the actual Republican Party platform.
Not the Proud Boys newsletter.
Not something Alex Jones wrote on a cocktail napkin.
The Republican National Committee.
Its current platform is explicitly Trump’s platform. The RNC described it that way when adopting it. It promises, among other things, the largest deportation operation in American history, describes migration as an “invasion,” promises to deport “pro-Hamas radicals,” alleges political persecution by Democrats, and builds the entire document around Trump’s political project.
You are perfectly entitled to support some of those policies.
You are perfectly entitled to oppose them.
But what you cannot plausibly say is:
Those people are merely hanging around the Republican coalition.
My brother in Christ, they wrote the platform.
This is the part that makes the DSA panic a little strange.
Because the DSA has not captured the Democratic Party.
MAGA has captured the Republican Party.
One organization has a little over 100,000 members and periodically gives Democratic leadership heartburn.
The other one has the White House.
The Old House Was Lovely, Man
And this is where the Dude has some sympathy.
The Never Trump conservatives remember the old house.
They remember Buckley chasing the Birchers out.
They remember NATO and free trade and institutionalism and constitutional restraint and earnest conversations about marginal tax rates.
There were leather chairs.
Somebody had a Scotch.
George Will was explaining baseball.
Then they went out for cigarettes and came home ten years later and Donald Trump was in the living room tearing copper wire out of the walls while Steve Bannon tried to start a trash fire in the kitchen sink.
That has to suck.
And if you spent your life believing that house was American conservatism, there is an understandable desire to say:
These people stole it. They aren’t us.
Maybe so.
But eventually possession becomes relevant.
At some point the squatters have the deed, the utilities are in their name and the old owners are standing on the sidewalk arguing about the original floor plan.
You don’t get to compare the Democratic Party as it actually exists to the Republican Party you remember from 1996.
The Mote
The Dude vaguely remembers a Bible story about this.
Something about a mote and a beam.
Walter says it was Ecclesiastes.
It was not Ecclesiastes.
Donny probably knew.
The point was basically this:
Before you become extremely interested in extracting the tiny object from someone else’s eye, you might want to deal with the Home Depot lumber aisle protruding from your own face.
And yes, the DSA mote is real.
Some of it is nasty.
Some of it is stupid.
Democrats should have absolutely no difficulty saying that Castro apologism is bullshit, authoritarian regimes are bad even when they dislike America, Putin owns Putin’s invasion, and every geopolitical event does not become morally clearer when you run it through a graduate seminar on American imperialism.
Tell them to knock it off.
Tell them they’re wrong.
Tell them to fuck off when appropriate.
That is what healthy political coalitions are supposed to do with their fringes.
And you know who ought to recognize that practice better than anybody?
Never Trump conservatives.
They have spent the last decade begging Republicans to do precisely this.
So by all means, JVL, bring the tweezers.
The Dude will hold the flashlight.
We can get that mote.
But afterward?
Walter, man.
We really need to talk about the fucking board sticking out of your eye.
You’re dripping on the lane man.