1. A few quick thoughts on Stormy Daniels,Donald Trump, Edmund Burke, Hugh Hefner, National Review, Guy Davenport, Theodore Sturgeon, chivalry & patriarchy.
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3. "How can Trump be the Ron Jeremy of presidents & still have the support of evangelical Christians & social conservatives," liberals marvel. "Isn't that hypocritical." No, not really.
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4. It's true that during the great Porn Wars that raged from 1960s to 1990s, religious right (Falwell & co.) made censoring smut one of their big issues.
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5. But even during the Porn Wars, there was a minority position among conservatives, inflected by libertarianism & 18th century aristocratic libertinism, that was open to smut.
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6. In 1966, William F. Buckley lamented that Hugh Hefner's had a hedonistic ethic “to which such modern ‘conservatives’ as Ayn Rand seem fully to subscribe.” But it wasn't just Rand, but also many National Review writers.
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7. National Review had a strong contingent of writers who welcomed the breakdown of censorship & wrote literary erotica: D. Keith Mano, Guy Davenport, Theodore Sturgeon (NR's main reviewer of sci-fi in 1960s).
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8. Here is National Review senior editor Jeffrey Hart, in a 1985 Partisan Review essay, extolling Playboy.pic.twitter.com/wT0ZQU6Zxn
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9. Pro-porn conservatives won the day in part through technology (hard to roll back the internet) but also because patriarchy & porn work well together.
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10. With the rise of feminism & LGBT activism, conservatives started to look at Hefner & other smut merchants as upholder of traditional heteronormativity and gender norming.
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11. The Federalist: Hugh Hefner's "work celebrates the sexual complementarity that has bound men and women together since the dawn of time" Translation: porn is better than accepting trans people.
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12. As patriarchy is under fresh challenge, conservatives, including evangelical christians, are looking for allies where they can find them, including Trump's overt piggishness.
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13. The older conservatism was Patriarchy With the Mask of Chivalry. Women were promised protection in exchange for submission. Now the mask has come off.
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14. As I keep saying, Trump turns subtext into text. As against chivalry's mask he gives us raw male id: banging porn starts & boasting about size of his nuclear button.
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15. Unlike National Review libertines, evangelical Christians haven't explicitly made their peace with porn. But they talk about it less than in 1980s & their revealed preference shows in their love of Trump.
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16. Edmund Burke, 17900: "The age of chivalry is gone." Brother, you don't know the half of it. Trump is post-chivalric conservatism.
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20. For more reflections on Trump & the rise of Porno-Conservatism, see here:https://newrepublic.com/article/146631/triumph-porn-social-conservatism …
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End of conversation
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