Race to the Bottom

 A New York Times op-ed yesterday delved once more into the biography of Marco Rubio—pointing out his bizarre chameleon-like ability to adapt himself to rapidly changing political environments. 

The contradictions have only mounted in Mr. Rubio’s latter-day alliance with Donald Trump, the authors write, and not just on the issue of immigration. Mr. Rubio has shifted from an impassioned champion of U.S. foreign aid to one of the dismantlers of the United States Agency for International Development. He has gone from piquant adversary of the president’s first-term foreign policy to an enabler of legally disputed strikes on alleged drug-trafficking boats and a cheerleader for the president’s hegemonic approach to the Western Hemisphere.

I'm reminded of how Byron characterized Southey, that great political flip-flopper of yesteryear: 

He had written praises of a Regicide;

   He had written praises of all kings whatever;

He had written for republics far and wide,

   And then against them bitterer than ever;

For pantisocracy he once had cried

   Aloud, a scheme less moral than ’twas clever;

Then grew a hearty anti-jacobin—

Had turned his coat — and would have turned his skin.

Indeed. Rubio, that political chameleon, has likewise turned his coat multiple times over at this point—"and would have turned his skin." 

On the one hand—this is a great mystery. How can someone contradict themselves so blatantly? 

And yet, on the other hand—what could be more obvious and banal? Rubio's shifting character and rhetoric have the simplest of all explanations: he sold himself for power and prestige. And the price he set wasn't even particularly high. "Just for a handful of silver he left us," as Browning wrote of the same generation of poetical turncoats Byron was describing; "Just for a ribband to stick in his coat." 

So miserably common is this in politics—in fact—that I'm starting to worry we're seeing it among Democrats too. Viz. the whole Graham Platner fiasco, which just seems to get worse over time. 

When Platner just had his Nazi tattoo, he was able to convince some people that his repentance was genuine. He was able to say: I covered up the tattoo as soon as I learned what it was; it was a terrible mistake and oversight on my part. It will never happen again. 

Then there were all his obnoxious social media posts that came to light. He said: I was a different person back then. I've changed. I was going through a hard time. 

And people were somewhat willing to accept that too. 

And now, it turns out that even during his campaign, he was sending sexualized messages to women who were not his wife. 

And a bunch of Democrats are rushing to defend that too. 

What we are seeing here is, alas, a process very much like what happened in the Republican party not so long ago, and which brought people like Marco Rubio down from the level of seemingly principled advocates of human rights to bottom-feeding toadies, willing to excuse any obscenity and perversity that Donald Trump might commit. 

I don't say that Platner is as bad as Trump. I merely say that the trajectory here is all too reminiscent. 

One strike could be dismissed as an aberration (though a Nazi tattoo is a pretty big strike, in my book). Two is pushing it. Three is a definite pattern. 

Maybe it's time to admit that Platner may just be kind of an asshole? 

Instead, major figures on the Left appear willing to extend him every grace. They accept every statement of repentance—and even when there is a total lack of repentance, they accept that too. They say: "infidelity is just fine—who cares?"

The same thing happened with Republicans and Trump. After the Access Hollywood tape, Republicans said: "he's sorry now; he's changed. It was a one-off moment." After his first impeachment, Senate Republicans said things like: "I'm sure he's learned his lesson. There's no need to remove him from office." 

And then, as Trump just kept on plumbing new depths of depravity, they had to change their own moral standards and behavior to mirror him. They moved the goal posts in order to keep Trump within bounds. They had to follow him on the race to the bottom. 

You can try for a whole to make a politician seem morally tolerable by reframing his character ("Trump is actually good at heart"); and when that fails, in the face of mountainous evidence, you then change the terms of debate; you reframe the concepts of morality itself ("Trump may be bad; but it's actually good to be bad.") If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. 

Now, the left is doing the same with Platner. They say: actually, it's good to be an asshole. They say: actually, it's refreshing. 

In order to make it acceptable for Platner to be the way he is, we need to change the definition of acceptable. 

For some on the left, this actually appears to come as a kind of liberation. One gets the impression that they wanted to let their inner asshole out all along, and were just waiting for Platner to give them the excuse. 

Ken Klippenstein—who occasionally has meaningful scoops on the national security beat, and who is worth subscribing to for that reason—seems to belong to this category. 

Here is what he had to say about Janet Mills, Platner's former primary competitor: "she’s probably still shitting pieces of her dentures out."

I am very unclear on why people hate Mills so much. She seemed like a progressive governor who courageously stood up to Trump in the first months of his second term—when so many others did not have the same guts. (Of course, she stood up to him specifically on the issue of trans rights, which so many on the left seem now willing to disown and throw under the bus.) Klippenstein's main objection to her appears to be a straightforwardly agist belief that people in their seventies are somehow inherently contemptible—hence the reference to her "dentures." 

Klippenstein then moves on to suggest that Platner's sexting of other women while married just proves his virility and awesomeness. 

"The question on Washington’s mind now is: Why can’t Maine just nominate an asexual, Harvard-educated McKinsey consultant as candidate rather than some tatted up, ex-Marine riff-raff like Platner?," he writes. "The answer is simple: That’s not what Maine voters want. 

"People are done with the clean-cut types who’ve harbored ambitions for political office since they were on high school student council and have lived every waking moment accordingly. I call them smoothgroins: real-life barbie dolls with smooth plastic where a sexual organ should be."

Apparently, we now hate asexuals too. 

With the death of "woke" and political correctness, it appears that it is not only people on the right who suddenly feel uncaged. The leftist practitioners of "dark woke" seem to be feeding on some of the same energy. 

And since that's happening, it is worth taking a moment to remind ourselves that "political correctness" wasn't always just about stultifying conformity and priggish goodie-goodie-ing. 

Sometimes, it just meant being considerate. Sometimes, it just meant not being an asshole. Sometimes, it just meant not vilifying and demeaning old people and LGBTQIA people and other out-groups who already suffer stigmas in our society, but rather treating people with dignity. 

Also, to state the obvious, many people manage to be sexually active without cheating on their spouses. "Not violating your partner's trust by sending sexualized messages to people surreptitiously outside the bounds of your monogamous relationship" is not the same thing as being an asexual "smoothgroin." 

Klippenstein has given hints before, however, of being somewhat giddy at the prospect of getting a chance to revel in a bit of Trump-like moral depravity. He's excited at the thought of the coming deluge, and thinks the Left ought to cash in and gleefully participate in the same crude energy. 

Writing about the Trump administration's unhinged white supremacist social media activity at the start of the year, he opined: "these memes speak to a bone-deep hatred people have for the realistic, reasonable, moderate center that Washington is so enamored with. The insanity is the point."

In another post from around the same time, he expanded on the observation: 

"Decorum is dead, floating face down in the backed up sewage of bullshit about showing respect to politicians and public figures and government officials who would never show any to you. There’s a lot of good in that. But there’s an ugly side, too [...] The vibe shift I’m describing extends beyond just the social media platforms. 'Cancel culture' is a term I haven’t seen in the wild in months. Liberal commentators like Matt Yglesias now awkwardly use the word “retard” — which, according to Google Trends, spiked in 2025 (its first rise in years). [...] Forget touching the third rail: now you can do yoga poses on it. I know I will be[.]"

(Note that the image used to illustrate this thesis is of Jasmine Crockett mocking Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas for his use of a wheelchair. Klippenstein does not appear to grapple with the fact that many people objected to this not because it was failing to show respect to "politicians and public figures"—but because it was demeaning people with disabilities.)

There is always a part of the Left that yearns in this barely-disguised way to capitalize on some of the same atavistic energy that fascist and racist movements seem able to deploy to such potent effect. One is reminded of the Marxist-turned-Nazi in Klaus Mann's novel Mephisto: "I am hungry for doomed adventure, for the depths, for the experience of extreme situations [...] We are going to experience all this, believe me. We are going to be gorged with horror. And, as far as I am concerned, it can never be too horrifying." (Smyth trans.)

So what if the price is demeaning and slandering disabled people, elderly people, and other innocent bystanders? 

If the reintroduction of the word "retard" to educated discourse and polemic is the great cultural achievement of our time—woe, woe to us!

Klippenstein's evident excitement at this prospect—his hunger for virile men who let their sexual aggression all hang out and sneer at various out-groups—while he insists, perversely, that all of this crudity and cruelty can somehow be harnessed to build a better, fairer, and more egalitarian world that leftists should endorse—reminds me too of the "Latter-Day Sinners" in D.H. Lawrence's poem: 

they calmly assert: We only thrill to perversity, murder, suicide, rape—

bragging a little, really, [...]

They say: Après moi le deluge! and calmly expect that the deluge will never be turned on them, only after them.

Post me, nihil! — But perhaps, my dears,

nihil will come along and hit you on the head.