William Saletan is confused, as he often seems to be. Let me break this down:
- My views on Donald Trump have not changed.
- I think that there is lots of room for criticism of the president and, especially, of his supporters who have abandoned what they once presented as cherished principles.
- Some of that criticism is very enlightening.
- Some of that criticism is stupid.
- Saletan, in the piece I referenced, was engaged in writing the stupid kind, i.e. arguing that conservative-leaning white Evangelicals have a religious responsibility to abandon their political agenda and embrace Saletan’s because William Saletan thinks that’s what Jesus would want.
- One of the ways that Saletan and others could avoid writing stupid criticism is to consider the fact that while white Evangelicals are not an undifferentiated political commodity who act only in their capacity as religious believers, their general political tendency is more aligned with the policies pursued by the Trump administration than with the policies preferred by William Saletan; and so, like any other group, they seek to advance their political goals through the political process: Any line of criticism that treats engaging in ordinary democratic politics as inherently illegitimate is foolish or dishonest. I imagine that some of those Evangelicals feel a bit like the feminists who once decided that their best interests were served in supporting Bill Clinton. But I don’t think that anybody in 1996 was going to take seriously the argument that you’re a bad feminist if you don’t vote for Bob Dole. And I don’t think the feminists were wrong about Clinton being the candidate for them to support in order to advance their political interests.
- It doesn’t matter to me that Saletan is Jewish, and it’s an act of pure intellectual cowardice to suggest otherwise. (People who aren’t white Evangelicals — e.g., me — are perfectly able to write about them.) It does matter to me that his criticism is shallow and poorly thought out. Hence, the response.