Is the NYT Op-ed page anarchist performance art? An investigation.

Peaches, head of the New York Times editorial desk.

In his latest post, NYT’s “reasonable conservative” fixture Ross Douthat uses like 95 classical literature references to vouch for the presidency of a guy who bans books.

“Why DeSantis Has to Run”

Douthat merely asks questions, challenging his readers to reach their own conclusions—the Socratic method, as it were.

Then from the right, writing for The Spectator, Daniel McCarthy channels Niccolò Machiavelli to argue that while DeSantis probably will run, he would be wiser to choose a more dogged, long-term path instead — emphasizing “virtu” rather than chasing Fortune, to use Machiavelli’s language.

…

It’s true that fortune doesn’t always favor the bold. (As McCarthy notes, that phrase originates in Virgil’s “Aeneid,” where it’s uttered by an Italian warlord just before he gets killed.) But the key to the don’t-miss-your-moment argument is that when it comes to something as difficult as gaining the presidency, mostly fortune doesn’t favor anybody. Every would-be president, no matter their virtues as a politician, is inevitably a hostage to events, depending on unusual synchronicities to open a path to the White House.

Wow, you went to private school, cool. Is the word “synchronicities” even legal in Florida public schools?

Here are the books banned by DeSantis:

• Forever, by Judy Blume

• Booker Prize winner The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

• Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye

• All Boys Aren’t Blue, by George M. Johnson

• The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood

• Dozens of books that include LGBTQ+ themes, protagonists of color, or that touch on race or racism.

I bet that neither Douthat or DeSantis would deprive their own kids of Margaret Atwood or Toni Morrison. Also, Virgil’s “Aeneid” is all war, infidelity, and a sequel to a book about gay lovers (The Iliad).

My favorite thing about wing nut GOP voters (stay with me here) is that they can always sniff out the “Machiavellian” culture elites that think they can fool thems yokels by pretending they like to hunt or whatever and don’t trust French fries or books.

Yes, please DeSantis, sir, take up the gauntlet thrown by Hamlet in the famous play and run in 2024, doust will be humiliated because Donald Trump will always outstupid you because he is just genuinely stupid while you’re a mere pretender who has definitely read books before.

I actually occasionally enjoy Douthat and Bret Stephens (tho shame on him for unleashing Bari Weiss’s brain into the world). They’re obviously more nuanced, intelligent thinkers than, like, Tom Friedman or the DoDo in paradise. Their moral flaw though is the utter contempt they have for the people they ostensibly politically align with. It’s a flaw they share with DeSantis.

Anyway, this proves that the NYT op-ed page is anarchist performance art.