2/It's disturbing enough that these men are somehow willing and able to put a moral vacuum and vicious hatemonger like Trump on a pedestal. The author does not, or is not interested in discovering, how these fuzzy-cheeked post-neocons would participate in processes of mass deportation, persecution
3/of sexual minorities, book bans and education pogroms, etc. That is, there's nothing here about the dirty work of the neo-fascist movement. It's all three piece suits with pocket squares, as polite as the ladies' tea party in The Manchurian Candidate, and just as surreal.
4/It all comes across as a subculture as distant as cockfighting. And the idea that this Beltway-ensconced bubble clarifies and summarizes the whole of Trump's attractiveness to some percentage of young men is just a nonstarter. I'm left wondering about the political moorings of the author.
5/And I'm also wondering about how the essay came to be reprinted in The Free Press. As a wet kiss to the Lost Boys of the young (elite) conservative movement, it's plausible that it got Bari Weiss's attention. But that is a scurrilous rag of dubious ethics and worse politics. Did she steal it?
6/Oh, and capping the essay with a cameo by Frances Fukuyama? Who the author regards as one of her intellectual gurus? That part of the essay slams mainstream liberalism as a sclerotic, motheaten collection of olds and old ideas. Fair enough! But also not new-FF has been a joke for decades now.