Not sure if there is going to be a regular episode of the Three Whisky Happy Hour this weekend. John is now in Venice, while I am still in Budapest (hanging out this rainy day in Cafe Scruton), while Lucretia is nine time zones behind us in her bunker, no doubt lockin’ and loadin.’ And I am sure regular listeners want to know whether she is spitting mad, or megaton-level furious, at the Trump verdict.
In the meantime, I sat in again this week for Peter Robinson on the Ricochet podcast, with a very special guest: Glenn Loury. Glenn has a brand new memoir just out, Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative. It is a staggering piece of writing. I knew vaguely that Glenn had experienced some difficulties in his personal life over the years, and he confesses to it all in this extraordinarily candid account of his own moral failings, alongside the intellectual story of his academic and political twists and turns over the years. I told Glenn off-air that I thought it could truly be compared to the Confessions of St. Augustine, but he demurred that this syrup was a bit too thick. I found it all deeply moving.
For those of you who avoid the Ricochet podcast because Rob Long is an anti-Trumper, I did manage a way to bring up this passage from late in Glenn’s book just to give Rob heartburn:
I liked Trump. I understood what people found appealing about Trump’s sparring with the press and his hectoring of the elites. Not only did I understand it, I felt it. I got visceral pleasure out of watching Trump standing on stage and hurling insults at smug, self-satisfied liberals and conservatives who had lost touch with the people who support they relied upon. None of the disqualifications of Trump that his critics listed—ceaselessly, day after day, year after year—could negate the gut-level satisfaction I got from watching him. Sure, he lied constantly, but Americans had become so inured to the dishonesty of their politicians that is was actually a relief to hear someone lie with brazenness and glee, instead of prevaricating while pretending they had a claim on moral authority. Trump revealed the hypocrisies of the political class for what they were even as he embodied them. His behavior was an indictment of the failures of that class as much as it was an indictment of himself.
Now, he backtracks in the next paragraph—January 6 and all that—but I have little doubt how he is going to vote in November. But in any case, this episode is marked safe to listen to.
So listen here, or over at Ricochet. And stay tuned for a regular installment of the 3WHH, plus a few bonus editions with several people John Yoo and I recorded this week.
