Allahpundit to the Dispatch (Updated)

There aren’t a lot of of bloggers who’ve been blogging continuously as long as I have. One of them is Allahpundit. I used to read his stuff occasionally because he was witty, 17 or 18 years ago when he was a solo blogger. Sixteen years ago he joined Hot Air and I don’t think I’ve read any of his stuff since. Now he’s leaving Hot Air for The Dispatch (where he’ll fit in more congenially). I found this passage in his valedictory post worth linking and quoting:

Partisan media serves two masters, the truth and the cause. When they align, all is well. When they conflict, you choose. If you prioritize the truth, you’re a traitor; if you prioritize the cause, you’re a propagandist. One recent example of the latter is the left mocking Republicans who accepted PPP loans during the pandemic for opposing Biden’s student debt bailout. The differences between those two programs would be evident to a reasonably intelligent fourth-grader but the imperative to serve the cause by rationalizing Biden’s giveaway forced liberals to treat it as a smart own. I think some even talked themselves into believing it. Propagandists lie to others, then lie to themselves to justify propagating the original lie. Propaganda rots the brain, then the soul.

That’s one reason why, when I’ve been forced to choose, I preferred to be a traitor than a propagandist. Here’s another: What is the right’s “cause” at this point? What cause does the Republican Party presently serve? It has no meaningful policy agenda. It literally has no platform. The closest thing it has to a cause is justifying abuses of state power to own the libs and defending whatever Trump’s latest boorish or corrupt thought-fart happens to be. Imagine being a propagandist for a cause as impoverished as that. Many don’t need to imagine.

The GOP does have a cause. The cause is consolidating power. Overturn the rigged elections, purge the disloyal bureaucrats, smash the corrupt institutions that stand in the way. Give the leader a free hand. It’s plain as day to those who are willing to see where this is going, what the highest ambitions of this personality cult are. Those who support it without insisting on reform should at least stop pretending that they’re voting for anything else.

I agree with others who say that, fundamentally, the last six years have been a character test. Some conservatives became earnest converts to Trumpism, whatever that is. But too many who ditched their civic convictions did so for the most banal reasons, because there was something in it for them — profit, influence, proximity to power, the brainless tribalism required by audience capture. “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket,” Eric Hoffer wrote. We’ve all gotten to see who the racketeers are.

I agree with just about every word of that.

I do my damnedest not to be a propagandist. I try to give a wide range of points of view as fair a shake as I can. As Allahpundit observes necessarily that makes many readers, whether they lean left or right, see me as a traitor. That goes with the turf. It also makes my readership, shall we say, select.

Update

James Joyner’s take is not unlike mine. He goes on to remark:

About that: that he managed to keep his identity secret for so long (AllahPundit’s Wikipedia page still has him as “anonymous”) was remarkable enough in its own right but even more so given his professional prominence. Even by the time he started his personal blog in 2003, it was too late for him to be a failed writer. How he managed to be so prolific a daily blogger while continuing his day job is beyond me.

It also explains why he refused to accommodate the Trumpers. Intellectual honesty is the sine qua non for the scholar. We’re human, of course, prone to all manner of biases that create barriers to changing our mind. But defending ideas that you not only don’t believe but find anathema would be soul-crushing.