Here is a nice round up from Jacob Heilbrunn, at the NYRB, of what's going on with the right wing Mandarins* who do not go in for Traitor Trump. The occasion is a discourse on the demise of "The Weekly Standard." Hard to see much daylight of clear thinking in much of those otherwise "conservative" and "right wing" quarters. I do, however, think "The American Conservative" and "American Affairs" are a better source for interesting and sane thinking than "The Weekly Standard" ever was. Heilbrunn, while castigating "The Weekly Standard" in general terms for its neo-con foreign policies, forgets how snark-filled "The Weekly Standard" was in the late 1990s before it got "serious" about invading half the Muslim world on the basis of promoting democracy, while propping up the other half of the Muslim world's dictators--a recipe for chaos and blowback.
The dirty secret not quite told is in the beginning of the article, where the rich guy owner of "The Weekly Standard" just pulled the plug, saying the magazine was not making money. Heilbrunn should have let readers know the dirty truth: Few of these magazines over the past 100 years make money, and if they do, it is fleeting, and more of riding a fad. Rich people have subsidized these journals since before the start of the 20th century,** and have been and are the playthings of rich people until they become bored, or, in the case of "The Weekly Standard," where the bottom line of the rich person's business interests are threatened, and outweigh the status and fun in owning an intellectual journal. Heilbrunn is certainly correct, however, that the neo-con journal was no more successful in regime change regarding the Republican Party than the now departed magainze's prescriptions regarding regime change in the Middle East.
*Chomsky was correct to refer to media and university intellectuals as Mandarins back in his first book of essays from over a half century ago.
** William Dean Howells' delightful novel, "A Hazard of Good Fortunes" (1892/1893), is largely about a writer who has the opportunity to edit a new magazine a rich guy wants to start. It is a powerful novel, sometimes poignantly funny (as when the main character and his wife search for housing in Manhattan), but very much understanding the war between labor and capital in late 19th Century America. Its overtones for today go without need for any further explanation.
