Back in the late 1990’s, James Byrd was murdered by three white guys in Texas. It was a terrible crime and the three men involved were quickly arrested and put on trial. It was a quick trial with two getting the death penalty and one getting life in prison. One has been put down while the other lingers in the system. Whatever your views on capital punishment, the fact that it takes decades to administer it says a lot about our society.

Now, our betters should have been congratulating themselves for what they had done. A generation earlier and this crime may never have been prosecuted. Instead, the three white guys were treated like any black criminal in the same circumstances. The real test of equality before the law is not at the admissions department at Harvard. It’s in the courtroom.

That’s not what happened. The Left used this case to tar normal Americans as bigots and later tried to blame Republicans presidential candidate George Bush for the crime. They ran very ugly ads trying to convince people that Bush was responsible for what happened because he was a raging bigot and racist. Naturally, the Republicans howled in protest, calling it a Nixonian smear and dirty trick.

A couple of days ago Jonah Goldberg doubled down on the absurd claim that Donald Trump is a member of the KKK. He’s been doing this carefully choreographed routine where he pretends to merely be curious about the story but is really trying to spread the smear that Trump is a secret Klansman. As I pointed out in the comments, it’s the sort of odious smear David Brock used to pull on Bush ten years ago.

Somewhere else, responding to another commenter, I pointed out that Goldberg lives in a whites-only neighborhood in a wealthy suburb of DC. It’s the sort of neighborhood Steve Sailer says, “home prices discriminate so the residents don’t have to.”  Goldberg, I’ll note, makes armpit noises on TV and his wife was a Bush appointee. If you want to see an example of managerial class sponger, it’s Jonah Goldberg.

Writing that comment, it occurred to me that I used make this point with regards to liberal commentators back in the Bush years. Chris Mathews used to rant and rave about racism, despite living in one of the whitest towns in America. In other words, the one thing to change in the last ten years is the Buckley Conservatives now sound just like the Progressive from a decade ago. Put another way, I did not leave conservatism, conservatism left me.

What was plainly obvious in 2000 when Bush ran for President was that the Left was not upset about his politics. They were horrified that he was a class traitor or more accurately, an apostate. He was from a clan that is the epitome of Yankeedom, yet he declared himself a Texan, abandoned Public Protestantism for Evangelical Christianity and was throwing in with the bad whites.

No man is hated more than the apostate, even more so when the apostate was a former member in high standing. In every mass movement, the apostate is the villain, who must always be found and destroyed. The Scientologists don’t try so hard to ruin the lives of former members because they have free time. Stalin did not have Trotsky murdered because he thought he welshed on bet or left the seat up too many times.

Apostates are hated not because they reject the cause or the group. They are hated because their very existence calls into question the rightness of the cause.  After all, if the traitor is able to prosper outside the cause, maybe he is right and the people in charge have been lying. That’s why he must be destroyed and never allowed to prosper. Otherwise, the logic of the cause no longer makes any sense.

The interesting thing we are seeing with this smear campaign against Trump is that it is a copy of the one launched against Bush. Trump is supposed to be allied with Yankeedom. If he had backed Rubio or Bush, the people at National Review would be holding parties in his honor. They would laud him as a great “conservative” behind the campaign of Jeb Bush! Instead, they are driving around in the broken down progressive clown car from the previous decade.

That tells us something about our managerial elite. The Left side freaked out over Bush the apostate. Now the Right side is doing the same over Trump. Their loyalties are to their class. The Right side is now finding solace in the arms of the Left side as they huddle together in the castle. All the jibber-jabber about party loyalty, conservative principles and fair play from the Right side have been cast aside in order to defend their class interests.

The big difference this time is that Trump is not Bush and Buckley Conservatives are not Progressives. Trump is a very smart guy who is fully aware of what he is doing, while Bush was an amiable nitwit, who just wanted to make the family proud. Similarly, Buckley Conservatives lack the skill of their brothers on the Left. It’s not called the Stupid Party by accident.

At this point, it looks like the Right side may have permanently damaged itself with the people it counts on for support. The Left side was at least able to provide it’s partisans with a chance for a catharsis. They voted for Black Jesus, had a big party and jeered at their friends and neighbors, who had been Bush supporters. Smashing things up is great fun, which is why looters are always willing to mug for the cameras.

It’s tempting to think this is a one-off phenomenon, but the managerial class evolved as a two-headed monster. It is a game of bad cop/worse cop on the voters. If one side is permanently damaged, the other side can no longer function in its natural role. The near total lack of political and intellectual talent on the Left side may simply be what awaits the Right side. How it all holds together is the big question, which is why it is so important to snuff out the apostate.