RIP Angelo Codevilla
Terrible news out this morning of the death of Angelo Codevilla, at age 78, reportedly the victim of a drunk driver.
It is hard to overstate the importance and brilliance of Angelo. If you only knew him by his many books and columns (including this 2015 piece he wrote for Power Line on Trump’s significance and prospects), it would be sufficient to establish his greatness. But he was also at the storm center of key aspects of American intelligence and foreign policy going back more than 40 years.
The entire post is worth reading, if you’re largely unfamiliar with Codevilla’s work (as I have mostly been). Here’s an except from an interview with Codevilla:
David Samuels: In 2010, you wrote an article, which then became a book, in which you predicted the rise of someone like Donald Trump as well as the political chaos and stripping away of institutional authority that we’ve lived through since. Did you think your prediction would come true so quickly?
Angelo Codevilla: I didn’t predict anything. I described a situation which had already come into existence. Namely, that the United States has developed a ruling class that sees itself as distinct from the raw masses of the rest of America. That the distinction that they saw, and which had come to exist, between these classes, comprised tastes and habits as well as ideas. Above all, that it had to do with the relative attachment, or lack thereof, of each of these classes to government.
David Samuels: One of the things that struck me about your original piece was your portrait of the American elite as a single class that seamlessly spans both the Democratic and Republican parties.
Angelo Codevilla: Of course, yes. Not in exactly the same way, though; what I said was that the Democrats were the senior partners in the ruling class. The Republicans are the junior partners…
…As the junior members of the ruling class, they are not nearly as tied to government as the Democrats are. And therefore, their elite prerogatives are not safe.
We have seen that play out very dramatically in the phenomenon of the NeverTrumpers. As I’ve said many times, it made some basic sense to be very worried about Trump before he became president ; I voiced my own worries here, which amounted to a lack of trust and a feeling that he was a loose cannon. But it didn’t take long, once he was acting as president, for those fears to quiet, and to be replaced by a feeling that he was doing some very good things. The failure of the NeverTrumpers to come to that realization, too, and in particular their seemingly incomprehensible alliance with the left that was working for everything these “conservatives” had professed to stand for, caused me to think a great deal about what was causing the persistence of their detestation of Trump.
I decided it has been due to three things. The first is that it’s hard to publicly change your mind, once you’ve staked out a strong position. It needs to be done if you’ve been wrong, but it’s something most people have trouble doing. The second is snobbery and elitism, as Codevilla (whom, alas, I don’t think I’d read) has been pointing out. And the third is related to that – and for all I know, Codevilla explained this as well – and it is the elevation of that identification as a person of a certain class and a certain intellectual standing above all other considerations. If that identity, and the preservation of that identity and sense of self, is paramount to a person’s feelings of value and self-worth, then supporting Donald Trump was apparently a bridge too far and could not be contemplated.
Codevilla sounds as though he was a man of exceptional brilliance and insight, and he will be sorely missed. RIP.
Very sad indeed! He was a fine and learned writer, as well as an important voice of reason. It is certainly true that support for Trump was regarded, in some quarters, as infra dig, but the descent into sheer foolishness and utter irrelevancy of such formerly sensible writers as Charlie Sykes, George Will, Jonah Goldberg, Mona Charen and others (too many to name, but all with brains severely addled by acute TDS) proves that what such persons most valued was always their proximity to power and privilege (not principle); therefore they could not abide an outsider with the temerity to challenge the establishment, whether it be “The Swamp” or “The Deep State” or the DNC or the MSM or GOPe, i.e. our thoroughly corrupt ruling elite.
I only became aware of Codevilla recently (last five years or so), but since then I have read everything he wrote. He will be missed.
Codevilla’s book “The Ruling Class” is for sale on Kindle right now for only $1.99.
Read his new work for years, never any books. Another shining light put out.
For anyone who hasn’t discovered David P Goldman (aka Spengler), you should be reading him if you like Codevilla. Very similar view of the world.
https://pjmedia.com/columnist/david-p-goldman/
I eagerly devoured every column and interview I ran across over the last five years or so, Codevilla was brilliant, learned, a fearlessly independent thinker and a national treasure. How terrible to lose him prematurely. Rest in Peace…
Mike Plaiss sees some parallels with David Goldman, I think there were some significant differences as well in their thinking.
RIP.
Codevilla is a huge loss just when we need intellectual firepower. I am proud to have met him at a Clairemont Institute event. He will be sorely missed.
Codevilla will be remembered as a chronicler of decline and as a harbinger long after we’re all gone.
Second the Goldman recommendation. Washed down with some Vintage Evola, naturally.
Here is the American Geatness piece on Codevilla, including his last article:https://amgreatness.com/2021/09/21/angelo-privilege/
A bit of trivia: Operation Market Garden was 77 years ago, this week. A Bridge Too Far.
@ Scott > “A Bridge Too Far.”
That’s now the one in Del Rio, for Biden’s Operation El Mercado.
Spengler:
https://asiatimes.com/2021/09/passing-of-a-great-and-fearless-american-mind/
Just a correction, I don’t think that drunk driver connection has been confirmed. Some say that there was another incident nearby involving a drunk driver and someone jumped to conclusions.
Regardless, RIP.
Codevilla’s death hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks. It was unexpected, certainly, but I originally thought is was from natural causes. After all, he was 78 years of age. Then I learned he was killed by a “drunk driver.” That outraged me at first, thinking of the cosmic injustice of such a demise. Then I considered that his active and intelligent revelation of the state of affairs in which we find ourselves probably caused our ruling class no small degree of discomfort and I recalled the mysterious death of Seth Rich. And the “suicide” of Vince Foster. Even further back in our history was the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby, who shortly thereafter died of “cancer.” Am I being too suspicious? Can one ever be too suspicious in our present age?
the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby, who shortly thereafter died of “cancer.”
He died three years later. He’d had a full-dress trial in Texas courts in the interim. He was 54 years old at the time and had lung cancer. The ratio of annual deaths to annual diagnoses for lung cancer was at that time about 0.91. I have no clue what sort of voodoo you fancy the CIA employed to grace him with an illness which is generated by decades-long exposure to chemical compounds and radiation.
And the “suicide” of Vince Foster.
Four separate investigation of Foster’s death concluded it was a suicide. He was living apart from his wife and children at the time; he’d been in contact with his home town doctor in the weeks prior to his death and been prescribed anti-depressants.
The mystery about Foster is not that he committed suicide, but that he was willing to put aside a satisfactory situation as a partner in a mid-law firm in order to work in the White House counsel’s office, a job that made him miserable. The other mystery is why he was willing to associate with the Clintons at all above and beyond the minimum necessary as Hellary was also a partner in the Rose firm; Gary Aldrich and others paint a portrait of a very conscientious man, not promising material for a Clinton minion.
Apropos of Codevilla’s passing: Michael Walsh has posted an excerpt from an essay Codevilla contributed to a forthcoming collection titled Against the Great Reset, which includes essays by Spengler, Victor Davis Hanson, Richard Fernandez, Conrad Black, and others.
Codevilla’s essay, “Resetting the Educational Reset,” tackles the decline in contemporary Western educational standards. A sample: “Loosening our bounds to reality is attractive also because calling things by whatever names serves our immediate purpose; liberates us from the hard work of understanding things not of our making; and gives us the illusion of mastery over our environment. It is especially attractive to those who have power over others, because it frees them from having to persuade the rest of humanity. For society’s mob of lazy under-performers, pleasing the leaders is an easier way of securing one’s place than competing for merit. Anyhow: intellectual/moral deterioration has ever been an easier sell than the hard acquisition of skills and virtues.”
The rest of the excerpt is here: https://the-pipeline.org/the-prince-angelo-codevilla-1943-2021/
The marvelous Codevilla was a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, which publishes the quarterly Claremont Review of Books, to which he was a very frequent contributor. I devoured each issue, for some ten or so years now.
The Review quickly became pro-Trump, just as I did, and reviled the anti-Trumpers like Sen. Sasse (R-NE).