Listless Vessels

Will Ron DeSantis be punished for telling the truth?

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Ron DeSantis speaks at an event hosted by conservative radio host Erick Erickson on August 18, 2023, in Atlanta, Georgia. (Photo by Megan Varner/Getty Images)

Ted Cruz’s critics will tell you that the man is incapable of telling the truth. Nonsense.

I know for a fact that he told the truth once. Once.

Don’t believe me? See for yourself.

That was recorded on May 3, 2016, the day Donald Trump crushed him in the Indiana primary to wrap up the Republican nomination. Cruz is an unnervingly disciplined politician, a man who gives the impression that his every utterance since he learned to speak has been calculated to get him closer to the presidency. But he’s also a human being, sort of, and on May 3, 2016, he had reached the end of his tether. His discipline cracked.

Can you blame him?

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  1. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    I thought Cheney had said something like Trump voters were a “bunch of idiots.” I suppose you would have preferred she said, “You’re the marks and he’s the con man,” but still that demonstrates a willingness to criticize the MAGA base on her part.

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  2. Chucky Bob

    Even if Destantis meant "basket of deplorables," which he clearly didn't, at least "listless vessels" isn't as easy to make sound bites out of. As another commenter pointed out below, a lot of people would have to look it up to know what that means. Sounds like a big nothing burger to me. The more Trump tries to make something out of nothing, the more desperate he looks, in my eyes. Oh well. Hope he gets a good night sleep tonight since he won't be defending his non-existent policy stances on the debate stage. I'm sure he's got some sort of court date in the morning, anyway.

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  3. Avatar photo
    Charley Warns

    SHEEP

    is a better description than "listless vessels." M. Stanton Evans in his essay "A Conservative Case for Freedom" described this population as "mass men." He writes:

    "[T]he vigor of civilization is dependent on people who are guided by some internalized system of value and who are thus capable of initiative and self-reliant behavior." Preceding that he wrote:

    "A man without the interior armor of value has no defense against the pressures of his society. It is precisely the loss of value which has turned the “inner-directed” citizen of nineteenth-century America into the “other-directed” automaton of today. Man, Ortega wrote, “is a being forced by his nature to seek some higher authority. If he succeeds in finding it of himself, he is a superior man; if not, he is a mass-man, and must receive it from his superiors.” To exist in community, men must harmonize their desires; some kind of general equilibrium has to prevail. Men who lose the “inner check,” as Babbitt called it, must therefore submit to an outer one; they become mass men, ruled by their “superiors.”"

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    1. Avatar photo
      Charley Warns

      "Lure" is a more intuitive metaphor than stalking horse for me. The fisherman is the hunter and his true intent is the hook ... not the lure. The lure conceals the hunter's true intent.

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  4. Brett

    The argument in this column is basically like saying, well, yeah you said David Karesh speaks nonsense and a lot of his Branch Davidian followers are just listless vessels, but you were kinda nice to some of the women and children in the compound saying not everyone was all-in and so you must not REALLY be anti-cult. The real opposition to the cult only comes from guys like Chris Christie who aside from being David's prime lieutenant have now turned state's evidence and were always for nuking the whole building. Come on man. And what's worse is we all know if DeSantis had in fact gone whole hog on how cultist the most ordinary Trump supporters are, you'd say he stupidly is sabotaging the party which needs former Trump voters to win.

    How about the Dispatch just adapt the old National Review formulation - support the most conservative not-Trump candidate who can viably win - which is DeSantis - and call it a day.

    Sincerely, Ron's burner account

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  5. Brett

    I'm not going to read the comments because I assume they are all just saying a variation of "See, DeSantis will NEVER criticize or attack Trump." Nick does so at the end of a column about DeSantis describing MAGA as a cult, I guess on the grounds DeSantis is trying to do so with at least a little bit of tact and nod toward voters who voted Trump and aren't cultlike (which is many of them). And so I just can't take it any more. I've reached my own breaking point.

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    1. Marc Whipple

      I thought Nick's article was very good. However, I agree references to a "MAGA cult" is not really correct. Policies do matter to the MAGA "faction" of the GOP. For example, even Trump's support would collapse, I believe, if he came out in favor of expanded legal immigration and\or amnesty for illegal immigrants.

      It is not a cult, if the cult leader can lose support if he changes a policy position. However, there is a group nihilism on the right, where they will support, or even advocate, for destroying American institutions if they do not get their populist way. Nihilism is to me a much better explanation than cult for Trump's continued support in the GOP after January 6th and the classified documents scandal. His increased support after each indictment is further evidence of a group nihilism.

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      1. Brett

        I take the nihilism point. There's something to that. But what's the anti-populist case for the institutions? I don't think of myself as populist. I'll cop to being a little populist curious at most. And I don't see much in the institutions left worth saving? So for example perhaps my ideal history curriculum wouldn't look like what Rufo will install, but I'd take his over what we have now.

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        1. Marc Whipple

          Thanks for the thoughtful response. I would not call anti- CRT or anti-DEI education reforms like New College of Florida to be nihilist. I am not a fan of some of those reforms, but they are generally good faith efforts to try to improve the public education system.

          The nihilism on the right involves things like overturning election results they do not like, defunding the FBI, voting for a candidate like Trump that vows retribution against other citizens they oppose politically. Regarding education, advocates of defunding public schools and universities are nihilist, IMO.

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  6. Randall Briggs

    I am reminded of what Dorothy Thompson, the first foreign journalist expelled from Nazi Germany, wrote after being expelled in August 1934.

    “No people ever recognize their dictator in advance. He never stands for election on the platform of dictatorship. He always represents himself as the . . . Incorporated National Will. . . .

    “When our dictator turns up you can depend on it that he will be one of the boys, and he will stand for everything traditionally American. And nobody will ever say ‘Heil’ to him, nor will they call him ‘Führer’ or ‘Duce.’ But they will greet him with one great big, universal, democratic, sheeplike bleat of ‘O.K., Chief! Fix it like you wanna, Chief! Oh Kaaaay!’”

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  7. Avatar photo
    Whitney Westerfield

    I’m sitting republican state legislator, and I frequently remark to my colleagues and republican friends that it seems we need to lose big time to shake people loose from the false idea that Trump is the leader we need. No one wants to consider losing in the short term. They only see the next “most important” election on the horizon, rather than the long term value of building a party on principles that we (used to) believe in.

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    1. Jackson Condrey

      Do all you can in your position of influence to influence people away from Trump.

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  8. Pishposh

    He has to lose and lose bad, and even then I don't know that the cultists will care. The Republican party walked itself into this dead end. Its mortality is very much on the table at this point. Yes... Its time to insult his voters. They have made it PAINFULLY clear that they deserve. it.

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  9. Betsybowditch

    An article in salon.com has a useful caveat about interpreting the polls that show increased support for Trump in the wake of his fourth indictment:

    When a MAGA-American picks up the phone and hears a pollster from the hated "liberal media" ask them questions about Trump's indictments and general trustworthiness, they aren't answering the question asked. What they're really hearing, over and over: "Are you ready to admit that you were wrong and liberals were right all along about Trump?" And the answer is a big, fat "hell no," because the first rule of MAGA is to never, ever, under any circumstances, admit that liberals might be right about something.

    That poll doesn't measure a sincere belief in Trump's trustworthiness. It measures people who, consumed with bitterness towards the more liberal majority, are clinging to Trump even harder in a pathetic bid to save face. Which, as anyone who has studied cults can tell you, is a surprisingly strong factor in why people squelch their doubts to stay in the cult. They were warned so many times that this was a mistake that they stick around, hoping to prove the skeptics wrong.

    https://www.salon.com/2023/08/22/new-polls-prove-obama-and-clinton-were-right-the-base-are-deplorable-bitter-clingers/

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  10. Avatar photo
    Stephanie

    “Listless vessel” is a nautical term I had to look up.

    It can’t possibly carry much impact if it needs to be translated into everyday English. (That in itself is just one more example of unclear messaging.)

    Apparently, it refers to a ship, I guess a sailing ship (or a sailboat), which is not listing; that is, tilting in one direction or the other, due to the wind. So a listless vessel is simply not being pushed by the wind/there is calm weather & no wind.

    The metaphor just doesn’t grab me. The best I can construe it to mean is that he’s saying the Republican Party is lacking in a definite impetus. That seems kind of lame. But definitely not inflammatory.

    Maybe DeSantis could have checked the weather and not left the marina with his sailboat if the winds were only 1 knot?

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    1. Jackrabbit McQuivers

      I don't know; it made perfect sense to me the first time I heard it, and I wasn't aware it is a nautical term.

      I assumed it meant "lacking energy to have one's own independent convictions," and "to be merely be a vessel that someone else can imprint THEIR beliefs."

      That not only made intuitive sense to me, but it's probably pretty close to what DeSantis meant. The fact that it has an alternate meaning, derived from nautical terms, seems like the type of info that nautical experts might chuckle at... but that doesn't distract from the intuitiveness of the message (to me, anyway)

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        Stephanie

        I'm not a persnickety type. Your construction is likely how the average person would take it.

        We don't normally refer to people as vessels, though, and saying someone is listless just implies they're tired or lacking energy.

        So I lean to the wonky meaning, which DeSantis might know as he was in the Navy.

        Here's a discussion. It has the nautical references, but also many, many quotes from past DeSantis speeches where he applies the term in various contexts. It looks like he likes using it.

        https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=60245

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        1. Jackrabbit McQuivers

          I understand your point. I'm from a family of language lovers and professionals writers, and we are (in)famously persnickety about language. I've started too many arguments than it's worth admitting over somebody's use of a non-restrictive clause.

          But my point is more about perception, and how the average person* would take it. Which, I think, is the only thing that matters in politics. And I don't believe the average person is researching nautical references, or even acknowledging when a phrase has a technical meaning that doesn't seem to apply. The average person is getting a "feeling" about a phrase based on context clues, and the emotional charge that each word carries.

          *caveat: I'm acknowledging that it only relevant for the average person who is tuned in enough to be aware of his comment

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            Stephanie

            I think you're right.

            Perception is stronger than reality, for one thing, and it's kind of an esoteric reference most people aren't aware of and couldn't care less about.

            But it seems perfectly typical for the nerdy kind of guy DeSantis seems to be. I'm 100% sure that a lot of what's in his stump speeches up to now goes right over most peoples' heads.

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    2. Avatar photo
      Evan K

      Nick says,"It has a specific meaning, denoting people who are easily swayed because they’re not anchored by principle." That may be what DeSantis *wants* to say, but according to Merriam-Webster, 'listless' means "characterized by lack of interest, energy, or spirit." Trump cultists (even those in Congress) are many things, but lacking in energy they ain't.

      Difficult to defend a statement as "true" when comprehending its meaning requires parsing past a vocabulary mistake.

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    3. Vaddeman

      Maybe he was mentally adrift when he said it. Regardless, the wind isn't at his back and the seas are getting choppy.

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        Stephanie

        To be fair, he started out with a fair wind, but then the wind died when he was miles from shore.

        So maybe he'll wait for it to pick up again, rather than firing up the engine and heading back.

        If I were he, I'd do that. Trump is not absolutely guaranteed to clinch the nomination. I'm seeing lots of articles lately in my local paper with headlines about Trump still pushing election lies, etc. No favorable press. And I live in a blue dot in a red sea.

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