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Flag, faith and family. That used to be a winning message for conservatism in America. Now, though? What if a target voter loves the flag but lacks the faith? What if he or she views the familial domain as unfit for political trespass?
国旗、信仰和家庭。这曾经是美国保守主义的胜利口号。但现在情况如何呢?如果一个目标选民热爱国旗但缺乏信仰怎么办?如果他或她认为家庭领域不适合政治的入侵怎么办?
Now let us travel one letter up the alphabet. Readers might remember “God, guns and gays” as another alliterative précis of the right’s obsessions in the later 20th century. But in 2024? What if a swing voter is a Second Amendment absolutist with no strong views on the other Gs? Or even takes a liberal line on them as a generational reflex?
现在,让我们在字母表中向上移动一个字母。读者可能还记得“上帝、枪支和同性恋”(God, guns and gays)是对20世纪后期右翼执迷的另一种头韵式简述。但到了2024年呢?如果一个摇摆选民对第二修正案(Second Amendment)持绝对主义立场,而对其他“G”没有强烈看法怎么办?或者甚至因为一种代际反射而在这些问题上持自由派立场呢?
We aren’t talking about exotic creatures here. The US is a nation of two-to-one support for same-sex marriage. Most people either “seldom” or “never” attend a religious service. At the same time, immigration is the top concern that voters name unprompted, and just one in three strongly objects to the idea that a president should be able to rule without much judicial or congressional restraint.
我们这里谈论的,并不是什么奇特的生物。美国是一个支持同性婚姻比例为二比一的国家。大多数人“很少”或“从不”参加宗教仪式。同时,移民问题是选民们自发提到的最重要的问题,只有三分之一的人强烈反对总统在司法和国会的限制下行使统治权的想法。
Put this all together, and something becomes clear. Lots of voters now are what I will call “public authoritarians”. Porous borders, tent cities, woke colleges, perhaps even Chinese imports: these things upset them. But private morals? Affairs of the bedroom and the chapel? You do you.
把这一切放在一起,事情就变得清晰了。现在很多选民都是我所说的“公共权威主义者”。松懈的边境、帐篷城市、觉醒的大学,甚至中国进口商品:这些都让他们感到不安。但私人道德呢?卧室和教堂里的事情?你爱怎样就怎样。
To win, the devout need the louche. Trump was a vessel in which to smuggle a cultural conservatism that couldn’t prevail on its own terms
为了取胜,虔诚者需要放荡者。特朗普是一个工具,用来偷运本身无法独立胜出的文化保守主义
Donald Trump’s electoral genius consists of never frightening these people. Even at his demagogic worst, a certain reticence about the private realm, combined with some well-documented peccadillos, assures the conservative-but-not-pious that he isn’t going to go all Cardinal Spellman on them. And so his coalition hangs together. The Republicans, it seems, have lost that balance of late. The Dobbs ruling on abortion was the start. The elevation of JD Vance — conservative Catholic, scourge of the childless, worrier about porn — is a move in the same vein.
唐纳德•特朗普(Donald Trump)的选举天才就在于他从不吓唬这些人。即使在他蛊惑人心的最糟糕时期,他对私人领域的某种缄默,再加上一些有据可查的劣迹,也能让那些保守但不虔诚的人确信,他不会对他们采取红衣主教斯佩尔曼(Cardinal Spellman)的做法。因此,他的联盟还算稳固。共和党最近似乎失去了这种平衡。多布斯对堕胎问题的裁决是个开端。JD•万斯(JD Vance)--保守的天主教徒、对无子女者大肆批评的人、色情问题的担忧者--的升迁也是一脉相承的举动。
Vance himself might be the future. He has the time and the brain. He has the most underrated asset in politics and perhaps life: unembarrassability. But Vance-ism? There aren’t enough private authoritarians in the electorate to sustain it. And this assumes no further secularisation. (Church membership in the US under Reagan: 70 per cent. It is now below half.) Either he changes his outlook — he wasn’t too embarrassed to change his old distaste for Trump — or accepts that its natural ceiling is the lower half of a presidential ticket, shoring up the faithful as Mike Pence did.
万斯本人可能代表未来。他有时间,也有智慧。他拥有政治乃至生活中最被低估的资产:不尴尬。但是万斯主义呢?选民中没有足够的私人独裁者来支持它。而且这还假设没有进一步的世俗化。他要么改变自己的观点——他并不羞于改变对特朗普的旧厌恶——要么接受它的自然上限是总统候选人名单的下半部分,像迈克•彭斯(Mike Pence)那样支持忠实的选民。
To be clear, there are millions of intense Christians who vote Republican to defend the creed. Just not enough to elect a president. For that, it is an arithmetical must to bolt on the kind of Trump fan that I am likelier to encounter. These characters react as I do upon seeing an ancient and sublime place of worship (“What a darling Sofitel it would make”) and aren’t just liberal so much as outright incurious about people’s domestic doings. Their grievance isn’t with the cultural settlement of the 1960s, but with that of the 2000s, if that means woke-ism, trade and a foreign-born population above 10 per cent of the total.
要明确的是,有数百万虔诚的基督徒投票给共和党来捍卫信仰,但这还不足以选出一位总统。因此,从数学上讲,必须依靠我更有可能遇到的那种特朗普粉丝。这些人看到古老而崇高的礼拜场所时会像我一样反应(“这里可以改造成一个多么可爱的索菲特(Sofitel)酒店啊”),他们不仅仅是自由派,而且对人们的家庭生活毫无兴趣。他们的不满不是针对60年代的文化安定,而是针对21世纪初的文化安定,如果这意味着觉醒主义、贸易和外国出生人口超过总人口的10%。
To win, the devout need the louche. Trump was a vessel in which to smuggle a cultural conservatism that couldn’t prevail on its own terms. A clever scheme, this, as Dobbs proved, but not a lasting one. The inherent tensions were going to come out in time.
为了取胜,虔诚者需要放荡者。特朗普是一个工具,用来偷运一种本身无法独立胜出的文化保守主义。这是一个巧妙的策略,正如多布斯所证明的,但它不是一个长久之计。内在的紧张关系终将显现。
In France, the hard right has never quite settled a question. If Muslim immigration is a challenge, what is it a challenge to: the secular republic or a Catholic nation? The voter who wants to protect laïcité and the voter who wants to reinforce the church can be kept in the same coalition, just about. But it requires constant and meticulous hedging. Pander to the second voter, and the first recoils. This is why populist winners — Boris Johnson, Silvio Berlusconi — tend to have something of the playboy about them. “Relax,” is the implicit message, “I’m not a prig.”
在法国,极右派从未彻底解决过一个问题:如果穆斯林移民是一个挑战,那么这个挑战是针对世俗共和国还是天主教徒国家?希望保护世俗主义的选民和希望加强教会的选民可以勉强维持在同一个联盟中,但这需要持续而细致的平衡。迎合后者,前者就会反感。这也是为什么像鲍里斯•约翰逊(Boris Johnson)、西尔维奥•贝卢斯科尼(Silvio Berlusconi)这样的民粹主义胜利者往往带有些许花花公子的风格。他们的隐含信息是:“放轻松,我不是个古板的人。”
Trump gets it, or at least got it. He is said to mistrust the clerical zeal of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. He avoids talking about the childless as demographic shirkers. But then what a righteous choice of dauphin. And, lest he scare wavering voters in a secular age, what pressure on the young changeling to mutate once more.
特朗普明白这一点,或者至少曾经明白。据说他对美国传统基金会(Heritage Foundation)的2025计划中的神职人员热情持怀疑态度。他避免将无子女者描述为人口问题的逃避者。然而,他选择了一个多么正义的王储啊。此外,为了不在这个世俗时代吓到犹豫不决的选民,这位年轻的变革者面临着再次变化的巨大压力。
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