Michael Vlahos writes: Sebastian Gorka was a subaltern mini-me of the emperor himself: in which his media appearances were also meant to stoke emotional fires within the legions. Like throwing red meat to lions in the arena, Gorka presented himself as a living affront to the aristocratic class—Washington’s rulers—in the realm of strategy and war. Take that, you sniveling Yuppie handmaids!

Truth was, the shiv was out for him among the courtier class, and he offered them an easy target.

Paradoxically, Gorka started showing his chinks and weak spots shortly after his first, successful, ceremonial performances. [Daniel] Drezner relished, like other anti-Red courtiers, how Gorka began to take mortal offense at the razor-like, if understandable, critique of his bona fides. His notoriously thin skin became as celebrated among Blue stiletto artists as his notorious Fox News eruptions.

Rather than lashing out at his Yuppie tormentors, Gorka should have reveled in his stained professional notoriety, throwing slings and arrows right back at the madding crowd. Rather than taking shrill umbrage when mere students impugned his bona fides, he might have instructed them: “This is what you get for creating venal PhD-for-profit factories to enrich a debased university system.” Or, “Are ideas now to be ranked according to a Miss Manners’ pecking order, like a latter day Pride and Prejudice?”

Thus, in the colorful Trumpian parade, Sebastian Gorka got it half right. The power of the emperor remains undiminished, because it still relies on two unimpeachable sources of authority: 1) That the elites, both Blue and Never Trump Red, still cannot recognize their enabling role, and so continue to blurt out, reinforce, and re-ratify the hated emperor; and 2) That a never-apologize, throw-it-back-always, and make your-double-down-better ethos will always authenticate your commitment to the legions who acclaimed you emperor in the first place. [Continue reading…]