I would like to take this column to express gratitude for an underappreciated group: anti-Trump conservatives. “Hold up,” you say, “anti-Trump conservatives are not underappreciated.” They are either traitors who do not deserve an ounce of appreciation for turning on the greatest leader of all time, or they are a day late, a dollar short, and do not deserve any gratitude for finally seeing a shred of the light.
Allow me to explain my sudden thankfulness. In recent days, Donald Trump has once again drawn my ire for his comments regarding the crash between an American Airlines airplane and an Army Black Hawk helicopter. For those unfamiliar, he once again blamed DEI without providing any specifics.
Was the air traffic controller a “diversity hire?” Was the Army pilot a “diversity hire?” The answer is no, but let me pretend these people somehow bypassed their respective training programs and were hired solely based on their ethnicity, race, religion, gender, sexuality, disability or some other factor.
It was clear from his comments throughout the rest of his interview that Donald Trump, much like the rest of us, did not know what Donald Trump was saying. He had no idea who the people were, much less any conception of how the accident occurred, and chose to use the most convenient scapegoat of the day to prematurely deflect blame.
What surprised me about this incident was the backlash, not from my typical liberal friends and the commentators they follow, but rather from conservative ones. Almost completely in unison, I saw a storm of social media posts and commentary decrying Trump’s actions at the press conference. Whether it was pointing out the use of DEI as a scapegoat or blaming the dead in so callous a manner, I saw conservatism publicly in action on a scale and manner I have not seen for some time now.
These are people who debated and humbled me in my history and government classes (the ones that apparently indoctrinate us). These are people whose Instagram posts are filled with videos of them at the range. These are people who have lectured me on the true intellectual origins of the Second Amendment or why a Western European-styled social democracy would not work well in the United States. These are people whose patriotism I never questioned, for they sure as hell would not bend a knee for any authoritarian, be it a “dictator for a day,” the head of the Third Reich or a tech oligarch in love with the first two.
That is not to say I only value conservatism when it agrees with me; rather, I only learned to fully appreciate these conservatives recently. Ultimately, they proved themselves capable of independent thought and morality in a manner I am unsure I am capable of replicating should a similar circumstance arise from the left.
For those who would argue this is no high and mighty action worthy of a pat on the back, I say this: more than a few of these people have turned their back on the ideology established by friends, family and the community that they either grew up in or currently reside in. Although I cannot speak for other liberals, I have the self-awareness to know I tend to advocate liberal causes only after they become trendy. I certainly ensure such causes line up with my morals, but I do not take the time and effort to pre-emptively find and research them.
These people have. They resort to more than your typical talking points when expressing their outrage. They appeal to causes that run deeper than simple things, like the fellowship of a branch of service that honors and defends their own. Maybe it’s just me, but recent events have shown hints of a resuscitated movement I may argue with, but I darn well respect and, more importantly, trust.
Janagan Ramanathan is a Sartell High School alum, former U.S. Naval Academy midshipman and current aerospace engineering major at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.
