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Donald Trump is the idol of a cult of personality bewitching a third of the country, whose every utterance compels the leaders of the free world ever more openly to complete madness, running against a backdrop of reignited multipolar geopolitical conflicts, collapsing middle-class living standards, allegedly stolen elections and entrapped so-called insurrectionists, unbridled millions invading undefended US borders, schools erasing children's concept of gender, worldwide lockdowns, and mandatory population-wide experimental injections.
Ted Stevens is "series of tubes" guy.
Ted Stevens did not trigger existential crisis in a low-stakes, functionally-irrelevant, 90% Republican-voting state, therefore disenfranchising a third of the country by holding show trials for the most polarizing man in American history will provoke no more than eyerolls from the median Republican voter, because the median Republican voter is a holier-than-thou asshole who will cut off his nose to spite his face? Have you just emerged from a coma? The non-RINO Christian Right is framing this "mere election" as the final turnaround on the highway to the Downfall of Western Civilization. Despite all his character flaws, Donald Trump is not immanentizing the eschaton. He is an avatar of all of the insults suffered at the hands of the Elite, and with every sling cast upon him, it becomes clearer what lawlessness they will embrace to render him powerless, and how trivially they could trample over people like us who don't have a billion dollars and a TV show and buildings with our names on them. When the alternative is writing a blank cheque to godless, lawless evil, it turns out God will forgive you a vote for a felon; man's laws are not God's laws, render unto Caesar, etc.
Nobody stood up for Ted Stevens, because Ted Stevens was a nobody who stood for nothing. Trump is the last man standing. And if they bring him down, and the only ones left are sneering subservient RINO elite wannabees and a lawless brigade that makes its living destroying the lives and livelihoods of middle class Americans on principle... Well, imagine a boot stamping on a human face— forever.
Man, what the heck are you talking about? Americans have never been richer, had higher incomes, had more political and economic freedoms. The job market has been stronger-for-longer than it has in years. Inequality is on a downward trend. Things are incredible right now. Whose boot is stamping on whose face??
If tiktok zoomers entering the real world for the first time, and wanna be coal miners instating on a maintaining a antiquated fantasy instead of getting a real job in a real city think things are bad now, wait until we get a normal economy.
Every single metric you listed as being "incredible" right now is material and even that is only pertinent to the economic elite. Wage earner's buying power is going down and they are uninterested in your exploding portfolio.
You don't understand Trump voter's social grievances. All you think about is number go up. This election is bigger than that.
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A minority, and a shrinking demographic.
I also object strenuously to the use of the term "RINO" to characterize the GOP establishment. Because there's nothing "in name only" about them. Indeed, it's quite clear to me that — regardless of what GOP voters may want or think the party stands for — they are the Republican Party. Being a "RINO" "sellout" Outer Party fake-opposition is what the Republican Party is, what it has been for a long time. It's populist outsiders like Trump — and the sizable fraction of voters who support them — who are really Republicans "in name only."
Which is why we're going to lose. They can and will simply "trample over" all of us, and there's nothing we can do about it.
"But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also."
I've been told repeatedly that Christians are not promised worldly political victory, but that they will be handed over to be persecuted, that they will be killed, and that they will be hated by all (see Matthew 24:9). That the right must understand that, per Tolkien, history will only ever be "a long defeat" and that the only victory to be had is in the next life, by sticking to our values unwaveringly even unto torture and martyrdom; that one should indeed willingly embrace said martyrdom like so many saints of old.
Back at the old place, Hlynka argued that it was precisely this embrace of "principled defeat" in this life for the sake of the next that defines "right wing" and separates it from the left, and thus only those who believe in an afterlife can be on the right; and that, regardless of their political positions, atheists are all automatically "left wing" by definition.
There's no "if" about it.
Yes, I agree with that. That is what's going to happen. It's inevitable, and there's nothing anybody can do to stop it.
Death is the only escape.
Are you Christian?
No, but most of the "normie Republicans" I know are (at least in a nominal "Christmas and Easter" sense). And I'm repeating the arguments some of them give (over and over) for why it's better for Republicans to "stick to our values" and keep losing than to "descend to our enemy's level" by retaliating tit-for-tat. They like to quote Mark 8:36 a lot.
I, personally, am one of those atheist right-wingers that Hlynka claimed doesn't exist.
I wouldn’t know. I think it was Michelle Obama who lamented to Barack that the left was too committed to going high when the right went low. Now the situation is perceived to be reversed. It seems there is something in both tents that suggests principles. I’ve never heard about them. I don’t think they exist.
It is fully possible for a muscular Christian narrative to assert itself alongside the tit-for-tat plays of the right.
Michelle's comments were funny at the time, given that the contemporary Democratic/media strategy was to regularly accuse or insinuate opposition to the Obama administration was based on racism, even as the Obama administration employed political machine politics at the national level. It was very consistent with assuming a posture of moral superiority while simultaneously going low.
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I'll second at least the sentiment that RINO is almost always wrong as an appelative. (And am sympathetic to much of the rest.)
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For some reason, your reference to Toilken makes me think of the fall of Gondlin. Yesterday felt like that to me.
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This is an interesting idea, and it's the best and most coherent version of the Hlynkian thesis that I've seen. (I don't recall ever seeing this exact formulation in any of his own posts, at any rate - if you have a link I'd appreciate it.)
Afraid not; it was years ago and over on Reddit (which I find terrible to try to search).
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Sometimes, like right now, I get the strangest urge to create a sure-selling T shirt.
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