On October 23, I published a Precipice post entitled "Just Can't." It really didn't cover new territory; it just offered the most recent substantiations for why I won't be voting next Tuesday. Here are some of the most glaring:
Now, a refutation of the idea that, say, the recent Reawaken America rally held in Manheim, Pennsylvania, is representative of the center of gravity of the GOP can be made. That was quite a sea of Kool-Aid those people were swimming in. But it’s flimsy in the same way that saying that the average Democrat is not an AOC tells us nothing about the locus of influence on the left.
But last month’s NatCon pow-wow was only a few degrees less non-conservative than the full-blown nutterism on display in Manheim. Speakers - up to and including sitting Florida governor Ron DeSantis - declared that it was time to employ the full coercive power of government to combat “wokeism.” (I personally hate that term, for reasons including its lack of specificity; I prefer to enumerate the identity politics militancy, climate alarmism and wealth redistribution that inform 2022 progressivism.)
At The Federalist, John Daniel Davidson acknowledges that the term “conservative” doesn’t fit neo-Trumpism. He’s a slick one, that Davidson. He says all the right things to appeal to citizens who may not avail themselves of think-tank papers and conference proceedings but have their barometers in working order. Progressivism is indeed poisoning our culture, our government, our civic institutions and our economics. But he concludes his piece by offering the same prescription as the NatCon speakers.
The characteristics of that era almost seem quaint now, shrouded in the mists of antiquity.
How's this for an understanding of present world-stage dynamics? Marjorie Taylor-Greene says that "under Republicans, not one penny will go to Ukraine?"
Shasta County, California residents are answering their doorbells to this:
The canvassers in California's Shasta County in September wore reflective orange vests and official-looking badges that read “Voter Taskforce.” Four residents said they mistook them for government officials.
But the door knockers didn't explain where to vote or promote a candidate, the usual work of canvassers ahead of a big election.
Instead, they grilled residents on their voting history and who lived in their homes, probing questions that might have violated state laws on intimidation and harassment, according to the county's chief election official.
At one house, they interrogated a couple about the whereabouts of their adult daughter. At another, they listed names of registered voters and demanded to know if they still lived at the address.
The incidents highlight how a once-routine staple of American elections -- door-to-door canvassing -- has been adopted by former U.S. President Donald Trump's supporters since the 2020 election to prove his baseless claims of voter fraud, or potentially disenfranchise voters by stoking doubts about voter registration books.
That would seem to be of a piece with the phenomenon of drop box tailgate parties:
A black Jeep crept along Coury Avenue on Wednesday night, rolling by one of the many ballot drop boxes collecting early votes for the midterm elections.
The driver, a man who declined to give his name, said he had made a pass at the box as part of a volunteer effort to stop a certain type of voter fraud that has captivated the far right, even though there is no evidence of its actually happening. He said it was the second night in a row he had driven by the box, this time after he had just taken his two children, who remained in the back seat, out for a sushi dinner.
He said he hoped to catch someone dropping off “100 ballots or 50 ballots.” No one did.
On Wednesday night, NBC News counted at least nine people watching the ballot drop box in Mesa, a small part of what has become a growing effort by some conservatives to monitor ballot drop boxes in hope of catching election fraud. Some people have stood watch at the drop box while wearing military-style fatigues and masks over their faces, prompting complaints to the Arizona secretary of state. NBC News did not observe any weapons.
No such drop box fraud has ever been found in significant numbers. But that has not stopped conspiracy theories about “ballot mules” — who supposedly secretly drop off hundreds of fake ballots in the middle of the night at drop boxes or election sites nationwide — from taking hold on pro-Trump parts of the internet. The conspiracy theory got its biggest boost from the widely debunked propaganda film “2,000 Mules,” which alleges such mules somehow changed the outcome of the 2020 election, even though repeated hand counts of ballots recertified the results.
The conspiracy theories have inspired action. Users on the Twitter-like platform Truth Social, which is owned by Trump Media & Technology Group, have discussed forming “mule parties” or “drop box tailgates” since at least late July, looking to organize volunteers to surveil drop boxes. On that platform, the former president’s account has shared posts by users advocating for drop box surveillance, including the Mesa drop box.
One organization, Clean Elections USA, has been pushing for Trump supporters on Truth Social to create “ballot tailgate parties” to monitor drop boxes nationwide for suspected “mules” since August.
The man who spoke with NBC News said that he spoke to two women who were watching the drop box for suspicious behavior and that they told him to sign up for a time slot online through Clean Elections USA.
The Paul Pelosi shooting has once again demonstrated that the rot within institutional Christianity continues unabated:
he image was of a pair of underwear with a hammer, and the caption said, “Get it now: Paul Pelosi Halloween costume.” After a friend sent me the link, I was almost shaking with rage. Within an hour or so, Donald Trump Jr. would post the same image with a similar message, but it was the first one that left me angry—because it was posted by someone who claims to be a follower of Jesus Christ.
Keep in mind what we have witnessed this week: A man with a history of following conspiracy theories—including 2020 election denial—broke into the San Francisco home of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, took a hammer, and beat the Speaker’s husband until he needed critical surgery.
Police report that the man went through the house, yelling “Where’s Nancy?” The language is a direct echo of screams from insurrectionists on January 6, who swarmed outside the Speaker’s office after attacking and ransacking the Capitol.
Within hours of the Pelosi attack, the typical internet mobs spread lies and conspiracy theories about the event, some of them too vile and obviously fabricated to even mention here.
A friend asked why I was so upset about the allegedly evangelical man who posted the “joke” about Pelosi’s attempted murder. After all, we’ve seen for years his troll-like behavior on and off social media. “Why are you surprised?” my friend said. “That guy has shown who he is for years. I feel sorry for him.”
But that’s the point. This is not an isolated incident from one sad, angry, and “extremely online” guy. It reflects an increasing trend among some Christians.
Take for example Charlie Kirk, who responded to the Pelosi attack by saying, “If some amazing patriot out there in San Francisco or the Bay Area wants to really be a midterm hero, someone should go and bail this guy out. … Bail him out and then ask him some questions.” That’s the same Kirk who claims to be a born-again Christian and whose name was merged with that of Jerry Falwell Jr. into the “Falkirk Center” at the nation’s largest Christian university (until Falwell’s departure).
While all of this is going on, hordes of online commenters and conspiracy theory websites either deny the attack happened at all—as a “false flag” by the Deep State—or positively delight in the humor of it all. Many of them have “Christian. Husband. Father” or some similar designation in their social media bios.
All of this would be bad enough if it were simply happening in the “fog of disinformation.” But even after the official Department of Justice affidavitwas released with details from the police officers’ interview with the alleged assailant—who admits to breaking into the Pelosi home to harm the Speaker—where are the apologies for spreading the lies? Where is the shame at delighting in what could easily have turned into murder?
When looking at some of the responses to the Pelosi beating, Mona Charen asked, “What the hell is wrong with these people?” The answer, of course, is hell.
We see the opinion editor of Newsweek trying to foment trouble in the aftermath of Brazil's election, even as Bolsonaro has, at least grudgingly, acknowledged his loss to Lula. His time-to-pay-attention-to-what-is-happening-in-Brazil tweet has engendered a thread replete with yay-rah affirmations from both post-Americans and Brazilians.
Consider Kari lake's rise to stardom. She quickly surmounted her early image as a flake and phony who had enthusiastically supported Barack Obama, using her 20 years of honing her chops in front of audiences as a Phoenix TV news anchor to present a polished veneer over the election denial at the core of her message. There's now talk about how she could leapfrog to the national political level in time for the 2024 election.
Okay, that's a lot of keystrokes devoted to the hopelessly toxic state of the Republican Party.
But the Left has its own issues with political violence, as demonstrated by the beating a Rubio canvasser took in Florida, as well as this incident in North Carolina:
The FBI have launched an investigation after a gunman shot into the North Carolina home of relatives of a Republican running for Congress - with the bullet landing just feet away from where the candidate's children had been sleeping.
The shooting transpired on October 18 in Hickory at a home belonging to Republican Pat Harrigan's parents, as he fights for an open seat in the famously liberal 14th Congressional District, in a contentious race.
The congressional candidate's daughters, aged 3 and 5, were asleep in the bedroom directly above the room where the shooting occurred, with the bullet coming from a densely wooded area behind the house, piercing a window but not waking the girls.
I'm really not interested in getting mired in whataboutism regarding political violence, though. My problems with the Democrat party, and progressivism generally, arise at the policy level.
Let me reiterate the areas in which leftist policy is driving the stake through post-America's heart: wealth redistribution, climate alarmism and identiy politics militancy.
One sees, with some frequency, social-media remarks about how those terrible Republicans want to end Social Security and Medicare. That's a fair accusation to lob at any wacko-type Republican, of which there are plenty, who doesn't flesh out an actual plan to deal with the abrupt jolt a lot of post-Americans would experience in the wake of such a move. But I don't see a damn thing from Democrats about how they would put those programs on a footing of solvency and avoid a situation in which interest on the national debt crowds out the government's ability to fund basics like defense.
The Inflation Reduction Act did nothing to reduce inflation.
Student loan forgiveness has eroded post-Americans's notion of personal responsibility, and done nothing to address the administrative bloat at the nation's higher-education institutions.
Climate alarmism has given policy shapers in government, as well as much of the corporate world, free reign to demonize fossil fuels and push for removing them from the nation's energy picture as quickly as possible, even as areas of the world aspiring to a Western level of advancement understand that play-like energy forms won't accomplish that.
We are sitting on an abundance of dense, readily available and relatively inexpensive energy, but progressivism won't let us touch it.
Then there is identity politics militancy.
Race hustlers are still at it, insisting that we sit down for yet more rounds of "difficult conversations," their euphemism for having those not yet on board shut up and be told why they are evil if they don't bring an awareness of color to every damn interaction they have with every one of their fellow human beings.
What would have been revolutionary in 2008, like “gay marriage,” seems almost “traditional” to many Americans in 2022, by the sheer force of its cultural normalization in America. Drag Queens dancing in front of children is as recreational as baseball in some parts of the country, or so it seems. Mainstream medical guilds now suggest that confused children and teens mutilate their bodies to tranquilize the mind. Public schools when I grew up might have been secular, but they weren’t morally insane or propagandizing students in cultural self-hatred like I routinely hear about now. Major media outlets are entirely compromised by a groveling deference to wokism and identity politics. The left once called for abortion to be “safe, legal, and rare,” but the move to de-stigmatize abortion and gloat about it has moved the needle in a ghoulish direction.
A red wave next Tuesday seems pretty certain. Leftist pundits' never-mind-the-polls-can't-you-feel-the-energy exhortations have a distinct whistling-past-the-graveyard feel to them.
And it comes down to one basic factor: a backlash against the coercive nature of the Left's attempt to impose what's described in the previous nine paragraphs.
Education is a driving force in this. It's why local school board races are particularly hot in this election cycle. A whole lot of post-American parents are saying, "Not with my kid's noggin, you don't."
But you can't make a binary choice in this state of affairs. If you are a legitimately concerned parent, or say, a small business owner fairly far down the supply chain getting told by your customers that, in addition to quality assurance, you have to prove you're actively taking measures to implement DEI, are you really willing to let the likes of Kari Lake, Tim Michels or Marjorie Taylor Greene take the lead in the effort to do something about it?
I say the following having given considerable thought to whether it's responsible for me to go on record saying so:
Both of our major political parties are irredeemably toxic. Neither one can provide a way out of our nation's grim situation.
You do you next Tuesday, but know this: however you vote, all you're doing is gratifying your desire to see yourself as an agent of positive development. You're not really moving the needle. It changes nothing. Our descent into a very dark time will continue and accelerate, in one form or the other.
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