A Stonewall Moment of Some Sort Is Needed

Introduction

I do understand that the sexual revolution has their very own version of Stonewall, the one that Obama celebrated when he said that the arc of history was turning out to be in sync with pretty much everything that Obama was in sync with. Pretty cool when you can arrange things like that. In his Second Inaugural, he expressed his great pleasure in this self-congratulatory fact this way:

We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths, that all of us are created equal, is the star that guides us still, just as it guided our forbearers to Seneca Falls and Selma and Stonewall, just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung . . .

Obama, Second Inaugural Address

After the unsung there, the address naturally started to float off due to the speechwriter using too much helium, but we already got the part that we should really be interested in.

Seneca Falls was an early conference for women’s rights, way back in 1848, and begins with an s, and Selma was a march organized by Martin Luther King, Jr in 1965, also beginning with an s, and then Stonewall was a riot that occurred after a police raid on a homosexual bar in 1969 Greenwich Village, also beginning with an s—Stonewall, not Greenwich. Also beginning with a s, since we are right on the cusp of gay history month, was the greater metro area of Sodom, formerly the pride of the pride movement. And we should not leave out the name for the overall pattern of all of these doings, that being slippery slope, contributing even two more s’s.

And for all those Christians who (even now) have a tenuous grasp on how slippery slopes function, I would commend this book to you. This is really something we ought to get up to speed on, just as we are currently getting up to speed on this slope here. As the word hurtling comes to mind, this would seem to require a goodish bit of catch up reading.

Another Kind of Stonewall

Thomas Jackson got his nickname of Stonewall at the Battle of First Manassas (also known as Bull Run). Things were running hot in that battle when someone called out, “Look men, there stands Jackson like a stone wall. Rally behind the Virginians!”

I bring this up, not to rehash any issues related to the War, but simply to provide us with a much needed metaphor. We are in the midst of this commie clown world thing that’s going on, and so we are greatly in need of a well-defined rallying point. We need for some Christians to find somewhere to stand, like a stone wall, like Jackson, and we need other Christians to notice that they have done so, and to rally behind them. Thus far the point of the metaphor.

Now in the world of contemporary politics, there is plenty of energy, desperately looking for a place to stand, but absolutely everything is slippery. In the world of the church, we have plenty of dry places to stand, but very few willing to stand there. The world of conservative politics has plenty of people willing to fight, but with no weapons. Simple detestation of woke socialism is insufficient. Meanwhile, the Christian world is a vast armory, and a huge ammunition depot, well-stocked, but no soldiers, and no ethos of fighting.

The need of the hour is for someone to identify a rallying point, where Christians are standing—as Christians—like a stone wall.

In Which Someone Whispers That Somebody Needs to Take Wilson Aside and Explain to Him That Now Is Not Really a Suitable Time for Him to be Reminding People of His Take on the War Between the States

Is too. I will say it again. Is too.

Responsible Christian writers and thought leaders—let us call them our softies—have been at great pains to instruct us all on our Christian duty of not triggering anybody. And because their deft approach has been working so well, such that hardly anybody gets accused of racism or white supremacy anymore, we really ought to listen to such insightful cultural analysts. I mean, nobody gets accused of racism at all any more unless they do something really vituperative, such as using the words like blacktop, blacksmith, or blackmail. Or waking up white in the morning, again, still unrepentant. Or making a Nigerian prince joke at a corporate staff meeting. Or referring to summer and winter in ways that privilege a Eurocentric take on things that simply assume a northern hemisphere. With particular attention being paid to this last one, how often we make reckless comments that eviscerate the feelings of our Aussie brethren, who simply cannot relate to all the cultural freight that we try to make Christmas carry. We have to do better than this, people.

Apart from such rare outrages, and given how wild accusations of racism have been almost eradicated, one can understand why the softies wouldn’t really want someone like me to come along with some Civil War analogy which throws all their great civility gains into the cultural tensions blender. Having done that, the analogy then holds the lid of increased misunderstandings tightly down, and with a callous heart hits the on switch.

“You see, Wilson,” they say patronizingly, when you use an illustration from the Civil War, in which one of the Confederate generals is made out to be kind of a stalwart person, worthy of imitation, you open yourself up to the charge of white supremacy. “I see,” I mutter under my breath, somewhat recalcitrant. “And so why then are you being accused of that very same white supremacy? I will tell you why. You are found guilty of the same crime that I am simply because you are the same color as Stonewall Jackson. That is how well your appeasement strategy works, Skippy.”

Over the last twenty-five years, during which time you have been lecturing me about my propensity to get myself labeled something I am not—you know, a white supremacist—it turns out that you have been using those very same twenty-five years to negotiate yourself down to the same level as an editor of Neo-Confederate newsletters. But that has only worked on you because you care about what they are saying about you, which you still do, and I haven’t for a long time.

So let me say this to you as one Christian to another, as one long-tarred white supremacist to a newly minted white supremacist. Welcome.

Winston Churchill once defined an appeaser as one who throws everybody else to the crocodile, hoping to be the last one eaten. And here we are now, with the crocodiles still hungry. What I saw a quarter century ago—the fact that your appeasement approach was hopelessly naive—you still haven’t seen. I will explain this further in another hot minute.

What I have not yet grasped is why my behavior (that has gotten me the label of white supremacist) is culpable, while your behavior (which has gotten you that very same label) is clean and pure. It can’t have anything to do with whether either of us actually are white supremacists, for that clearly has nothing to do with it.

But you know what else damns you and your whitey ilk? Your grandparents emigrated here from Finland in the 1920’s, and so your skin tone match with Stonewall is the merest coincidence, you want to say, having nothing at all to do with the troubled history of race here in the United States of Abusica. But the fact that you might think to use this as a way of exculpating yourself is profoundly troubling to all of us who are sitting members of the Truth and Reconciliation Board. The very worst white supremacists are always the ones who feel themselves serenely above it all, and that would appear to be you appeaser guys. Your protestations of innocence are the mark of the profoundest sort of guilt. Quiver, you maggots. You do know what color maggots are, right?”

The Grand Mistake

Why does this tactic work? Why has the left continued to use it, with such great success?

Somewhere up above, I used the word misunderstanding. People want to know why I use illustrations, or defend causes, to teach on subjects that open me up to such grievous misunderstandings. The one asking this question knows my teaching. He knows that I am not a white supremacist, he knows that I don’t enable pedophiles, he knows that I don’t call women foul names. And yet people are out there circulating their stories, fibs, lies, fabrications, and decontextualizations, and then I do or say something that seems deliberately calculated to get the chimps jumping. “Why do you do that? Why do you not care about these misunderstandings?”

And the answer is that they are not misunderstandings at all. They are lies. I don’t care about the lies. And this is because Jesus commanded us not to care about the lies.

What does Jesus say to do when you are reviled? What does He say to do when “all manner of evil” is spoken about you? He says to walk around the corner and do a couple of fist pumps. That’s what Jesus commands. Maybe even three fist pumps.

As soon as you care about the lies, down at the ego level, they have got you. The hook is now in. These people are children of the devil, who is the father of lies, and please do remember that as the father of lies, he knows how to do it. He begins with a lie that is halfway plausible, but this is just a ranging shot. It is only to identify those who are susceptible to this particular trick. Once he has identified the chumps, he can ratchet the lies up to ludicrous proportions, and the chumps continue to go along.

You don’t think the lies have been ratcheted up to ludicrous proportions? I see. What’s your co-worker’s preferred pronoun? Should we be amputating the breasts of thirteen-year-old girls? Should a man lose his job for expressing a negative take on the previous question? Is buying a sandwich at Cracker Barrel an example of white supremacy? Should a castrated Bruce Jenner really be the Republican candidate for governor of California? Should drag queens be conducting story hours for little kids at public libraries? Have we always been at war with Eastasia?

You see, my central offense is that I am willing to say that I know that the progressives are lying.

When they go into their fits of offended outrage, they are not outraged. They are lying. I know that. They know that. They know that I know that, and vice versa. The only people who don’t know* are the ones who still think it is a matter of misunderstanding, which could be cleared up if only we could talk a bit more, and if those conservative Christians would stop providing the raw material for misunderstanding. So if only Christians would stop opening themselves up to these misunderstandings, we could proceed with the task at hand, which apparently is dragging us all into a commie paradise.

*I say “the only people who don’t know.” This is something of an overstatement. The left has chumps on their side also, useful tools who really are offended, every time they are told to be.

But it is getting kind of late. Do you really want to know how bad this woke stuff has gotten here in America? Things are so bad that we are just three months away from Joel McDurmon noticing that it has gotten pretty bad. When that happens, it is time for some of you people to run. Where? you may ask. Rally behind the Virginians.

A Brief Postscript About Memorial Day

Over the years, America has been involved in numerous wars. Some of them were mendacious, some of them were just stupid, and others were noble. It is appropriate and right for us to mark the sacrifice of all those who died in such wars, and to do so with genuine gratitude. But despite the civic rhetoric that surrounds these observances, such sacrifices cannot provide us with the rallying point we need. Our rallying point must be from outside the world. If it is inside the world and in accordance with its ways, it is the easiest thing for the enemy to just pick the other side.