Introduction
As the inauguration of Donald Trump approaches, the confirmation hearings of his cabinet appointments also approach. As I write, Pete Hegseth had his hearing yesterday, although I have to say that, from some of the questioners, there was not an awful lot of hearing going on at the hearing.
I would ask all of you to please keep in mind the fact that Democrats don’t know how to behave in a civilized fashion when it comes to the confirmation of any of these . . . these . . . rapists and human traffickers. These Democrats don’t know how to not fight dirty. So we have that to look forward to.
But also, in preparation for these hearings, I find that I myself have been trundled out of the progressive left’s Cabinet of Anxieties.
See What I Mean?
Just in recent days, what has the American public learned about me? According to NPR, it is all about “Theocrats on the Doorstep of Power.” And according to USA Today, I am a walking assemblage of many scary concepts. “This church coalition, associated with a denomination called the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC) and mobilized by firebrand Idaho pastor Doug Wilson, has grown considerably in recent years by appealing to conservative evangelical Christians who are drawn to a more combative and openly rightwing temperament.” People for the American Way got into the act also. I would provide a link to their let’s-all-breathe-into-a-paper-bag take, only I lost the link. Sorry. And then, Mother Jones served up a refried portion of their TheoBros thesis, in which article my inflammatory book Ploductivity was cited. And then yesterday NBC reached out to me for comment on the Hegseth nomination.
In any case, the memo has apparently gone out, and I am now officially a Scarecrow.
Aw Shucks
I am not attending the inauguration. I have not ever met Pete Hegeth, although I would be pleased to shake his hand some day. I have not ever received any monies from the Mossad, or suggestions even. I have met Tucker and was on his show, that part’s true. I know next to nothing about the Jewish space lasers. I wasn’t even consulted about that operation. And Andrew Tate won’t do anything I say. Nothing gayer than calling everything gay.
Want to know what I do? I preach on the Lord’s Day in north Idaho, and I write a good bit. Over the years, my readership has steadily grown and, if its myself that says it, my material has been selling like warm cakes.
Once the Connection is Made . . .
But once a connection to my various misdeeds is made in the public mind, this means that anytime a Trump appointee does anything remotely sensible, any lazy journalist can play the Kevin Bacon game in order to tie that personage to me. And once he is tied to me, he can also be tied to the fact that I am scandal-ridden.
Now it is true that I sleep better than scandal-ridden people ought to sleep, but I attribute this remarkable feat to the fact that the scandals, such as they are, are a complex assemblage of lies, all heaped together. Over the course of decades they have achieved something of a verisimilitudinous vibe. All nonsense of course, but the vibe is certainly there. Can’t discount the vibe.
For example, I hear that there is a Sons of Patriarchy podcast out there, and because I don’t get paid enough to listen to things like that, I have not. Now I know that for some indigniladies this is like me chatting at the water cooler with some co-workers over the upcoming Michigan/Ohio State game, about which some of them are pretty worked up, and then saying something like, “Oh, Michigan has a team then?”
But back to politics. When this treatment happens to some Trump appointee or other, and a north Idaho cleric that he never heard of is hauled out as some form of complete refutation, and all of official Washington is agog, wondering how he is going to get out of this one, and journalists are scrambling to get a comment from me about it, I have thoughtfully pre-supplied my official comment in the next paragraph. Now I don’t want anybody thinking that I am putting on airs, getting too conceited for someone of my lowly station. That would be bad. I know and understand that said journalists are just coming out to the cornfield to talk to the Scarecrow.
Anyway, here is my official comment on whatever is being said this time. They lie like dead flies on a window sill. They lie like a Persian carpet in the palaces of Kubla Khan. They lie like a lazy hound in a sun puddle on the front porch of an Arkansas hunting cabin in late September.
A Firebrand Yes, But Mostly a Modest and Unassuming One
Having been labeled a firebrand by none other than USA Today, I suppose I should conclude by saying something about that.
The people who like to think of themselves as the official voice of American society—you know, elected officials, news anchors, late night former comedians—are actually the inhabitants of an artificially constructed Plausibility Structure . . . one that has been shrinking recently. This is a gated community somewhere on the East Coast, in between New York City and Washington DC, and the Homeowners Association (HOA) for this gated community is run by the love child of Joseph Goebbels and Cher. In this community, democracy is defined as whatever furthers the agenda of the Party, and threats to democracy are any ideas found to have originated outside the gated community and advanced by the Great Unwashed, the hillbillies, the hoi polloi, the rubes and the cornpones, not to mention their leaders, the white supremacists and rapists.
Important grammatical note: I know that hoi in Greek is the article the, and so by writing “the hoi polloi” I have been guilty of saying, in effect, “the the many,” an embarrassing move if ever there was one, revealing high levels of ignorance. For which offense I can only reply that once the relativists and subjectivists have destroyed all standards, this means that the remaining objectivists and absolutists can pretty much do what they want, answering only to God and His Word now. So “the hoi polloi” it is.
But I find that I still haven’t addressed the firebrand charge. To take just one issue to illustrate the point—there are many that could be selected—I am a firebrand because I am a moderate who refused to move. I am a main-streamer who didn’t budge when the River of Acknowledged Consensus was diverted just a few years ago by the Army Corps of Engineers.
Take, for example, my position on marriage. I believe that it is an institution created by God, in which one man and one woman come together for life.
Now this radical and misogynist position is identical to the one that Obama had when he was running for president, and it is the same position as Hillary held when she was running for president. How is it possible that I was a radical, even back then, and they were accepted, even back then, as responsible progressive voices?
They were not accepted as progressive voices because of the content of their position. Not at all. They were accepted as progressives because everybody knew they were lying. You know, they lie like dead flies on a window sill. They lie like a Persian carpet . . .