Introduction
We do not yet know if this is what will happen, but we should at least know that this is what we should be bracing for. I know, it is almost a year until the voting in the general election happens, and I also know that these months could be a political eternity. All kinds of things could happen betwixt now and then and, work with me here, how often does one get a legit chance to use that fine word betwixt?
Supposals
But the supposals that could result in this happening are starting to stack up on us. So, barring alien invasion from outer space, or a huge asteroid landing on Nebraska, or a massive global economic collapse, or anything like that, let us suppose that everything around us continues to stagger on in the same drunken way that it has been going. Just suppose. Work with me.
Let us say that the nominating process on the Democratic side finally decides that what America was really yearning for was the opportunity to vote for a commie. Or say that they don’t, and so they settle for a former main-streamer, someone fragile like Biden, someone with the willingness to pretend to be a commie in the primaries, and to pretend not to be in the general. From all the available options, it seems to me that the Democrats are preparing to nominate themselves a piñata.
Then let us suppose that the Dow breaks 30,000. Let us assume that black unemployment is down in the basement, looking for its dancing shoes. Say that the economy is roaring down the highway of our quasi-capitalism, looking for all the world like a three-mile convoy of eighteen-wheelers delivering goods to the average voter’s home town. And, as it turns out, we are not in a hot war with Iran, and Kim Jong Un has mysteriously piped down considerably.
And then, in the category of much-salt-in-wound, let us also say that a number of those tricksy blue states did their thing by pledging all their electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote nationally, and then let us suppose that Trump walked away with that popular vote tally, giving him an enormous electoral landslide on top of everything else. Whichever commie it was that they nominated did win Illinois and California, but their too-clever-by-half move resulted in that electoral vote going to Trump anyhow. We would then have the spectacle of their attorneys-general filing suit against their own laws in order to prevent Trump from having what was shaping up to be the mandate of the gods. The last thing we need is some press conference with Trump telling us that Juno told him to do it.
In short, let us simply suppose that the circus maximus continues. This last supposal about the popular vote illustrates that the liberals are not angry at the Electoral College, not at all. They are actually two-year-olds who didn’t get three naps in a row, and they are angry at whatever gets in their way. If the Electoral College gets in the way of their agenda, they are angry at that. And if the popular vote gets in their way, they will, without missing a beat, be angry at that.
And this—at last—brings me to the point of today’s musings. How could they possibly defend opposing the popular vote? Bear with me.
So Who Will the Scapegoat Be?
If the last three years has taught us anything, it is that the Left, and the Media, and not a few Craven Conservatives, are unwilling to acknowledge or articulate the obvious. Hillary lost because she was a terrible candidate, mendacious and corrupt, and the American people did not want to buy what she was selling.
But instead of acknowledging this, and viewing the game film with a dispassionate eye, and saying something like, “Hmmm. We clearly need to move back to the center,” they instead opted for the Derangement Syndrome approach, and the Russian Collusion Narrative was born. They apparently lost because of “Russia, Russia, maybe Ukraine, Russia, Ukraine.”
For anybody who would like to be walked through what actually happened versus what was alleged to have happened, I can heartily commend Andrew McCarthy’s book, Ball of Collusion. I am a good way through it now, and McCarthy is meticulous, informed, careful, courageous, and most helpful. He is not a Trump fan, by any stretch, but he knows the difference between objecting to someone’s policies and style, on the one hand, and accusing that person of treasonous criminality on the other. My only objection to his book is that he appears not to be able to confront some of the obvious implications of what he slam dunk proves. He shows us how official Washington is absolutely riddled with corruption, but still wants to assume that there is a healthy and robust body politic down under all the ulcerated boils somewhere. I would be willing to discuss that proposition with him if it ever came about that all the people who ought to be in jail, according to his account, find themselves in jail.
At any rate, McCarthy effectively shows that the Russian collusion narrative surpasses that famous nothing-burger, and attains to the coveted status of negative-number-burger, with the -17 special sauce and everything. When you look at the actual facts that they had, and how they managed to spread it out over three years of hysterics, what do you think they will manage to do with the next collusion narrative?
What “next collusion narrative”? I am glad you asked.
Evangelical Fascism
Actually. I promised earlier I was getting to my point, and then I didn’t. Many sorrys.
They will need a collusion narrative that can grant that all those people did vote for Trump over the commie, and yet be able to say that it shouldn’t be considered legit because why—after all—should it be legal for hatred to vote? If you cannot be allowed to vocalize your hate speech, then why on earth should be allowed to cast your hate vote?
So it turns out the enemy will not be foreign. Not Russia, not Ukraine, not Iran, and not North Korea. No, I am convinced that we are due for what a friend has described to me as the next “great evangelical scare.” The enemy is domestic, and he was probably sitting in a pew last Sunday within three miles of your house.
Brace yourselves for an onslaught of books, articles, documentaries, movies, news stories, and various hit pieces on the alarming rise of the evangelical hard right. We are, people, all of us, on the terrifying brink of The Handmaid’s Tale come to life in front of our very eyes. If someone has the temerity to ask them for evidence for such wild charges, I will interrupt you and say that these people don’t operate on the basis of evidence. They operate by weaving a narrative, and once the narrative is set, there they are—booted, spurred, and ready to ride.
Evangelicals Get the Alinsky Treatment
A week or so ago I wrote in defense of the evangelical voice in the 2016 election, and did so against the common charge that evangelicals had largely discredited themselves. They had abandoned the simple ways of the Teacher from Galilee and voted for that guy from Queens.
All of this is part of the preparation for Saul Alinsky’s 13th Rule, and that rule will be applied to the incipient fascism that the evangelical world is supposedly incubating. The gears are being greased, as we speak. As you read these words, think about them. “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”
Now I am not in the habit of quoting Huey Long favorably, and he may not have said it anyway, but here it is. Speaking of fascism, he is supposed to have said, “Of course we’ll have it. We’ll have it under the guise of anti-fascism.” And then one then looks around and lo! he sees some antifa protesters, attacking bystanders, breaking shop windows and burning cars. This is all justified, you see, because they are attacking the fascists.
So get ready for this. Effective evangelical participation in democracy is currently being prepped to be identified as the number one threat to democracy. The target has already been picked—politically active evangelicals.
How will they freeze it? They will do this by repeating, over and over again, ad nauseam, that evangelical support for Trump in the 2016 election was the Judas moment, the great betrayal. If the levels of support for Trump among evangelicals is anything comparable in 2020, and Trump wins, then that will be identified as the spurning of repentance. Fellow Christians can disagree with what Trump-voting evangelicals did, certainly and of course. But to the extent that they are helping to delegitimize their brothers in this whole business, they are being played for patsies. It turns out that the whole point all along was to delegitimize all of us, and we didn’t really need any help from within the ranks bustling the process along.
How will it be personalized? Look for certain evangelical leaders to have high profile status bestowed on them, hung around their necks and set on fire. They will be made representatives of “hatred with a theological veneer,” and the most likely candidates will be those who have said reasonably conservative things over the years which, with an adroit use of ellipses and comma removal, can readily be turned into outrages.
The last step is polarization. This means there can be no discussion—you haters—and attempts will be made to turn America into one gigantic Oberlin College Safe Space, with coloring books, puppies, and everything, along with a bin full of available handcuffs for hauling off those people who don’t believe that free speech needs to be safe for the listeners too.
When this happens, nuance is grabbed where the pants hang loose and promptly defenestrated. And that means that all evangelicals are going to be lumped together, which is what polarization does, and the soft targets are going to be hardest hit.
First they will come for the fellow traveler evangelicals, and they will actually be glad about it because they were looking for a chance to go over to the other side anyhow.
Then they will turn on the sob sister evangelicals, who are actually Christians, but who have been trained to feel bad about things on command—whatever it is this week that is causing young people to leave the church. These are the evangelicals who managed to get themselves woke in variegated ways and to various degrees. For the Alinskyites, these evangelicals will be the most fun because they can always be counted on to accuse themselves like they were the defendant in a Stalinist show trial. Which, come to think of it, they are.
Then they are going to come for the dispensational black-helicopter-expecting molon labe evangelicals. You know, like some of the Virginia militia guys. They are going to have a rodeo with those guys. The only thing that could possibly daunt these evangelicals is if their courage and high-heartedness results in them actually winning. Then they would have to sit down and think a bit.
When they are done with that, I might offer them all some book recommendations.