Lex Anteinternet: A Protestant Dominionist Dictatorship brought to you by Project 2025 and the New Apostolic Reformation or the End of the Reformation?

Lex Anteinternet: A Protestant Dominionist Dictatorship brought to y...: 

A Protestant Dominionist Dictatorship brought to you by Project 2025 and the New Apostolic Reformation or the End of the Reformation?

When Trump was elected President, people, for the second time in a row, thought "oh he won't be so bad".  

He's been as bad as expected, and worse.

A large segment of the politically aware American demographic is wondering, nearly every day, "what on Earth is going on here" as the Trump administration does something odd day after day.¹ A second group, his core MAGA adherents, ignore the oddities and assume that a lot of the nonsense about lurking Marxist must be true, and assume that Trump is doing what needs to be done to save the Republic.

Well, Trump is demented, which explains a lot. But there's something else going on. And that something else is Christian Nationalism with a strong Protestant Dominionist focus.

Round Head flag, English Civil War.  Takinginterest01, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons. There were several varieties of this standard, as there was no standardized Parliamentarian flag.

Trump himself isn't really a sharp enough tool in the shed to do what's occurring. quite frankly, and at any point in his life, he probably wouldn't be interested enough to care anyway, as long has people are praising him and he seems to be getting what he wants..  To the extent he has any deep thoughts at all, and he likely doesn't, many of his real thoughts and desire run contrary to much of what's occurring.  Trump, after all, is nothing much more than a wealthy playboy.  He likes money, women, and has bad taste. M'eh.

But Trump was savvy enough to know he needed muscle and backing to get into office and moreover back into office.  The intellectual muscle has been provided by far right populist, Protestant Evangelicals and their fellow travelers, the latter of which will live to regret ever being associated with the movement.  Trump supporting Catholics are going to come to particularly regret traveling on this bus.  

We've often said here that the United States is a Protestant country, culturally.  It's so Protestant that people who aren't Protestant often are, culturally. Right now we have a really good example of that in the form of Stephen Wright, who is Jewish by heritage and perhaps by practice, but who in views is a raging Calvinist.  It's pretty easy to find run of the mill, and even some non run of the mill, Catholics in the Trump fold who likewise culturally looked not to Rome, and not even to Luther, but to John Calvin.  

The very first religiously significant group of English colonist in North America were religious dissenters, something very much worth remembering. The Puritans were Calvinists, not members of the dominant and official religion of England, the Church of England.  Their landing in 1620 came in the context of an ongoing struggle in England over what England was to be, in terms of its faith.  The Anglicans were in control at the time the Puritans left for North American shores and they were also suppressed for their religious radicalism in their native land.  England was now solidly Protestant, sort of, with latent Catholicism seemingly having been beaten down with the peasants losing the Prayer Book Rebellion of 1549, but whether England would be radically Calvinist or sort of looking back at its Catholicism with the Church of England had not been determined.  That question would provide much of the background to the English Civil War in which the parliament sought to depose an Anglican king, while being lead by a Calvinist who would be declared the Lord Protector.  Ultimately, Calvinism didn't sit well with the English, and while parliament won the war, the crown would be restored and playboy king seated on the throne, who would convert to Catholicism sometimes prior to his death.

Calvinist would flee to North America upon the crown being restored.

The early English colonies in North America were frequently religiously intolerant.  They were commonly sectarian and aggressively enforced the religion of their founders.  The Puritans did not come to North America for religious freedom in the manner in which so often portrayed in grade school when I was a kid, but rather to avoid suppression under the crown and enforce their version of Christianity where they lived.  People living in Puritan colonies had mandatory worship requirements at the local Calvinist church.  It's not as if, if you lived in one, you could sit that out, or for that matter declare that you were a Catholic and would worship elsewhere.

Puritans on their way to church.

Mary Dyer, a Quaker, was executed in Massachusetts for preaching her variant of Protestantism in that colony.  

Christian Dominionist look back to the Puritans and the 1600s for their concept of what the state should be like.  Not to the 1770s to 1790s.  They may not all do so consciously, but they do.  When they say that the United States is a Protestant nation, they mean its a Puritan one.

We all know, of course, that 1st Amendment protects the freedom of worship. That text states:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

When that law, and that's what it is, was added to the Constitution in 1791 the infant United States was much different that the loose group of sectarian colonies of the 1600s.  Indeed, the mother country itself was much different than the one that had fought the English Civil War.  Having endured that experience, and with its own history of sectarianism, what the drafters of the Bill of Rights wanted was to avoid there being a Church of the United States, which if it had been created, would have been a branch of the Anglican Church.  The amendment protected the right of various people to worship as they saw fit, or not at all.  Modern conservatives have decried the Courts for decades about this amendment being misinterpreted, but it isn't.  The Bill of Rights inserted religious tolerance ito the law.

Be that as it may, there's no doubt that the country remained a Christian nation.   Other religions made an early appearance, setting aside native religions, very early on, but they were a distinct minority.  A Jewish house of worship existed in New York, for example, as early as 1654.  But overall, non Christian religions were practiced to a very small degree.  And early patterns of settlement meant that the sectarian nature of the colonies continued to reflect itself into the early 1800s, and even into the mid 19th Century, although patterns if immigration began to heavily impact that, particularly the immigration of Catholics, who were largely detested by everybody else for a very long time.  Be that as it may, American culture reflected Protestant Christianity well into the 20th Century and still does today.

This began to break down, as so much in our modern culture has, in the 1960s with the Baby Boom generation. Baby Boomers, or at least many of them, outright rejected many of the basic tenants of Christianity and brought in the really loose cultural Christianity, although with a leftward tilt, that we see today.  One religion was a good as another, Christianity was basically "be nice".  The warnings that St. Paul had given in his letters were ignored. 

Things decayed.

On this site we've tracked some of that decay.  While not meaning to spark a mass debate, we've noted the erosion of hetrosexual religious standards starting in the late 1940s and which were in full bloom before the Baby Boom generation with the massive success of Playboy magazine, and the concept of the loose moral big boob dimwit and sterile "girl next store", who was always ready to have sex. By the 1960s the erosion was becoming generational.  By the 1970s it was becoming part of the culture and homosexuality began to openly emerge.  Marriage started taking a big hit by the 1980s, with divorce becoming increasingly common by the late 1970s  A culture in which divorce had been hard to obtain had evolved into one where marriage wasn't necessary at all, and ultimately into one where same sex couples could marry, the original meaning of marriage having been pretty much lost.

Enter (Evangelical) Christian Dominionism.

In 1975 Evangelicals Loren Cunningham and Bill Bright had a meeting in which they claimed to receive a divine message related to the culture.  They were shortly thereafter joined in their infant movement by Presbyterian theologian Francis Schaeffer..  They claimed a mandate from the Devine to invade and achieve dominion over the "seven spheres" of society identified as family, religion, education, media, entertainment, business, and government.  The New Apostolic Reformation is informed by this movement.  And this is the Evangelical wing that is active in the Trump Administration and which have heavily influenced Christian Nationalist.

Dominionist, no matter what they may say, are not democratic.  They are part of the Illiberal Democracy movement, and in the United States, they are the very core of it.  Believing that the culture has been hopelessly corrupted in the seven spheres, they do not seek to convert by example, but to seize control of the culture, force a reformation of it, and bring about a Puritan nation on the model, sort of, of the original Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Puritan flag of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

This heavily aligns with the concept of Illiberal Democracy.   You can have a democracy, the Dominionist and Illiberal Democrats hold, as long as it fully accepts the predominant cultural world outlook.  No countering that is allowed.

Now, something careful observers will note is that this movement is now all over the European world.   And some of the early Christian Nationalist are most definitely not Evangelical Christians.  R. R. Reno is a convert to Catholicism from the Episcopal Church.  Patrick Dineen is a Catholic, although he's notably moved away from the Republican Party and is now openly part of the American Solidarity Party.  Rod Dreher was a Protestant who converted to Catholicism and then converted to Orthodoxy.  He's also now moved on from the Republican Party to the American Solidarity Party.  The head of the Heritage Foundation, which is responsible for Project 2025, is Kevin Roberts, who is Catholic.  And of course, J. D. Vance is a Catholic convert.

How do we make sense of this?

Well, one way in which we can makes sense of this, although not in the case of Dineen, Reno or Dreher, is to admit that a large segment of Catholics are heavily Protestantized, although this notably excludes younger Catholics and recent converts who most definitely are not.  Gen. Jones Catholics and Gen. X Catholics were often very poorly catechized and therefore you can find quite a few who have gravitated to the far political right and who will state very Evangelical views of things which they have picked up from it, sometimes theological views that  Catholics don't hold at all.  Boomer Catholics went through the entire Spirit of Vatican Two era and are sometimes pretty beat up by it, and the younger ones experienced the Kennedy betrayal of religious adherence which caused many Catholics to follow suit.  Some Boomer Catholics were on the very liberal Church end as well to the irritation of nearly everyone else in the Catholic sphere, who are glad to see their waning influence, but who contributed to the atmosphere the same way that poorly catechized late Boomer/Jones/Gen X Catholics were, but with a certain added massive whineyness on some occasions.

Anyhow, while it happened later than the birth of the Dominionist movement, intellectual and younger Catholics have moved towards an increased conservatism for quite some time, and it is now really visible in the Church.  Overall it's a very good development, because it's so Catholic, and it reflects the view expressed in the letter to Diognetus more than any Seven Mountain tract.  But the decay in the culture, which is particularly evident from the much more informed Catholic perspective, has caused some intellectuals, notably Dineen, Reno and Dreher, to despair of the culture and, in the case of of all three, to openly maintain that liberal democracy is an experiment that has failed.²

They aren't dominionist, however. They're more in the nature of Catholic Integralist, a movement that long predates Christian Nationalism or Dominionism.

Integralism argues that the Catholic faith should be the basis of public law and public policy within civil society, wherever the preponderance of Catholics within that society makes this possible.  It formed out of the chaos of the late 19th Century in Europe and was strong in traditionally Catholic Romance language speaking countries.  It never supported the concept of a state religion, but rather subordinating the state to the moral principles of Catholicism, rejecting morality from the state, and, in its European form, favoured Catholicism as the proclaimed religion of the state

Integralism really fell away from Catholic thinking as a discussed topic after World War Two for a variety of reasons, one being that modern liberal democracies quite being hostile to religion, which frankly most had been before the Second World War.  Indeed, over time, the Church increasingly disapproved of clerics being in politics, and ultimately banned it.  But in 2014, with an essay by Dinneen, it started to reappear.  It's adherents claim that its the official position of the Church, but fail to acknowledge that on many things the church's "official" position can be pretty nuanced.  Even prior to the Second World War it had always been the case that integralist took the view that imposing a Catholic view of things on a population couldn't be done on a non Catholic culture.  In more recent years the Church has really emphasized that there's a civic duty to participate in elections, which while not rejecting integralism, does demonstrate a view accepting democracies and requiring Catholics to participate in their democracies.

The revival of integralism came about the same time, however, that dominionism started to gain steam, and for same, but not identical, reasons.  Dineen's essay came out in 2014, but the following year the Supreme Court issued the Obergefell v. Hodges decision, and just as we predicted here, thing have really gone off the rails.  Justice Kennedy's decision lead directly the populist outrage and right on to Donald Trump.

Obergefell was just a bridge too far for many Americans, but the drift towards societal libertinism it expressed had been going on for a long time.  As we've noted, you can trace it back at least to 1953 and the release of Playboy, but savvy students of culture would point out that perhaps the signs were there as early as the very first movies, which took a run at pornography right from the onset until being reigned back in.  Mass communications of all types, including mass media, had a big role in this no matter how much society attempted to restrain it.  The moral shock of the First World War lead to the Roaring Twenties which foreshadowed the 1960s, interrupted only by the economic deprivation of the 1930s and the Second World War.  At any rate, the decay had set in pretty deep even by the early 1970s.

Anyhow, Integralism and Dominionism are not the same thing. Pope Francis, noting a rising connection between Integralism and Christian Nationalist, approved a publication criticizing the drift in this direction.  Catholics getting tied up in the far right Evangelical movement's goals are going to be in for a surprise when they learn that many in that community would not even regard Catholics as Christians.  The re-Puritanization of the country would not be a good thing for Catholics, who after all hold a very broad view of Christianity rather than a nationalistic view of it, and who don't share the same millennialist views of things at all.

Dominionist, for their part, would be shocked to learn that Integralist hold a lot of things that Dominionist frankly accept as abhorrent. They may be united on abortion being evil and transgenderism being contrary to the moral law, but modern American Evangelical Christians would be surprised that the mass of the Catholic Church holds divorce to be a great moral wrong and condemns easy remarriage.  They'd also be surprised to learn that Catholics condemn sex outside of marriage, including all sexual acts outside of the unitive type, to be grave moral wrongs, and that's the Catholic concern with homosexuality.  

Rod Dreher, who seems to have joined the Christian Nationalist movement, or who had joined it (I'm not sure about his current position, given that he's a member of the American Solidarity Party), early on advocated a sort of walled in approach to societal moral decay in his book The Benedict Option.  I criticized that approach here, and he seems to have retreated from what he seemed to indicate that book espoused.  Anyhow, looking at the situation overall, this is a really dangerous moment in American history, but also one from which Western societies might emerge into something new, and better.

Much of this comes in the context of the collapse of the Reformation, and it stands to accelerate it.  At the end of the day, holding Donald Trump as any sort of "Godly Man" is absurd. The direct attack on American democracy, which is occurring as we write, is highly dangerous, but probably won't succeed.  Forces on the other side have taken forever to react, but are finally starting to, including a reassessment of the really radical and downright goofball positions the left has advocated for some time.  The New Apostolic Reformation and Dominionist movement carrying the flag is causing "Christianity" to be condemned, but among thinking Christians is causing a reassessment of the Reformation churches and a massive movement away from them back into the Apostolic fold, as the theology of the Reformation churches simply can't be defended.

Roman society was reformed by Christianity, but not by operation of law, but by operation of the faithful members of the "one Catholic, Holy and Apostolic Church".  We're in the death throws of  the Reformation, of which this is all part.  If that's right, it'll be a blessing in the end.

Footnotes:

1.  In fairness, a lot of the odd things that Trump does is because he very obviously has dementia, which nobody is doing anything about.  He's really not mentally stable enough to occupy the office he's in.

2.  Evangelicals of the far right are particularly focused on transgenderism and homosexulaity, but just completely ignore almost all of the remaining actual Christian tenants on sex.  Donald Trump, whom Evangelicals have really adopted, is a serial polygamist.  White House "faith advisor" is on her third husband.  Evangelical churches have pews fill up on Sundays with people who are living in what St. Paul very clearly condemned as states of mortal sin.

Related threads:

A Protestant Country. It's history, and what it means.

Labels: American Civil Religion, British Empire, Catholic, Christian Nationalism, Christianity, Colonial North America, Donald Trump, Judaism, New Apostolic Reformation, Orthodox, Protestant, religion, Society

Until Death Do Us Part. Divorce and Related Domestic Law. Late 19th/Early 20th Century, Mid 20th Century, Late 20th/Early 21st Century. An example of the old law, and the old customs, being infinitely superior to the current ones and a call to return to them.

Labels: 1940 Wyoming Legislature, 1941, 1970s, Blog Mirror, Evolutionary Biology, Long Posts, Marriage, Monday at the bar, religion, Sex, Sexual Revolution, Social Issues, Sociology, The relationship between men and women

Can real conservatism exist without authoritarianism?

Labels: Agrarianism, Commentary, Conservatism, Democracy, Distributism, Illiberal Democracy, Liberal Democracy, Liberalism, Populism, Progressivism, William F. Buckley

Illiberal Democracy. A Manifesto?

Labels: Illiberal Democracy, Liberal Democracy, National Conservatism, Politics

Illiberal Democracy.

Labels: 2020s, 2022, Christian Nationalism, Conservatism, Illiberal Democracy, Liberal Democracy, Liberalism, Politics, Populism, trends

"Do not be led astray: 'Bad company corrupts good morals.' Trump, Putin and American Evangelicals.

Labels: American Civil Religion, AnteCovid, Christian Nationalism, Illiberal Democracy, Monarchy, Mormon Missionary Test, Protestant, religion, Russian Orthodox Church

Lex Anteinternet: Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 69th Edition. TDS, Vance in the wings. Our geriatric oligarchy. Immigration spats. Banning puberty blockers. Mjuk flicka and the Mantilla Girls

Lex Anteinternet: Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 69th Edition. TDS, Va...: 

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 69th Edition. TDS, Vance in the wings. Our geriatric oligarchy. Immigration spats. Banning puberty blockers. Mjuk flicka and the Mantilla Girls.

The really ugly American

Trump’s win shows us who we really are

An excellent, and exactly correct, article.

And who we are isn't very pretty.

Many people worried that the election of Donald Trump, a thoroughly reprehensible man, would mean the end of the American democracy.  It probably won't, but it does mark the complete end of the United States as a great nation in every sense. 

We have no claim, as of this last election, to any sort of exceptionalism.  A certain moral status, hard won and defended in the Civil War and the wars of the 20th Century has been forfeited, and for blisteringly limited self interest.  Indeed, much of the electorate, frankly, proved themselves ignorant, choosing the interests of billionaires over their own, based on mean and vindictive promises and a false vision of the past.  Others, limited in their  minds to a binary choice in which they felt compelled to choose between the threat of progressivism in the Democratic Party, which never saw a gender perversion or mental illness it didn't want to glorify and demand you do too, and a GOP which at least looked to some sort of sanity on such issues.  Yet others chose a narrow issue, gun control, abortion, which they highly valued and made the leap.  Others were simply mad about being lied to for decades by the Democrats and pre Trump Republicans on matters like job exportation and immigration.

Not all Trump voters are alike by any means.

But there's only one Trump.

Since being elected he's insulted Canada repeatedly in a childish manner.  On the day I'm typing this out (originally), he's threatening Panama, suggesting we're going to demand a return of the Panama Canal.  Since then he's been demanding Greenland.

The amazing thing is that in spite of the utter lunacy of these ramblings, plenty have signed on board to back them.  People who wonder how the absurdities of the Nazi Party found acceptance after 1932 now know.

I don't expect Trump to serve out his term.  Behavior like this shows that the nation's incoming Chief Executive is returning to his middle school years, years which caused his parents to send him to military school, and that return is probably organic in a man who is flabby and ancient.  We'll see, of course, but it appears to at least me that the dementia train has left the station, as it earlier clearly did for Joe Biden.  

Merely having a chief executive this age is, frankly, dangerous.

At any rate, I suspect that backers of J. D. Vance are just wanting to give things a decent interval before a cabinet finding of non compos mentis is delivered.

I'm not a Vance fan, but the sooner, the better.

Trump Derangement Syndrome

One of our dear readers, who has I might note a truly excellent blog I keep meaning to link in here, gently noted that this blog suffers from Trump Derangement Syndrome.

It's a fair accusation.

As is evident, I just can't grasp why a thoughtful highly intelligent person like our reader would vote for Trump.  I  know plenty of them I might add.  Highly educated, very well spoken, very well read, individuals who voted for a person I find nearly loathsome.

I wish they could explain it to me.

I wonder too if they fear for the nation the way that those of us who recoil form Trump do.

I will note that I perfectly grasp why people didn't vote for Harris, and wouldn't have for Biden.  Biden's descent into incapacity aside, the Democratic Party has just become, well, weird in many ways.  I noted at the time that Obergefell was decided that disaster loomed, and frankly, I was spot on.  Contrary to Kennedy's naive assumptions about his legally bankrupt ruling, Obergefell really opened the doors of a sexual and sexually perverse pandora's box, although frankly that box had been unlocked in the post war by Kinsey and Masters.

By the way, there's actually an article in Psychology Today about TDS.

Anyhow, for the Trump supporters who are routinely insulted by my posts regarding Trump, but stop in to read anyhow, thanks for doing so, and if you can explain your support for the man, I'd appreciate your doing so.

I'll confess.  I feel that Trump should have been tried for sedition and should be in prison, so my view is indeed harsh and unyielding on him.  I hope I'm proved wrong, but I expect him to be a disaster.

Waiting in the wings

Vance in uniform, and not that of a military prep school

As noted, I'm pretty confined J. D. Vance is waiting in the wings, and isn't much more of a Trump fan than I am.  I also think as a National Conservative, he's the real deal.

Love him or hate him, Vance would have made a much better contrast to Harris than Trump.  Vance actually has an intellectual concept of where he wants the country to go, and it doesn't appear in any fashion to depend on Elon Musk personally arresting the decline in the North American birth rate.

Must is a National Conservative, as noted.  He couldn't have been elected in a race against Harris.   The National Conservatives, who ranks are filled by some real intellectuals, know that they have a very limited time to get in their man.. That time is limited to the next four years.  Vance won't be able to pull off a post Trump win in 2028, and they know it.  In order to make the reforms they want, and they are genuine and massive, they need to get Vance in before then, and that depends on Trump being gone.

Age may very well remove Trump, through death.  If it doesn't, my guess is dementia will.  Then we will have Vance, and that will be quite interesting.

Oligarchs.

Drone Bee.  By Guillaume Pelletier - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=59927223

A really interesting thing about the incoming Trump administration is the now open and obvious influence of the mega rich on it.  The most obvious example is the overarching presence of the world's most wealth many, South African Elon Musk, but he's far from the only one.

It wasn't all that long ago that Republicans continually suggested that mega rich Hungarian George Soros and Mark Zuckerberg were a big problem.  Even now, Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray wants to do something about "Zuck Bucks".

Love of money, as we know, is the root of all evil, and and one thing it does is to buy power.  Absolute power, we're told, such as the U.S. Supreme Court has pretty much handed over to the Executive Branch, corrupts absolutely.

Something needs to be done about this and what that something is, quite frankly, includes taxation.  Populists have to decide if they want to be drone servants of their party, or the owners of their party in this regard.

So far, it looks like the drones have it.

The immigration spat

The best argument for doing away with H1B I can imagine.  Also, not only a crude dip into vulgarity, but an unfortunate sexual insult by a man who clearly knows that's now how that actually works, given his many progeny by many willing women.  And explain to me how Evangelicals feel that this camp is moral?

It is interesting, however, how a fight has suddenly broken out in the MAGA camp which is related to this.  The GOP campaign against immigrants in the general election blurred the lines between legal and illegal immigrants.  It was relatively clear that basically many hardcore Rust Belt and rural Trumpies didn't like immigrants in general.

There are, I'd note, real reasons to be concerned about the American immigration rate.  But for immigration, the US population would be falling, which contrary to widespread belief would frankly be a very good thing.  But demonizing immigrants is flat out wrong, and we're not actually having the conversation we should be, which would have a lot more to do with conservation, economics, and yes, culture, than whatever it is that we are arguing about.

One thing now that we are arguing about is H1B, a visa program.  I've seen an immigrant Pakistani Trumpy robustly claim that this program lets in illiterate people who can't speak English in Italian restaurants to, in contrast, Elon Must backing it on the basis that that he came in the country that way and as the world's richest sperm donor, he loves himself, and everyone else should too, as he's good for the country.

He's not good for the country.

Interestingly, there's some lingering questions if Musk violated the country's laws when he came in.  He probably didn't, but it's interesting.  If he did, and I'm not saying he did, that would make him one of those super nasty law breaking immigrants who should be back up and returned to their land of origin.

On other ironies which are worth noting, this spat has really taken weird turns.  Ann Coulter told Vivek Ramaswamy that she wouldn't have voted for him as he's of Indian extraction, which is as racist as can be, but at least honest.  Some Republicans are defending H1B, others are condemning it.

And Trump clearly is okay with some immigrants, such as ones he'll marry.  It makes me wonder what dinner talk is like at the old Trump homestead.

When things hit the news.

On this story, I had the odd experience of having somebody say the other day "I see you are now having trouble up there with immigrants too". They were from Texas, and this was a phone call.

I had to ask what he meant, but apparently the arrest of an illegal alien here made national news.

It's interesting in that this isn't all that newsworthy here.  I don't know why people would think otherwise, but rural states like Wyoming have had illegal aliens just as long as anyone else, and given the blue collar nature of work here, probably longer.

Gerontocracy

Not only are we developing an oligarch problem, it has a gerontocracy problem as well, which this past election certainly pointed out.  We have an ancient (and seemingly impaired) President, and an ancient, and rather odd acting, President Elect.

Trump is 78 years old, of course.  Locally, one of our Senators is 72, and the other 70.  Not young.  Our Congresswoman is a comparatively youthful 62.

Texas Republican Congresswoman Kay Granger is 81, and is now living in a memory care facility.  She hasn't cast a vote since July, which of course makes sense.  

Of note, she spent a year, starting in January 2023, as the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.  That says something, and what it says is that mental decline can really be rapid.

Why, as a nation, are we comfortable with this?

On a positive, if perhaps sad note, she did not seek reelection.

The UK bans puberty blockers

The US should follow suit.

The entire "trans" movement is really based on an illusion of epic proportions.  We are, truly, born male and female while some are more masculine than others, or more feminine than others, boys are boys, as they say, and girls girls.  People who are confused on this point are, in reality, very few, and those who persistently are mentally ills.  Almost all teens who claim to be "trans", aren't and the overwhelming majority of them come out of it relatively quickly.  For that matter, adults who claim to be "trans" aren't.  

Puberty blockers are child abuse on the Aktion T4 and there's no excuse for it.

Back to the populists for a second, it's insanity like giving children puberty blockers that helps explain their rise.  In future years this behavior will be regarded the same way eugenics in Nazi Germany is now.  How mass lawsuits have not broken out is beyond me.  

Mjuk flicka.  Soft Girls, Kept Women, Feminist Women, and a More Natural Life.

ICELANDIC MILKMAID ON HER MORNING ROUND

This is a fine, sturdy pony standing so stockily for his photograph, and he can make light of his burden of buxom beauty with her heavy can of milk. She cares not for saddle or stirrups, for most of these island people are born to horseback, and her everyday costume amply serves the purpose of a riding-habit for this strapping Viking's daughter, with her long tresses shining in the breeze.  

(Original caption, of interest here I wouldn't call this young lady "buxom" or "strapping", but just healthy.  This might say something about how standards have changed over time.)

Mjuk flicka a Swedish term for "a kind pleasant" girl, but it sort of translates as "soft girl".  In this context its a bit of a trend, and one that's worrying feminist.

It probably should.

We've had other threads along these lines, but its fairly clear that a fair number of women have come to the conclusion that the push into the business and working world that came along in the 1970s hasn't really done them as much as a favor as the propaganda then and now would have it.  This recalls the TikTok breakdown some young woman had that's discussed here:

Women at work. "Whoever fought, for women to get jobs. . . . why?. . . . why did you do that?" Looking at women (and men) in the workplace, and modern work itself, with a long lens.

And also here:

A lamentation. The modern "world.*

One of the odd things that the "soft girl" is exhibiting is that she's an example of reinventing old social norms backwards and highly imperfectly, and that is concerning.  Rather than acting as a very traditional wife, she's essentially reduced herself to concubinage.  Her male supporter could sever ties at the drop of a hat.  She's serving in the traditional concubine role, free of any children or responsibility, and providing what we might charitably refer to as companionship.  This is bound not to go well, which reaching back to tradition without the duties of responsibilities associated it, usually does.

I can't help but note the contrast to the Mantilla Girls I continue to run into at Mass, including Christmas vigil. Due to being in a packed church, combined with my wife' s decision making process, we ended up in the cry room.  This followed a brief pre Mass trip to the balcony, where there was room, but then the long suffering spouse brought up 200 other options which sent us back down.  Anyhow, there was room in the cry room, which also contained one extended family with a baby.  The baby never cried.  One of the parishioners in the room was a Mantilla Girl, quite attractive and very nicely dressed.

Its interesting for a variety of reasons, including the contrast to the soft girl.  The Mantilla Girls have a much more realistic grasp of the world.

Mehr Mensch sein.

Related threads:

What the Young Want.* The Visual Testimony of the Trad Girls. The Authenticity Crisis, Part One.

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Lex Anteinternet: An Appeal To Heaven. The 2024 Wyoming Primary

Lex Anteinternet: An Appeal To Heaven. The 2024 Wyoming Primary: 

An Appeal To Heaven. The 2024 Wyoming Primary

The primary election is this Tuesday. 

On that day, people who didn't go down to the courthouse early to vote, like me, and those who didn't vote absentee, and are voting, will cast their votes.

I've been following politics since at least 1972, when Richard Nixon won his second term in office.  I can remember doing so as a kid.  I was nine.  Teno Roncalio, a Catholic lawyer from Sweetwater County, a veteran of Operation Overlord, and a Democrat, was our Congressman.  Gale McGee, a University of Wyoming professor, and a Democrat was one of our Senators.  The other was Cliff Hansen, a rancher from Teton County when Teton County still had real ranches, and a Republican, was our other Senator.  Stan Hathaway, a Republican Episcopalian at the time, who later became Secretary of the Interior and a Catholic, was our Governor.

Yep, that's right.  We had more Democrats in Congress than Republicans.  Being called a "Democrat" wasn't a slur.

In the 1980s, a very conservative and extremely religious Wyoming politician who was LDS attempted to have a bill passed targeting pornography sales.  He was widely lampooned.  HE had not, however campaigned on his faith, even though it obviously had informed his legislative effort.

I can't recall, until Foster Friess run for Governor in 2018, any Wyoming politician making their faith central to their campaign.  If you knew much about candidates, you often knew what their faith was, but there was never anyone who boldly claimed "I'm a Christian" as a reason to vote for them.  People probably would have been offended if they had, and of course Wyoming was and is the least religious state in the Union.

Something that did happen in that time frame was the arrival of the new Evangelical churches.  I pass one every day on my way to work, and two gigantic ones have been built.  I know very little about the one that I pass, which proclaims itself to be an "Evangelical Free Church", thereby proclaiming a denomination without realizing that its done so, and even less about the two gigantic ones, other than that one has a huge following, including members who are openly living in sin or violating Christ's injunction about divorce and remarriage.

With their arrival, and the campaign of Freiss, who wasn't from here and was never of here, and the evolution in national politics, we now see Evangelical proclamations thickly made, but with the adherence to the message of Christ thinly understood.  One Natrona County legislature, newly imported from Illinois, Jeanette Ward, proclaimed her Christianity while asserting in the legislature that we are in fact not our brother's keeper.  Numerous politicians in the hinterland have claimed that the Constitution is divinely inspired, a minority Protestant and minority LDS view that seemingly has wide acceptance in the populist right.  A candidate in this district proclaimed his Christianity, and his wife, in his support did the same in a mailer, while making statements that are outright lies.

Now someone approached him and said, “Teacher, what good must I do to gain eternal life?”He answered him, “Why do you ask me about the good? There is only One who is good. If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.” He asked him, “Which ones?” And Jesus replied, “ ‘You shall not kill; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness; honor your father and your mother’; and ‘you shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”

The young man said to him, “All of these I have observed. What do I still lack?”

Jesus said to him, “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to [the] poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” When the young man heard this statement, he went away sad, for he had many possessions.

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Amen, I say to you, it will be hard for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven.  Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

Matthew Chapter 19.

We are all familiar, of course, with the uncomfortable comment from Christ that its harder for a rich man to enter the Kingdom than it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.   This statement is so disquieting that one entire branch of Christianity, the heath and wealth gospel group, has dispensed entirely with focusing on it.  They aren't alone, however.  I heard plenty of homilies in the 70s and 80s, probably the 90s, from Priets who discussed "spiritual poverty".

I don't hear that much anymore from Apostolic Christians, whose clerics have become increasingly more orthodox.

And I think the warming is real.  Vast wealth corrupts.  You only have to look at the impact of the vastly wealthy to realize that, whether it be Elon Musk or Donald Trump and their personal morals.

People who look at Trump and see him as a devout Christians are fools.

But then, a lot of American Christians are Christian Light.

How does this relate here?

Well, in a culture loudly proclaiming itself to be Christian, that of the American political right, we see an awful lot of people whose adherence to the basic tenants of the Gospel are absent. That's why one right wing commentator could seriously maintain the Hawk Tuah Girl was exhibiting a conservative value (pleasuring her man, she stated), rather than seeing her for what she is, a sad example of a person whose become debased.  Whole sectors, however, of the far right have become debased in various degrees, which is not to say that the left is a beacon of moral purity.

Seeing either party as a Christian one is foolish.

Christians are indistinguishable from other men either by nationality, language or customs. They do not inhabit separate cities of their own, or speak a strange dialect, or follow some outlandish way of life. Their teaching is not based upon reveries inspired by the curiosity of men. Unlike some other people, they champion no purely human doctrine. With regard to dress, food and manner of life in general, they follow the customs of whatever city they happen to be living in, whether it is Greek or foreign. 

And yet there is something extraordinary about their lives. They live in their own countries as though they were only passing through. They play their full role as citizens, but labor under all the disabilities of aliens. Any country can be their homeland, but for them their homeland, wherever it may be, is a foreign country. Like others, they marry and have children, but they do not expose them. They share their meals, but not their wives.  

They live in the flesh, but they are not governed by the desires of the flesh. They pass their days upon earth, but they are citizens of heaven. Obedient to the laws, they yet live on a level that transcends the law. Christians love all men, but all men persecute them. Condemned because they are not understood, they are put to death, but raised to life again. They live in poverty, but enrich many; they are totally destitute, but possess an abundance of everything. They suffer dishonor, but that is their glory. They are defamed, but vindicated. A blessing is their answer to abuse, deference their response to insult. For the good they do they receive the punishment of malefactors, but even then they, rejoice, as though receiving the gift of life. They are attacked by the Jews as aliens, they are persecuted by the Greeks, yet no one can explain the reason for this hatred. 

To speak in general terms, we may say that the Christian is to the world what the soul is to the body. As the soul is present in every part of the body, while remaining distinct from it, so Christians are found in all the cities of the world, but cannot be identified with the world. As the visible body contains the invisible soul, so Christians are seen living in the world, but their religious life remains unseen. The body hates the soul and wars against it, not because of any injury the soul has done it, but because of the restriction the soul places on its pleasures. Similarly, the world hates the Christians, not because they have done it any wrong, but because they are opposed to its enjoyments. 

Christians love those who hate them just as the soul loves the body and all its members despite the body's hatred. It is by the soul, enclosed within the body, that the body is held together, and similarly, it is by the Christians, detained in the world as in a prison, that the world is held together. The soul, though immortal, has a mortal dwelling place; and Christians also live for a time amidst perishable things, while awaiting the freedom from change and decay that will be theirs in heaven. As the soul benefits from the deprivation of food and drink, so Christians flourish under persecution. Such is the Christian’s lofty and divinely appointed function, from which he is not permitted to excuse himself."  

From a letter to Diognetus (Nn. 5-6; Funk, 397-401)  

I'm fearful of what this election holds in more ways than one.  One thing I'm afraid of is that the co-opting of Christianity by the Trumpists will harm it.  The only really Christian party in the race is the American Solidarity Party, but it doesn't stand a chance.  Some elements of Christian Nationalism are actually deeply Christian, with an understanding of Apostolic Christianity, whereas some parts are American Protestant, which have an erroneous view of the end of the Apostolic Age.  They are not compatible.  The deeper National Conservatives, for that matter, are an insurgent group within the far right seeking to slip in, take over, and effect a sort of social revolution. They saw J. D. Trump as their Trojan Horse, but thought they were through the gates of Troy too early.

Real Christian movements do rise up periodically. But that's what they do, rise up.  They aren't imposed down.  Some of that has already occured, with the far left reacting strongly to it.  But that doesn't seem to be appreciated here.

I don't see a lot of really deep Christianity out there in the political field.  If I did, frankly, quite a few of those things that the Democratic left have proclaimed as weird would be practiced, which may be why J. D. Vance, for all the negative attention he's attracted, is the only really honest figure in the Trump camp.  He does believe the traditional things he says, I'm quite sure, currently regarded as "weird" or not.  But then, like the members of the New Apostolic Reformation, which he's not party of, he's seemingly willing to make common cause with lies in order to try to advance what he regards as a greater good, something that's always tactically iffy and morally reprehensible.

Satan, we're told, is the father of lies.  Lying, we're told, is a sin.  In Catholic theology at least, it can be a mortal sin, which has not deterred at least one Catholica elected official here from campaigning on a whopper during the last election.  Lying always has a bad end.

Lying will have some sort of existential bad end for those now doing it.  Lying to yourself does as well.  You can't really be "a devout Christian" with multiple marriages, or when shacked up, or when favoring your career over others or over nature, or while prioritizing wealth, 

And if you are seeking to transform society, you have to give society a reason to transform.  Simply declaring that you are on the side of God doesn't really do that.

Lex Anteinternet: Woke v. Weird? Woke v. Weird? The race we should have had (and still could save for Republican cowardice and populist subversion).

Lex Anteinternet: Woke v. Weird? The race we should have had (and s...: 

Woke v. Weird? The race we should have had (and still could save for Republican cowardice and populist subversion).

By The logo may be obtained from Socialist International., Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5214135

I don't really think J. D. Vance is weird.

I think Trump is pretty weird.  I'm concerned that he has accelerating dementia.  His press conference the other day was jammed packed with gibberish.  A rational GOP, which doesn't exist, would at this point show him the door.  Rather than a rational GOP, however, we have the Populist masses and a collection of forces with agendas, such as the National Conservatives, Christian Nationalist, etc.  Some adore his meandering gibberish as they are unthinking or actually quit thinking about what's going on years ago.  Some tolerate it as they know that when he's in office they can basically shove him aside and run the bus.  Some, I strongly suspect, figure that if elected, which they were planning on, age and the 25th Amendment or a pine box will take him out the back door of the White House and put them in the leather upholstered executive chair.

I think J. D. Vance was in that last category.  By supporting Donald Trump, I suspect, he and people in his obit, were figuring that that Trump would play the same role that the Ghost plays in Hamlet. . . departed and out of power.

If that's what Vance was figuring, that's not weird.  It's probably correct in terms of the expiration of Trump's mortal coil or his cerebrum.  The latter would be, of course, slightly more problematic than the former, but in a pinch, would likely work just as well, save for some disruptions from the Maga Militia crowd.

Anyhow, Trump is getting weird, but neither Harris or Vance are weird. What they are is poles apart in existential views, and they both really have one.

Harris is a politician of the political left, which has gone increasingly leftward since the mid 20th Century.  Indeed, it's final descent into the far left is what sparked, in part, the populist counter reaction.  It's adopted lifestyle politics with lifestyle's that were regarded as "weird" until fairly recently, and frankly many still are.

At the same time, the full bore assault on culture that commenced in the 1960s was hugely successful, normalizing behaviors regarded as immoral at the time, but which now are not. That's why, in no small part, people are proclaiming J. D. Vance as "weird".  As I noted here earlier, Vance isn't of the populist line of thought, he's an actual conservative, but a National Conservative of the Rusty Reno, Patrick Dineen, Kevin Roberts, type.  Vance expresses cultural views that have in varying degrees been under attack since the 1960s, but which have remained all along in some sectors of the culture and are attempting to stage a comeback, or even more, gain entry and acceptance for the first time.

That race, if it were on the surface, would be a really interesting existential one.

Chance are high that the country isn't really comfortable with it.  Certainly the unwashed populists who see nothing inconsistent about proclaiming themselves Christian while admiring the Hailey Welch or Sydney Sweeny wouldn't really be all that comfortable with the views of Roberts and Vance.  But for that matter, a lot of suburban moms or the now lauded/condemned "cat ladies" are probably not all that comfortable with the views of Sanders and Harris.

That contrast would serve a purpose in and of itself.

The race, however, we actually have is a national embarrassment due to the figure leading the GOP.