Thursday, December 17, 2020

Strange Days

 We're certainly living in strange times. People move from one delusion to another as the one wears out or becomes boring and the new one, promising to explain absolutely everything, comes into view. Not long ago a lot of the president's supporters, and the president himself, were saying that the Covid pandemic was a hoax. Now I've been told by one avid Trumplican that the virus was released into the population by the Dems in a plot to get Biden elected. 

I mention this in passing as a sign of the times. Here's another: the mayor of Kansas City is resigning because of death threats. In fact, the making of death threats seems to have become an American pastime. Then there's the ex-general, fresh from jail after a presidential pardon, calling for marshal law to be imposed by the president in the interest of overthrowing the recent election. And then again there are the various lesser-known talk-radio hacks calling for their listeners to be willing to die for the cause of Trump.

None of this is normal. None if it is excusable. There is no whataboutism to be called into action here. Because some of this talk is coming from so-called leaders. A candidate for governor or a state senator endorsing secession here, a radio-talker with an audience of millions calling for insurrection there. What we are seeing come to pass before our very eyes is an insurrectionary subculture where rhetorical justifications of violence have become the norm, the baseline, and are even considered inspiringly patriotic. 

This subculture will not go away when Trump leaves office. The crazy cannot be put back in the bottle. It has its own media to breathe resentment and grievance-claims into the atmosphere every minute of every day, and it has its hero, its warrior-knight, Donald Trump, who needs that subculture even more than the subculture needs him. 

I don't generally make predictions, but I just don't expect anything good to come from this. Oh, there is always the chance, of course, that there is simply less here than meets the eye. That this blusterer at the Jericho march and his ilk will strut the media stage for their fleeting moment, and then fade away as the audience moves on to the next freak show. But be it noted that the MC of the Jericho March, the noted Christian author Eric Metaxas, afterward described that bluster as "keepin' it real." Thus a call to violent insurrection is casually normalized by a Christian "thought leader." Strange days indeed.

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Read also:

Rod Dreher on the Jericho March

Procedure is getting up through--for now (Kevin Williamson at NR)

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