Last night was the special-election equivalent of a wave-election. Democrats won seats in Georgia. A transgender heavy metal singer defeated a Virginia incumbent who launched a bathroom-bill similar to North Carolina's.The Republicans behind all of these mailers just lost their elections. pic.twitter.com/W20rNzLVg3— sean. 🦃 (@SeanMcElwee) November 8, 2017
The VA governor race was polled as tight--but turned into a 9pt Democrat blow-out. The turnout percentages in VA matched those in last years presidential election. This isn't even a mid-term.
What Does It Mean?
You f'ing know what it means.
What Happened?
Yesterday The Omnivore's brother's pastor sent The Omnivore this link. The title of the piece is "The Price We've Paid." The article is about the current explosion of Hollywood sexual abuse and the lack of moral authority on the part of evangelicals to witness it (in the spiritual sense--not the visual sense). This lack of moral authority is, of course, due to throwing in their lot with Trump.
Erick Erickson, on NPR, explains it like this: (paraphrase) Over the Obama years Christians became convinced that they were going to be persecuted to a degree that would destroy them. They were looking at a culture getting away from them and, they thought, being driven by a liberal elite in Academia, Hollywood, and, of course, from the White House.
They threw in with Trump not because he exemplified any of their values--but because they thought he would hurt their enemies. In Erickson's view, this was, ehhh kinda justified. That's because Erick Erickson has largely cast himself in the role of a culture warrior--and when you are a warrior . . . you want to win.
What CPhilips notes in the article The Omnivore was sent, was that in doing so--in choosing as a warrior someone who is the antithesis of your values you put "winning" in the physical realm over behaving properly in the spiritual realm. When someone trades their soul for a billion dollars in a story, we can all see the towering stupidity of that.
When confronted with the political equivalent in real life, Jerry Falwell Jr. was signing that contract in blood as fast as he could get the vein open.
Who knew?
What The Heck Does That Have To Do With The Election??
The Omnivore will tell you--but as The Omnivore pointed out--you already knew. You just don't want to admit it (if you voted for Trump). Just as evangelicals are coming to realize that Trump, in no way, represents their spiritual values, America is realizing that Trump doesn't represent American values. America has never been a "me-first, the rest of the world can go pound sand" nation. Oh, sure, we've flirted with it--but our best-selves? We're that shining city on the hill.
Our job isn't to be the long suffering, exhausted, complaining 'World Police Man.' Our job is to be the fucking good guys--the cavalry--fucking GI-fucking-Joe. Trump's "America First" nationalism reeks of the Nazi's American-First Nationalism because it's from the same source (Bannon) and because it has the same adherents (literal Nazis).
Trump isn't just an incompetent president--Trump is recognizably un-American. He's remaking the GOP in his image--and in doing so, ceding patriotism to the Democrats. How does The Omnivore know?
Simple: Papa John's just had to tell literal Nazis not to buy their pizza*. This is after Trump got involved in the NFL kneeling debate and, by virtue of his appeal to white nationalism (you can debate whether he wants it or not--but you can't debate he has that appeal), polarized it so that Papa John's got a literal endorsement from the Daily Stormer.
Even if people don't see the (obvious) connections there, they sure as hell feel it.
The same way that evangelicals gave up their spiritual power to win a material-world culture war (one that they weren't even legitimately fighting--but that's a different article), the butt-hurt angry GOP-Trump base gave up American Values in order to "win" a cultural battle that (again) they were fundamentally misunderstanding.
We know that if you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks in to you--but what about when you choose the abyss as your champion? What then?
* Look for Trump to tell White Nationalists not to vote for him--right? Papa John's just showed how easy that is, eh?
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