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On Christian Nationalism in This Age of Trump

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Pro-Trump protest at the Capitol, Jan. 2021

Hugh Hewitt got me going.  I was listening to his interview with Tim Alberta in last week’s program (12/6/23) about Alberta’s new book on the rise of Christian Nationalism (CN) in the evangelical movement.  Hewitt disputed Alberta’s claim of a growing Christian Nationalist sentiment among evangelicals.  Regardless of the trend’s size – and neither Hewitt or Alberta could put a finger on its actual magnitude – Hewitt misses the point.  I think that Hewitt certainly understates CN’s impact, and, more importantly, he ignored the probability of it as a manifestation of Trump’s baleful influence within a good chunk of the Republican base, evangelicals.  Today, Christian Nationalism is religious Trumpism.

Tim Alberta on with Hugh Hewitt - YouTube
Hugh Hewitt interviewing Tim Alberta

So, what is Christian Nationalism?  Historically, it’s the identification of Christianity with American patriotism.  The concoction is too strong for my tastes; however, I saw a reasonable commonality of interest of the two at a certain point in time.  The term goes back to the Cold War.  At the time, many Americans viewed the contest as a battle between a mostly Christian USA and godless Soviet atheism.  It was a contest of powerful and obviously incompatible ideas.  The latter was a serious threat to the former.  The intersection of Christianity and American patriotism made sense.

In the interlude after the implosion of the Soviet Union, CN went dormant.  In the last five or so years, it was reawakened in fits of despair over failures to break the Democrats’ and their neo-Marxist allies’ grip on political and cultural power.

And guess who appeared on the stage in 2015 to champion the dejected?  Why, of course, Donald Trump.  They wanted a fighter and they got one, and everything associated with it such as combativeness, bellicosity, and bombast.  No deep thought and contemplation here, just in-your-face belligerence.  The desire for drama quickly overshadowed policies and ideas.  The Trump wave particularly spread over evangelicals and a reconstituted Christian Nationalism became just another manifestation of Trump’s cult of personality.

Yes, personality.  Trump’s searing attraction was his pugilistic personality.  It’s no surprise that a tabloid star would garner such loyalty in this combustible atmosphere.  The Cold War’s battle of ideas degenerated into today’s mudslinging between the Democrats’ New Left and the Republican personality cult.

Trump didn’t bring anything to the table but histrionics, and a couple of policy ideas easily grasped and exploitable for visceral effect: the wall and evil foreigners stealing our jobs.  There’s a great deal of truth in the need for a wall on the southern border, and much balderdash about the theft of jobs.  While trade with Communist China is indeed a scandal for national security reasons, tariffing trade with allies is the height of stupidity.  As the CCP becomes a global enterprise in Belt-and-Roads and a 300-ship and growing navy, Trump told our Asian allies to pound sand by taking TPP off the table and threatened tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum, and on the exports of a host of present and future allies.  The guy loves and brandishes tariffs if all his talk of the glories of them is sincere.

Trump rolls out sweeping tariffs, defying trade war warnings | The Times of Israel
Pres. Trump signs executive order imposing tariffs on imported steel from Canada and Mexico.
President Donald Trump shows the executive order withdrawing the U.S. from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) after signing it in the Oval Office on Jan. 23, 2017.
Pres. Trump shows signed executive order withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Jan. 27, 2017.

The related issues of outsourcing and offshoring were demagogued; all the while, our contribution to driving American businesses away went down the memory hole.  Alongside empowered NIMBY’s everywhere on American soil, EPA-like commissariats at all levels of American government, armies of neo-Marxist activists cropping up everywhere, and unions driving heavy manufacturing into bankruptcy, we voluntarily bludgeoned our home-grown enterprises with the highest corporate income tax rate in the world (see The Tax Foundation below).  Yes, congressional Republicans and President Trump cut those rates beginning in 2018 (Tax Cut and Jobs Act), but that wasn’t part of Trump’s schtick in 2016 when the Trump sect made its appearance.  It’s much more politically fruitful to blame foreigners than Americans for the situation.  Instead, Trump’s tariffs were always the locus of his heart’s desire.  They fit his style.

His allure washed over Republicans and the evangelical wing of the base.  For the religious-minded, the cultural issues took center stage and Trump delivered the Supreme Court.  For some with an evangelical bent, Trump would be identified with the Old Testament’s King Cyrus, a foreigner, a pagan who nonetheless was God’s agent to do good according to the prophet Isaiah.  That formulation is the seed of a new Christian Nationalism centering on Trump.  Today, when I read Christian Nationalism, I read Trump.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) speaks the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit held at the Tampa Convention Center on July 23, 2022 in Tampa, Florida.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) speaks the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit held at the Tampa Convention Center on July 23, 2022 in Tampa, Florida.

The bright glow of the Trump personality attracted all sorts of imitators like moths to a lamp.  Marjorie Taylor Greene, that Trumper of all Trumpers, pulls no punches in donning the garb of Christian Nationalism in 2022 at a Turning Point gathering when she declared, “We need to be the party of nationalism and I’m a Christian, and I say it proudly, we should be Christian nationalists.”

Lauren Boebert prayed Biden's 'days should be few' as 'Christian Center' crowd laughed and cheered
Lauren Boebert

For such people, brashness is a virtue.  There’s no one more brash than Congresswoman Lauren Boebert (R, Colorado, 3rd Dist.).  She scoffed at the commonly understood separation of church and state when she announced during a sermon at Cornerstone Christian Center in 2022, “I’m tired of this separation of church and state junk — that’s not in the Constitution.  It was in a stinking letter and it means nothing like they say it does.”  She goes further, “The church is supposed to direct the government.  The government is not supposed to direct the church.  That is not how our Founding Fathers intended it.”  Brashness has no room for subtleties and nuance.  Trumpian brashness is entertaining.  There’s always time later to clean up the verbose mess.

Lauren Boebert speaking at the Cornerstone Christian Center

I suspect that Hewitt tried to diminish the influence of Christian Nationalism to protect the Trump brand from potential turn-offs to large swaths of the voting electorate in 2024.  He’s got a big job ahead of him.  Overt brashness, conceit, and narcissism invite trouble for those trying to piece together a winning coalition of voters.  Hewitt’s tactic is to dismiss CN’s representativeness in the Trump base, and Trumpism, which is more stage temperament – i.e. personality – than policies or ideas.

We are entering dangerous territory in our current state of hyperbolic politics.  Both parties are becoming extremely problematic.  The Democrats’ neo-Marxism is a national suicide pill.  For Republicans, toxic currents are swirling in their pool.  What do I mean?  The trumpeted marriage of Christianity to nationalism in the bluster of people like Lauren Boebert is, in fact, an inaccurate description.  More properly, it’s nuptials between Christianity and Trumpism, that attempt to peddle the personality trait of brashness as a substitute for adult thinking.  It’ll be a big turn-off once the 2024 campaigns begin in full swing no matter Hewitt’s declaration of Christian Nationalism to be insignificant.

Hewitt’s only hope is a greater loathing for Biden than Trump, a contest between who smells worse.  Hewitt is doing his best to spray Glade over Trump’s pungency.

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RogerG

Read more here:

* “Corporate Income Tax Rates around the World, 2017”, Kari Jahnsen and Kyle Pomerleau, Tax Foundation, 9/7/2017, at https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/global/corporate-income-tax-rates-around-the-world-2017/#:~:text=Key%20Findings%201%20The%20United%20States%20has%20the,percent%20when%20weighted%20by%20GDP%29.%20…%20More%20items

* Marjorie Taylor Greene’s endorsement of Christian Nationalism: “Opinion: Marjorie Taylor Greene’s words on Christian nationalism are a wake-up call”, Amanda Tyler, CNN, 7/27/2022, at https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/27/opinions/christian-nationalism-marjorie-taylor-greene-tyler/index.html

* Lauren Boebert’s endorsement of Christian Nationalism: “Boebert says she is ‘tired’ of separation between church and state: ‘The church is supposed to direct the government’”, Brad Dress, The Hill, 6/22/2022, at https://thehill.com/homenews/house/3540071-boebert-says-she-is-tired-of-separation-between-church-and-state-the-church-is-supposed-to-direct-the-government/

* The full Boebert talk at Cornerstone Christian Center can be viewed in full on YouTube at https://youtu.be/P-G-oAl9pF8?si=qbQnoTmB4xxRSJE4

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It’s Basic Economics. The EV Is Junk.

Watch This Severe Electric Car Fire And Explosion At A Charging Station
May 8, 2020, at a charging station in Dongguan, China, where an electric car caught fire when being plugged into a charger.

While perusing my news feed, I found a recent Fortune magazine article on the problems that electric vehicle owners are having with their cars, 80% more difficulties on average than conventional combustion vehicles (see below).  The writer tried to deflect the problems into the category of “growing pains” for the new industry.

Yes, I agree with him, but he seems unaware of the much more fundamental issue.  Problems or no, the EV is a politically driven product and, like any such good or service, has politically driven trade-offs.  Growing pains?  Growing pains or no, the whole EV industry probably would be immensely smaller but for politics.  Politicians constructing their road to utopia understand that people must be bribed, and coerced, to mass adopt something that makes their lives worse off.  The things still don’t make much economic sense compared to those efficient muscle engines.

Internal combustion engine
Gasoline direct injection engine.
Electric-car battery costs: Tesla $190 per kwh for pack, GM $145 for cells
An EV battery pack weighs on average 1,000 pounds. Your typical combustion engine and its transmission can vary from 300 (4-cylinder) to 1,000 pounds (V-8 powerhouse).

Lest we forget, politicians are camp followers, always with their fingers in the wind discerning the next fashionable thought or issue.  Those leaning to the Left already have a laundry list of ready-made issues, just add water – i.e., donors’ money.

But there’s one huge complication: Politics is a poor driver of an economy. Utility (use and practicality) occupies first place in a normally functioning economy.  Sellers invent and continue to produce the stuff that buyers find useful and enhances their lives.  If it’s not as good as the alternatives, it’s essentially junk.  It’s the economic definition of junk.  When politics enters the fray, utility disappears from the equation.  Practicality and usefulness take a back seat to powerful groups’ ideological demands.  When the movement rises in prominence due to their momentary occupation of the commanding heights of the culture, they quickly gain the reins of political power to impose their preferences, and the artificially driven esteem for junk rises.

Trade-offs and opportunity costs are tossed to the wind.  If pressed, the true believer can always interject their own wholly invented, unprovable costs into the equation.  Prominent among the hypothetical eco-costs is the existential end of the planet.  That’s always the gambit for the zealot: scare people into adopting the zealot’s choices.  The Left’s ownership of the cultural commanding heights has made it easy for already Left-leaning politicos to engage in the hyperbole.  Consequently, political power is married to an ideology’s agenda.  In the end, your family sedan is forced into oblivion.

So, as politically inspired junk is imposed on the population, what is lost, or the opportunity cost?  On the EV front, the auto producers’ resources are plowed into the less-useful and away from the more-useful.  That’s a trade-off, and it’s unavoidable.  The loss of the opportunity for producing the more useful things (opportunity costs) increases, and that’s equally unavoidable.

What to do if your electric car runs out of charge | Toyota of Orlando
An EV depleted of charge
Vandals cut cables at EV charging station on Vancouver Island - Drive Tesla
Vandals cut and removed charging handles from this charging station on Vancouver Island, B.C.

What does all this mean for you?  Your life changes, and for the worse.  It always pencils-out that way when you are forced to choose the worst alternative. How bad is that alternative?  The whole eco-agenda cascades onto you with its abundant unintended consequences.  It goes beyond the problems with charging and the batteries (some of them catch fire) in the article.  The additional resources to make the thing work as the numerous glitches of the impractical (“growing pains”) raise the costs of producing the impractical which will always translate into an increase in the cost of living.  Higher standards of living do not ride the back of higher costs of production and living.  The more that you try and do that, the worse it gets.

Save the planet by being worse off?  But you aren’t saving the planet. Do you think for a moment that India and China and the rest of Donald Trump’s “shitholes” are going to give up cheap energy?  Come on, get a grip.  China is building new coal-fired plants at the same clip as they are warships.  India, soon to be the planet’s most populous country, wants relief from the oppressive heat.  Sorry, solar panels and windmills won’t cut it.  Economies of scale in energy production, meaning a grid and power plants, is the only thing that’ll elevate people out of the sweat and filth.  Everyone, if they were honest, knows it, except AOC, John Kerry, and our culture’s eco-barkers.

Wait a minute.  That’s quite a crowd who’ve bought into the nonsense.  And nonsense it is.  The leap of faith from a period of warming temperatures to the apocalypse more resembles a religious doctrine than science.  “Follow the science” is no such thing.  It’s follow the eco-Pope.

That Genius of Lansing, Mi., Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, has decided to go California and follow the eco-Pope.  She’s hellbent on bringing blackouts and skyrocketing utility bills to the wolverine state.  She signed two bills establishing energy central planning (see below).  The state must be 100% “clean energy” by 2040, 60% by 2035.  That means a massive increase in solar and wind, 1.5 million acres more (Mackinac Center report, see below).  The costs will be humungous, and it will be taken out of the hide of Michiganders.  And out of the sovereign powers of localities.  Their power to regulate these gargantuan scars on the land in their neighborhood will be proscribed.  Expect each family in the state to shell out an additional $2,746 per year for energy (Mackinac Center report).

Declaring war on gas and petroleum and monopolizing all energy needs onto an electrical grid suffering from “intermittency” (solar and wind) is absolute folly.  Do you want to live worse off? Do you want your children to be worse off?  Don’t think for a moment that at least you’ve saved the planet, as they’ve made most people’s lives more challenging.  By the way, it won’t be true for Jeff Bezos, nor Mark Zuckerberg, nor John Kerry, who married into the Heinz fortune.

Al Gore Celebrates Earth Day By Buying Another 12,000 Square Foot Mansion | The End Times ...
Albert Gore and his mansions

The planet will be the same as before, and you’ll be less well off.  All this brought to you by people who don’t know what they’re doing.

On second thought, they do.  And it’s hooey.

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RogerG

Read more here:

* “Electric vehicle owners report 80% more problems than with conventional cars and trucks amid ‘growing pains’ for the industry, Consumer Reports says”, Tom Krisher of the AP, Fortune, 11/23/23, at https://fortune.com/2023/11/29/electric-vehicle-reliability-more-problems-gas-powered/

* “Michigan Gov Whitmer signs sweeping green energy bill forcing transition from fossil fuels”, Thomas Catenacci, Fox News, 11/30/23, at https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/michigan-gov-whitmer-signs-sweeping-green-energy-bill-forcing-transition-from-fossil-fuels/ar-AA1kJF4I

* “New Energy Bills Would Increase Costs and Blackouts”, Holly Wetzel, Mackinac Center, 10/27/2023, at https://www.mackinac.org/pressroom/2023/new-energy-bills-would-increase-costs-and-blackouts

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MAGA v. Reagan: Oren Cass v. David Bahnsen, November 15, 2023

Michael Reagan explains why his father wouldn't have voted for Trump - CNNPolitics

Last night (11/30/23), Gov. Ron DeSantis (R, Fla.) squared off against Gov. Gavin Newsom (D, Ca.) in a debate.  It was interesting to note that Newsom tried to use Trump against DeSantis.  It’s true that Trump prefers to tear down his opponents early and often with any tool at hand, usually with a huge dollop of balderdash, so there’s much on the record for Newsom to use.  Ironically, Newsom’s exploitation of Trump’s hostile words about DeSantis underscores a deepening divide within the GOP that can be summarized as MAGA v. Reagan.  You may or may not be aware of it but it is happening before your eyes.

Let’s face it, and here’s the point, Donald Trump is no Ronald Reagan in thought and comportment.  Trump has come to symbolize a rising isolationist element in the GOP. Reagan was a patriot but no isolationist.  The dividing lines within the GOP are becoming starker by the month as one part of the party coalescing around Trump pays rhetorical homage to Reagan while they are busy tearing down his legacy.

It’s a battle between big-government isolationism (MAGA) and a philosophy of governance built on smaller government combined with international engagement (Reagan).  A couple of weeks prior to the Newsom/DeSantis face-off, David Bahnsen (of the Reagan philosophy) engaged Oren Cass (of the emerging MAGA philosophy) in a debate about this growing rift.  This chasm has a greater impact on the future of the GOP than the spat between Newsom and DeSantis.

They debated over this proposition: There should be a greater role for public policy (government) in markets.  Oren Cass in the affirmative (MAGA), David Bahnsen in the negative (Reagan).

If you are a Trump supporter, you must ask yourself one simple question: Where would he lead us if elected again?  Yes, his first term was Reaganite because he drew from the GOP’s ample stable of Reaganite thinkers, but he burned bridges with them long ago.  A second term would draw from the coterie of big-government isolationists such as Oren Cass.  You would be voting for this.

Here’s a few takeaways from the Bahnsen/Cass challenge:

#1 – To set up the big-government approach, you have to tar the alternative.  The alternative is a more restrained government in order to let markets breathe, what is called free markets.  A market is merely a spontaneous arrangement that brings together buyers and sellers, voluntarily and thus free.  So, a host of problems are assigned to markets by people like Cass to gouge out a bigger role for government to manipulate and direct them.  Though, can stagnating wages, a languishing standard of living, and outsourcing of some American manufacturing justifiably be laid at the feet of markets?  That leads me to #2.

#2 – Cass and his cohort in and out of government won’t say it but they’re into central planning.  Central planning is government actors – bureaucrats, public employees, and politicians – directing the buyers and sellers.  What does this smell like?  It smells like politics being injected into people’s private decisions on what they produce, how they produce it, and what they buy.  If it was a medical treatment, it’s a poor one.  Politician-witchdoctors overriding our individual judgments turns us into serfs and causes more of what they are blaming markets for.  That leads me to #3.

#3 – The knowledge problem. Cass and the politicians on the other side of the fence like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren believe that government is filled with wise demi-gods.  Do you, or anyone for that matter, actually believe that politicians and public employees possess the knowledge and wisdom to substitute their decision-making for that of millions of people in millions of individual circumstances?  It’s been tried before.  It’s the culprit behind the implosion of the Soviet Union.  North Korea’s misery is caused by it.  FDR’s New Deal turned a depression into a Great Depression.  For the old timers like me, the 1970’s stagflation was caused by it.  Those kvetching about today’s stagnated prosperity don’t realize that it is rooted in it.  It’s amazing that the MAGA coterie want more government to cure the ailments caused by government. How’s that supposed to work?  That leads me to #4.

#4 – The subsequent lawmaking and enforcement are infected with fatal pathogens, the fingerprints of government, i.e. politics, at work. Let’s take a look at the heralded CHIPS Act.  The intent to replant chip manufacturing in the U.S. was larded with ESG, DEI, eco-nuttery, child care mandates, etc.  Billions of taxpayer dollars are to be showered on billion-dollar corporate biggies while hitting them with the kind of thing that drove them from American shores to begin with.  Go figure.  The Cass/MAGA approach has been around for years.  Speaking of Gavin Newsom, California is a microcosm of the consequences of this state of mind.  Currently, it is causing Californios to flea the state (800,000 between 2020 and 2022) in like manner as American companies found the grass to be greener in China and the Philippines.  You don’t need to shower taxpayer largesse on a handpicked industry and its towering players to entice them back.  Try not punishing them.  Try acting like you actually like them.  Dah!

This is the debate that we ought to be having in the GOP.  We need more face-offs between the MAGA and the Reagan philosophies so Republican voters know what they’re getting into.  I’m afraid that it’s not happening often enough.  We’ll end up with a lose-lose.  If we win, we’ll get the misery from big-government foolishness under a Republican label.  If we lose, we’ll get it from the Democrats.  Are we even aware of it?

Please watch the Bahnsen/Cass debate below.

RogerG

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Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon”, Another Attempt to Erase The Great Men of History?

May be an image of 1 person and text that says 'ACADEMY AWARD" WINNER JOAQUIN PHOENIX Napolirr EXCLUSIVELY IN THEATERS THANKSGIVING .L'

Fashions of thought and material things can dwell up from the bottom as in a free market economy with a new technology, catching stodgy elites by surprise.  They can also permeate downward from academia to the movie studio, for instance.  Astride the forceful demise of western civ courses, the lefty capture of most of the academic universe has dispensed with The Great Man Theory of History because, according to their lights, there are no great men, only cis-gender, patriarchal oppressors.  You know the tripe.  Has Ridley Scott succumbed to this half-witted zeitgeist in his latest offering, “Napoleon”?

Of course, there are great men (and women).  Their status can’t be attributed to so-called misogynistic agitprop of an older, crueler age.  In fact, today’s real agitprop actually comes from the shallow rhetoric masquerading as grand theory emanating from the stilted minds in our faculty lounges.  Conversely, there were great men and women because they were so very influential in what followed for decades and centuries, maybe millennia.

Honestly, I haven’t seen the movie yet.  There’s so much trash coming out of Hollywood – and probably that’s always been true – that I wait for the critics’ reactions.  Some cinematic subjects just don’t interest me (all the Marvel/DC effusions come to mind).  Some are so scurrilously riddled in lefty bromides (men as inherent abusers, most villains are rich, etc.) that I can’t bear to plunk down the 10 bucks for a ticket.  Does “Napoleon” come draped in the same set of presumptions that are drilled into the heads of today’s Humanities students?

Bringing down The Great Men can involve reducing them to also-rans, or dullards according to one critic.  In the assessment of Kyle Smith writing in The Wall Street Journal, the Napoleon who took over a continent was diminished to a simpleton in Scott’s rendering to such an extent that the great man “could never have commanded so much as a squadron of the Salvation Army”.

The 10-dollar-threshhold remains. Is it worth 10 bucks?  Or, would I be better off reading Andrew Roberts’s biography of Napoleon and drop the movie?  I suspect the latter.

On second thought, I may just take the hit to my meager pocketbook and go see it.  I can walk and chew gum at the same time.

My main worry, though, is that after a few decades of a movie-going audience marinated in lefty agitprop in their public schools, and the sense of awe produced by big-screen audio-visual, an unread people will mistake a movie for the real thing, er, person.  We’d best not forget that reality.

RogerG

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Matt Rosendale (R, Mont.), Sicarius?

May be an image of 1 person and the Oval Office
Matt Rosendale (R, Mont.)

The Sicarii (Latin for “dagger wielders” or “dagger men”) were a violent splinter group of Jewish Zealots who were militant enthusiasts of the First Jewish Revolt (or first Jewish-Roman War).  As Jerusalem was falling to Roman legions in 70 A.D., a portion of the Sicarii escaped to occupy the mountaintop fortress of Masada.  There, they committed mass suicide just before the Romans overran their defenses in 74 A.D. according to the ancient historian Josephus.

The Sicarii — The First Assassins in History | History of Yesterday
Sicarii assassins
The last Jewish zealot at the Siege of Masada Ancient Persia, Ancient Rome, Ancient History ...
The last Sicarii zealot committing suicide before the enter the Masada fortress.
Masada: Fortress of the Zealots | Live Science
The ruins of Masada today

Blind fury, combined with the self-conceit of the purity of one’s motives and beliefs, can take a person to some horrible places.  Is Matt Rosendale willing to help lead the GOP to its own Masada?

I am a Montanan and flabbergasted that a person like Rosendale calls himself a Republican and occupies Montana’s second congressional seat.  He’s an embarrassment.

To be sure, Sicarii-like mental states can be found Left and Right.  Anywhere from much of the Democrats’ base to Antifa/BLM can be found the burn-it-all-down state of mind.  Now, in the Age of Trump, Republicans have developed their own Sicarii.

Back in October, in an interview in The Messenger (see below), Rosendale said that he prayed for the defeat of some Republican candidates in 2022 midterms, just enough to ensure a narrow Republican majority in the House.  Here’s Rosendale:

“Look, we have shown, OK, with a very small handful of people, six at times, five at times, that we can have tremendous impact in that body and when a lot of people, unfortunately, were voting to have a 270, 280 Republican House, I was praying each evening for a small majority,”

The Sicarii didn’t only direct their anger at Romans.  They targeted “collaborators”, fellow Jews.  Rosendale, like all fire-breathing zealots going back millennia, heaped scorn on fellow Republicans.  Fanatics have their own rhetoric to identify the “enemy” amongst their normal and natural allies.  “Establishment” and “RINO” serve the same function for Rosendale and company as “collaborator”.

He says that he wants to push the party further to the right, right into a Republican Masada.  Rosendale can’t grasp the fact that there exist many, many people who don’t agree with him, that he doesn’t reflect the Party or the country.  His little faction is a splinter of a splinter.  Is this guy a loon or what?  Does he know the difference between governing and campaigning?

Governing requires working with others who disagree, and there will always be many of those.  An adult would understand half-a-loaf and compromise.  Not the Republican Sicarii.  They have turned the House Republican caucus into a clown car.

I’m in District 1 and represented by Ryan Zinke (R), thank God.  Are the constituents of District 2 happy with a politically suicidal Sicarius pulling them into a political rut?

What started out as Joan of Arc ends up as George Armstrong Custer.

May be a graphic of fireworks and text

RogerG

Read more here:

* “Montana GOP Rep. Prayed for Smaller Republican Majority After 2022 Midterms (Exclusive)”, Dan Merico and Matt Holt, The Messenger, 10/2/23, at https://themessenger.com/politics/montana-republican-house-prayed-smaller-majority

** Also in my Substack feed, The Golden Mean, at https://rogerlgraf.substack.com/

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Thanksgiving 2023

May be an image of corn and text that says 'HAPPY THANKSGIVING GIVIN'

Are we in the process of wasting our bountiful legacy, that fruit of the ultimate Giver of all truly good things?  We might be forgetting that we have much to be thankful for. Thankful to whom?  Why, of course, God.  We have many blessings that we should be humble enough to recognize the Benefactor.

Are we?  Many, yes, but others are too busy dismantling our cultural edifice, and with it, God.  The rot began at the top among an academic nobility, people festooned in paper credentials and debased ideas and beliefs.  The quaint barroom jibe gets to the point: “You have to be very well educated to be that stupid!” (as stated by Wilfred Reilly)

So did George Orwell: “There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.”

From the inquisition to ferret out the esoteric “white supremacy” in the military to the recruitment of all levels of government in the crusade to the indoctrination of our kids in it, the trendy thought penetrates everywhere.  Watch today’s football games for commercials festooned in swank thought.  Amazingly, it’s how the corporate biggies wish to express their altruism by being fashionable and doctrinaire activists.

You’ll see commitments to pursue climate-change ideology in the burnishing of the least practical alternative in personal, mass transportation – the EV.  You’ll see Wells Fargo ads bragging about using my savings and checking account to resuscitate the 2009 financial crisis.  What they’re saying in tv commercials is only the tip of the iceberg.

If we continue on this trajectory, the blessings in future Thanksgivings may be harder to discern.  But ultimately, God is in charge.

Are we to go the way of the Roman Empire or ancient Sumerians?  Can a civilization think its way into decline?  Possibly.  Yet, at this moment in time, we should remind ourselves that we have much to be thankful.  Surely, God has blessed us. Let’s not forget it.

RogerG

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Polls, Polls, Polls, and a Party Gone Bananas

Political Cartoons - Campaigns and Elections - The Shining 2024 - Washington Times

Well, both parties have gone bananas.  The Democrats have gone over to denigrating the entire corpus of western civilization.  They are essentially Marxists in belief with their race/gender hucksterism and eco-central planning. Republicans are in a state of madness, consumed in a cult of Trump.  If you are an actual conservative, and not a cult member, expect to be reviled and abused.  It happened to Mitt Romney.

At times, I have been no fan of Romney.  His decision to march with Black Lives Matter in 2020 was a low point in my esteem for Mitt.  In February 2020, he was the lone Republican senator to vote in support of one of the two articles of impeachment.  I found both charges to be rank partisan prosecutions, something out of Stalin’s playbook.  But at least he had the wherewithal to express loathing for repulsive Trump behavior.  Rumors have been rife among Republican congressional members and staff of their disgust for Trump but were paralyzed by fear for their personal and family’s safety if they came out of the closet.  They have good reason to fear the cult.

One incident stands out. On January 5, 2021, one day before the January 6th riot, Mitt Romney boarded a plane in Salt Lake City for a flight to Washington, D.C.  So, to were others who were flying to D.C. for the Trump rally that devolved into the infamous riot. He was met with boos and chants of “Traitor” and “lowlife” on the plane (see below).  Is finding merit in one of the two impeachment charges, or expressing disapproval of Trump’s conduct, “treason”?  Is disagreement with Trump a measure of “lowlife”?

Apparently, Romney is more attuned to popular sentiment than the Trumpers on the plane.  Polls consistently show Trump’s disapprovals to hover around the mid-fifties.  It’s just that at this juncture, Biden has attained a level of repulsiveness equal to or slightly exceeding Trump’s.  So, in a contest limited to Biden v. Trump, Trump edges out Biden – and the celebrity pundits on Fox News are in a party mood.

They miss the point.  In a contest against a clearly, mentally and physically wobbly opponent, Trump can only eke out a narrow lead within the margin of error.  Don’t mistake these results for a suddenly growing and popular embrace of Trump.  That would be a big error in judgment.

The most recent NBC News poll (see below), like all the others going back a year or so, show a consistent distaste for Trump and an overriding dislike of Biden to match.  In this binary matchup, Trump is ahead by 2 points for the first time in this poll.  But lying in the poll’s weeds are some other interesting findings.  Any generic Republican facing Biden is 11 points ahead, and any generic Democrat forges 8 points ahead of Trump.  A no-name Republican does 9 points better than Trump against Biden; a no-name Democrat enjoys a landslide vis-à-vis Trump.

For the Democrats, the task is simple: remove Biden from the ticket.  They may do it.  Democrats are nimbler on their feet. Republicans seem to be hellbent on running their Trump Titanic into the iceberg.  On the other hand, he could win if Biden is on the ballot, but don’t expect any coattails if the Trump personality is evident down ballot.  Trumpism is a personality cult, and a not very endearing one.

RogerG

Read more here:

* “Kornacki: First Time In 16 NBC News Polls Over Four Years Where Donald Trump Leads Joe Biden”, Tim Haines, Real Clear Politics, November 20, 2023, at https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2023/11/20/kornacki_first_time_in_16_nbc_news_polls_over_four_years_where_donald_trump_leads_joe_biden.html

* Steve Kornacke on X about the NBC News poll at https://twitter.com/RyanGirdusky/status/1726247457414414630

** Also in my Substack feed, The Golden Mean, at https://rogerlgraf.substack.com/

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USC 20, UCLA 38; Five Losses Over the Last Six Games

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Once again, USC proved that it doesn’t have much of a functioning defense.  And that incapacity has disheartened the offense.  Caleb Williams and company had a bad day from the offensive line with the sacks to the receivers with the dropped passes to the running backs with a total of 3 yards rushing.  Losing is a downer and the team is beaten.  It shows.

The team has quality players, by all accounts, but maybe not enough of them.  Yes, poor alignments, delinquent adjustments and strategy, poor coaching play a huge role.  But I’m wondering if at least some of the problems can be traced to California’s changing population.  California is becoming more feudal each decade.  The state may not be producing as many of the 5-star recruits in all positions, particularly the ones that require the big, burly types: d-line, o-line, linebackers.  I’m not an expert.  I’m just wondering.

All I have to go on is personal anecdote.  I taught and coached in a California Central Valley high school and went to high school in another one of those Central Valley secondary schools.  By the time I am working through my career as a teacher and coach, I began to notice the gradual decline of the towering, big, and burly teens in the student body.  It reflected the shrinking portion from African Americans and the descendants of European immigrant families, far different from my personal high school experience and my early years in teaching and coaching.

It’s not simply a matter of race.  The relationship between the social environment and biology is only beginning to be understood.  We do know that over time, maybe generations, new groups take on the characteristics of the surrounding and prevalent groups.  Point: things change and blend.

But, for the purposes of recruitment today, the pool has changed.  There are indications that some in the coaching ranks allude to the fact.

I’ve monitored online forums, social media threads, and web reports on the state of play in college athletics, especially USC. Head coach Lincoln Riley naturally has been the brunt of criticism for the team’s performance.  One of the recurring complaints is the relatively mediocre recruiting classes, especially if you want to compete for national championships.  Related to that is the charge that he hasn’t recruited enough local talent (LA area, California broadly), like from powerhouses like St. John Bosco (Bellflower, Ca.) and Mater Dei (Santa Ana, Ca.).  It is true but that the talent pool is plucked clean by programs from all over the country; though, this fact doesn’t detract from the possibility that the amount of highly rated athletes is incrementally shrinking leaving an intensifying feeding frenzy for what’s left each succeeding year.

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USC coach Lincoln Riley
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UCLA coach Chip Kelley celebrating

So, when Riley responds to questions about mediocre recruiting classes, particularly locally, he’s quite right in saying that the local pool may not give you what you need.  And, like everyone else, USC is in need of big, burly, fast, and smart.  They surely can be found in California, but it’s unrealistic to expect USC to rake in the vast majority of them.  And the problem worsens over the long term as California’s persistent outflux and influx change its population and athletic talent pool.

I’m wondering if California is demographically doomed.  Somehow, USC and the other big California schools will have to increasingly try and convince athletes from a national pool to come to the land with the highest rate of poverty and homelessness, expensive everything, violent and property crimes galore, gangs, blight and filth from the urban core to exurbia to small towns to the fields and orchards.

The weather, beautiful coastline, and the Sierras may not be enough.

RogerG

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The Flag of Israel on My Montana Home, 11/18/23

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I am not one to turn my vehicles and home into political billboards.  And no country comes close to my love for my own.  Still, Israel is special.  The history and cultural affinity of the people and country should draw us close to this narrow strip of land on the eastern Mediterranean coast.

The events of October 7 bring into sharp focus the threat to this natural strategic and cultural ally in a very dangerous neighborhood.  The horrors of that day should remind us that the U.S. is also a very special country.  We are the last remaining superpower on the side of the angels.  As such, we can’t be blinkered and flippant like those small countries that dominate the UN General Assembly.  Stan Lee of Marvel put it best when he wrote into the mouth of Spider-Man, “With great power there must also come great responsibility.”  We have the duty to prevent the annihilation of the Jews and Israel because we have the power to do it.

To be charitable, the radical Left may actually believe that their chants of “End the apartheid state” and “from the river to the sea” aren’t calls for genocide.  But if they have their way, there will be a second holocaust of the Jewish people.  Israelis would be thrust cheek-by-jowl into political communion with people who hate them, if recent opinion polls are any indication (see below).  A poll released on November 14 by Arab World for Research and Development (AWRD) shows that 83% of West Bank residents supported the slaughter of Jews on Oct. 7.  Of Gaza Strip inhabitants, almost 64% did so.  No other choice came close.  Of course, in an exercise of gross euphemism in the question, the slaughter of civilians merely for their Jewish ancestry was hidden behind “military operation” and the killers referred to as “resistance”.

How can a people become so hostile to the very existence of Jews?  Simple, the people are raised on a steady diet of the vilest propaganda.  I invite you to pay a visit to the Middle East Media Research Institute who regularly looks into the subject (see below).  In a Times of Israel story from 2013, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) funded camps for Palestinian children that instilled into these kids the idea that “Jews are the wolf” (see below).  Or check out the YouTube video, “Inside the Gaza Summer Camps Training Children to be the Next Generation of Terrorists” at https://youtu.be/vCWMBvxWKL0?si=p1oa8CyaMoiW-qnF, to get a taste of it.

“River to the sea” is a suicide pact for Jews.  Should the U.S. be a party to this eventuality through indifference?  If you talk to some on the Right, yes.  They see America as an insular island on the globe.  They wish a return to the 18th and 19th centuries when oceans were barriers, and the U.S. was a developing country. No longer on both counts.  They wish to disguise their indifference behind the existence of domestic problems.  Problems, like the poor, shall be with you always.  But we have the power and with that power we have the responsibility to prevent a horrible replay of history.

Some on the Right – Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens come to mind – seem to suggest that we do nothing till their domestic pet peeves are addressed in their preferred manner.  The flag of Israel flying from my house is a reminder that a superpower must look outward and inward at the same time.  It’s the adult response in a chaotic world.

RogerG

Read more here:

* The full AWRD poll can be found at https://www.awrad.org/files/server/polls/polls2023/Public%20Opinion%20Poll%20-%20Gaza%20War%202023%20-%20Tables%20of%20Results.pdf

* The Middle East Media Research Institute can be found at https://www.memri.org/search-results?country_id_report%5B0%5D=0&country_id_clip%5B0%5D=0&country_id_jttm%5B0%5D=0&tv_station_id%5B0%5D=0&subject_id%5B0%5D=0&jttm_subject_id%5B0%5D=0&cjlab_category_id%5B0%5D=0&category_id%5B0%5D=0&cdate=0&custom_data_range_start=11/18/2023&custom_data_range_end=11/18/2023&order_type=0&order_style=0&keywords=palestinian%20public%20opinion&type=0&ia_number=&sd_number=&sa_number=&content_number=&author_id&content_type%5B0%5D=0&current_site=

* The YouTube video, “Inside the Gaza Summer Camps Training Children to be the Next Generation of Terrorists”, can be seen at https://youtu.be/vCWMBvxWKL0?si=UmoiHj1r2dgwCDV_

* “Palestinian kids taught to hate Israel in UN-funded camps, clip shows”, Lazar Berman, The Times of Israel, August 14, 2013, at https://www.timesofisrael.com/palestinian-kids-taught-to-hate-israel-in-un-funded-camps-clip-shows/

** Also in my Substack feed, The Golden Mean, at https://rogerlgraf.substack.com/