Amerika

When the “gang of nineteen” stepped onto the stage for the Republican primary debates back in 2015, they all came bearing the same message: the flag, the dollar, Jesus, and Israel. There was also some stuff about getting firm with those dastardly terrorists who keep blowing up our obese citizens on vacation.

They were repeating what was basically the Reagan message minus a key part. Reagan realized, unlike McCarthy, that socialism was both seductive and destructive. On a practical, real-world, commonsense, and everyday level socialism fails because it impoverishes the nation as a whole and turns people into passive-aggressive douchebags.

However, to realize that about socialism is to realize that America is a mixed economy like National Socialism, China, or Europe. That is, it uses free market economies to stimulate growth, then taxes those, and then inflates their value with monetary theory so it can take in even more taxes.

If you recognize that, you find yourself thinking critically about entitlements, which are the biggest increase in government since the 1930s, like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare, EMTALA, and welfare.

To stick with the Reagan program, you have to want to cut those. You also have to want to avoid affirmative action and other quota programs. The political consultants say that this is political suicide, so conservatives avoid it.

Instead they double down on patriotism, money, and religion. The “Israel” part of the equation has more to do with Christianity than Jews; it seems that in these “end times” a great number of people want armageddon so that the “ratpure” occurs:

Hagee and his more than five million followers believe that the establishment of Israel in 1948 and its subsequent military occupation and colonization of Palestinian and other Arab lands are the fulfillment of biblical prophecy and the necessary precursors to the return of Jesus Christ and the coming of the apocalypse.

Once this final theological drama begins, they believe, gentiles and Jews will be judged, and those who accept Jesus as the Christ will be saved, and all others will be condemned to the eternal fires of damnation. Everyone else is expendable, including the Jews they claim to love so much.

While their support for Israel is supposed proof that their program is not anti-Semitic, CUFI’s adherents’ interest in Israel is little more than a declaration that Jews are only useful insofar as they trigger the end of days.

While this may not be the most cynical thing ever, it comes very close. Neoplatonists/dualists believe in a pure Heaven/Good versus nature/evil, and therefore they want this world to burn so that everyone goes to Heaven.

More realistic people see the universe as a type of mechanical system which rewards efficient recycling of energy. This favors the productive, reproductive, and those who avoid insanity errors like most of humanity are making most of the time (we are a degraded and self-degrading species).

As it turns out, what “populism” has done is shift from a religious focus to the idea of identity and culture being linked, and including religion but not limited only to religion:

Earlier this month, Trump also criticized abortion opponents for losing “large numbers of voters” in the 2022 midterm elections, “especially those that firmly insisted on No Exceptions, even in the case of Rape, Incest, or Life of the Mother.” The comments on his Truth Social platform drew sharp retorts from several prominent religious conservatives and anti-abortion activists, including Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America president Marjorie Dannenfelser, who, in a thinly veiled critique of Trump, criticized Republicans who have advocated for an “Ostrich Strategy” on abortion, preferring to ignore the issue than elevate it in critical elections.

Trump’s recent complaints about evangelicals and abortion opponents have baffled allies and advisers who recognize the crucial role both groups play in the conservative ecosystem and their sway in presidential primaries — a dynamic the former president is seemingly well aware of. In 2016, Trump’s chief reason for tapping Mike Pence, the self-described “devout evangelical” and then-Indiana governor, to be his running mate was to shore up support among religious conservatives who remained deeply skeptical of his own brash political brand. That same mission could prove more challenging in a crowded 2024 primary as Trump works to convince primary voters he is both the most electable and most committed to advancing their causes in a second administration.

Trump, a realist, is barely even a conservative. He is a “make the trains run on time” not “force obedience” kind of guy. He wants stuff to work, and to that end, he believes in rewarding the good and punishing the bad, like the various grifters who tried to overcharge him for shoddy work and found their bills unpaid a year later.

While conservatives fixate on abortion, this is mostly to avoid discussing real problems like diversity/immigration, the socialist Deep State, union-bloated labor costs, and declining international prestige. Trump if asked in private would probably say that abortion is murder but also natural selection, so works out okay.

Few understand that the Trump campaign had a stroke of genius in converting conservatives from “Christian libertarians” to people geared toward preserving a culture and identity against diversity. By moving from post-Reagan neoconservatism to populism, Trump kept Christianity but made it subordinate to identity:

It’s not isolated to a single denomination and is defined by the belief that the U.S. is a Christian nation with specific values that must be protected from “some sort of moral decline because of the diversity of democracy and the diversity of society at large,” Riccardi-Swartz says.

As a result, it’s become inseparable from the “gods, guns, country mentality” that defines portions of the Republican party and U.S. conservatism, Riccardi-Swartz says.

To Leftists, conservatism is still the God, guns, and patriotism mentality, but the subtle shift of populism moves away from the Evangelical wing and more toward a practical view in which “Europeanized Christianity” is simply part of a Western European culture that we have in America.

Think in terms of economics. If nineteen candidates spout the same dogma, but one guy does not and goes on to win the election, what he is saying is rarer and more valuable. Even more, he may have opened doors mostly simply by mentioning things which the others were colluding to avoid mentioning for fear of facing competition.

If every Republican candidate says the same thing, then who wins becomes a matter of pure politics — who are your allies, how big is your funding, and what special interests have you promised favors — instead of anything you offer the voter. Bureaucrats like pure politics because it remains under their control.

Trump stabbed back at the bureaucracy, including the Christian bureaucracy which is exemplified in Evangelicals, by arguing for making the trains run on time instead of hoping for (!) armageddon so we all go to the magic special place where nothing is bad and all of the donuts are perfectly frosted.

Those of us of more of a deist/perennialist outlook see the divine as something beyond human comprehension. We have many names for it and many vocabularies for it in the form of the different religions of the world, but it is the same thing.

Conservatism got knocked for a loop by the events of 1215, 1648, 1848, 1865, and 1960. It has been in retreat ever since. Now that all of those Leftist programs are failing, conservatism is rising again and asserting realistic principles over religious symbolism like a final battle in Har-Megiddo after which all die and go to Heaven.

This is not to say that we discard religion; it is part of culture, although perhaps not middle eastern religions for European-descended peoples. However, we think religion like politics should be realistic, meaning that it should be measured in terms of its effects.

To be utterly cynical about it, consider the two directions we can go: more toward the third world, like Russia, or more toward a post-diversity first world, like Finland. Any action should be measured in terms of its outcomes; if it makes us more like Russia, it is a fail; if it makes us more like Finland, it is a win.

If we follow a purely symbolic religion — basically the cerebral equivalent of idol-worship — we end up being more like Russia. If we accept religion as a general guide toward believing that we live in a good universe and therefore can make the leap of faith to believe in an afterlife and existence that rewards the good, we get closer to Finland.

After all, Finland remains the happiest nation on Earth because of low diversity, high culture, and quality death metal, despite being a freezing block of ice situated next to Russia:

For the seventh year in a row, Finland has landed the top spot on the World Happiness Report’s annual ranking of the happiest countries in the world.

Countries are ranked according to self-assessed life evaluations and answers to the Cantril ladder question which asks respondents to think of a ladder with the best possible life for them being a 10 and the worst being a zero and then rate their current lives on that scale.

Obviously the death metal portion is responsible. In the broader sense, what makes Finland happy is that it has upheld the Western system: minimal diversity, high upward breeding pressure, and low investment in pointless commerce. If they remove diversity entirely, they will be even happier.

Religion moves away from this type of solution. Like ideology, it looks for 100% solutions of an absolute and universal nature. That means that it tries to convince people to behave in a good way even if they are bad, and in doing so, perpetuates more bad like all anti-realistic attempts do.

At its furthest point, this makes religion like ideology into a quest for a virtuous apocalypse. It would rather burn down the world for promises of Heaven or Utopia than accept our “imperfect” reality and do the best we can with it. When you see conservatives go in that direction, recognize that they are compromised and should be avoided.

Tags: apocalypse, armageddon, christianity, donald j. trump, dualism, evangelicals, finland, israel, neoplatonism, populism, ronald reagan, russia