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Reluctant Radicals

Progressives in general all think it is still the 60’s and Vietnam is still going on. They all imagine themselves to be principled radicals standing up against The Man, even though now the Left is completely in bed with corporate America and there is no longer a significant anti-war faction in the Democratic party. If Hillary had won we would probably be involved in at least one new shooting war by now. They all imagine themselves to be radicals fightin’ the powah, marching with MLK and feeling naughty about smoking some pot. In other words, they are constantly looking for an excuse to be outraged, march in the streets and maybe throw a brick or two through a window. Most of them are little more than LARPing like people at a Renaissance fair except instead of wearing puffy sleeved shirts they dress up in what they imagine are ominous outfits and are hitting people with bike locks.

Rank and file conservatives on the other hand mostly want to be left alone. They want to go to work, raise their family, watch some football, go to church, save money for their kid’s college education. They grumble about taxes and show up to vote in November but their lives don’t revolve around politics, their lives revolve around family and work. At least that used to be the case. Then came the 2016 election and what has transpired in the last week. Now the world has changed.

This really struck me a few summers ago. I was driving around the lake where my parents were living at the time in Northern Michigan. The lake is surrounded by little cottages owned by mostly middle-class people from down south that scrimped and saved to buy a cabin “Up North”. On weekends they were there with their kids or grandkids, mowing their little lawns, painting the cabin, watching the kids play in the lake or just going for a walk. They lived in a little bubble of routine: work all week, leave work on Friday a little early and go up north for the weekend.

I think it was the lawn mowing that was most poignant for me. Here are regular people that spend the whole year working their butts off to afford a little cabin up north to relax and they were perfectly content to drive 5 hours on a Friday to spend Saturday mowing the lawn. Now I will grant you that a summer day in Northern Michigan isn’t like a summer day pretty much anywhere else. The days are long, the clouds are few, the breeze is gentle, the temperature is perfect and the sky is so blue it almost hurts to look at it. There is no place better in the summer. They aren’t asking much. They willingly pay their taxes, deal with the indignities of life, all so they can have these little, fleeting moments of absolutely perfect tranquility.

The last two years and especially last week have shattered the illusion. America isn’t a place where you can mind your own business and expect others to do the same. The progressive movement long ago mutated into something more than a political philosophy. It is now a violent, fundamentalist religion. The Left will not leave you alone to mow your lawn or attend your church or even raise your kids. They are coming for everything and nothing will remain that is not under the heel of their boots. Your kids are not safe in local schools. You sons are certainly not safe in college, not from ideological manipulation or false accusations of assault. Your churches are not safe, many are being infiltrated by the religious “social justice” wing of the cultural Marxists and those churches that resist will find themselves targeted for destruction. This is not a mild game of political push and shove. It is total war.

The last week of September in 2018 was the week that innocence died.

What I am seeing on social media has been fascinating. Not the bellowing and mouth-frothing of the progressives (“Believe women….just because they are women!”), that is to be expected. Nor the conservative supporters of the President backing Kavanaugh. No, what I am seeing are a lot of men and women that suddenly have had their eyes opened to what is going on. People that preferred to just stay out of it are realizing that is no longer an option. You can do everything right: pay your taxes, drive the speed-limit, obey the law, save for retirement, buy a house and still it can all come crashing down. You just want to be left alone? They will not leave you alone. Not now.

So a lot of people are finally taking the red pill and realizing that the illusion of our civil society is a sham.

This isn’t what they want. But circumstances are forcing everyone to make a choice and take a side. However reluctantly, the quiet American middle is becoming radicalized.

Rod Dreher quoted a reader that he described as “resolutely not a Republican” as writing to him and saying this:

The Democratic Party has announced today that every straight Christian white man will be guilty until proven innocent wherever they hold power. This used to just be SJWs on campus. Now it’s their whole party.

Feeling extremely radicalized. I won’t let them do this to the country my son is growing up in.

I have seen many people saying something similar and recognizing that being neutral now is akin to committing cultural suicide. What the progressives seem to forget is that an awful lot of regular Americans that the Left depends on being quiet and staying content to be tax cattle are fathers and mothers to sons and we have moved from a quiet campaign against boys via drugging them and talking about “toxic masculinity” to declaring that no man, no matter what his character, is immune to being accused of misbehavior in order to advance the progressive jihad. I use that word “jihad” intentionally. The extreme Left has operated under the rules of engagement “By Any Means Necessary” for decades. It doesn’t matter if you ruin a man, it doesn’t matter if you fake a “hate crime”, it doesn’t matter if you suppress free speech, it doesn’t matter if you burn a building. It doesn’t even matter if you engage in wanton violence because the ends justify the means and like jihadi suicide bombers, the progressive jihadi are willing to do whatever it takes to bring about their image of paradise on earth. Those engaged in jihad can justify blowing up children because they are convinced by their mullahs and imams that the struggle and the goal are all that matters. The progressive jihadi are told the same thing by their mullahs on college campuses and the entertainment world. Instead of 72 virgins in paradise they imagine a paradise of a lifetime of free college education studying Gender And Oppression and an endless fountain of fair trade soy lattes.

Even the Beltway “conservatives” are starting to wake up. National Review has been all over this with Kavanaugh over last week. Of course some of them are still siding against Kavanaugh because he was appointed by Trump and that is all the proof of guilt they need (looking at you Jennifer Rubin and Bill Kristol) but a lot of the generic Never Trumpers are starting to look like collaborators that are realizing that once the occupiers secure their place, they will come for them next. When the cultural Marxists complete their victory, they won’t need tame conservatives anymore.

The stakes of the Kavanaugh nomination keep climbing. This was never about a particular Supreme Court seat or a particular issue, not even abortion. It has always been a proxy fight, the latest in a string of battles that started election night 2016. It is about the progressive Left, the mullahs of cultural Marxism, dropping their masks and declaring open warfare. It is about retroactively disenfranchising tens of millions of Trump voters and warning the rest of America to keep their mouths shut or they could be next. My hope is that this last week will serve as a wake-up call to the slumbering center of America. You can’t just plan on mowing your lawn and watching the ball game on Sunday. You have to pick a side. A lot of us seem to be doing just that, no matter how reluctantly.

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