we’ll need a word for
right wingers who can’t live in
world they helped build

Adapted from a passage in the New York Times Opinion Essay, The Vibe Shifts Against the Right by Michelle Goldberg, where Ms. Goldberg writes:

Irving Kristol famously said that neoconservatives were liberals who’d been “mugged by reality.” Maybe soon we’ll need a similar word for the right wingers who can’t stand to live in the world they helped build.

According to the NYT, Michelle Goldberg has been an Opinion columnist since 2017. She is the author of several books about politics, religion and women’s rights and was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for public service in 2018 for reporting on workplace sexual harassment.

According to Wikipedia, Irving William Kristol January 22, 1920 – September 18, 2009) was an American journalist and writer. As a founder, editor, and contributor to various magazines, he played an influential role in the intellectual and political culture of the latter half of the twentieth century, He was dubbed the “godfather of neoconservatism”. After his death, he was described by The Daily Telegraph as being “perhaps the most consequential public intellectual of the latter half of the century”. He is the father of political writer Bill Kristol.

It would almost be fun to be able to sit back on watch as reality (this IS Reality BTW, not a reality game show) comes over the right wing as the realize what they have done.

The cold water creeping over in the bath type of slow change.

The problem is, we are all in the bath together on this one.

My Captain does not
answer, his lips pale and still,
ship is anchor’d safe

February 12, 1809 – April 14, 1865

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck,
You’ve fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

According to Wikipedia, “O Captain! My Captain!” is an extended metaphor poem written by Walt Whitman in 1865 about the death of U.S. president Abraham Lincoln. Well received upon publication, the poem was Whitman’s first to be anthologized and the most popular during his lifetime. Together with “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”, “Hush’d Be the Camps To-Day”, and “This Dust Was Once the Man”, it is one of four poems written by Whitman about the death of Lincoln.”

Behind Mr. Lincoln’s statue is carved these words.

“In this temple as in the hearts of the people for whom he saved the Union, the memory of Abraham Lincoln is enshrined forever

The people for whom he saved the Union.

That’s us.

Let’s don’t screw it up.

nothing in malice
what I deal with too vast for
malicious dealing

In a letter in response to a question about how the emancipation of slavery and the power of the Army might be misapplied in Louisiana, Abraham Lincoln wrote on July 28. 1862:

I am in no boastful mood.

I shall not do more than I can, and I shall do all I can to save the government, which is my sworn duty as well as my personal inclination.

I shall do nothing in malice.

What I deal with is too vast for malicious dealing.

Yours truly

A. Lincoln

No boastful mood.

Shall do nothing in malice.

I shall do all I can to save the government.

… my sworn duty.

… my personal inclination.

What I deal with is too vast for malicious dealing.

How can Mr. Lincoln sum up so much of what is wrong today in so few words?

How far down have we gone?

essential freedoms
speech, worship, from want, from fear
anywhere in world

In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

The first is freedom of speech, and expression—everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way—everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want—which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants—everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear—which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor—anywhere in the world.

That is no vision of a distant millennium.

It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, excerpted from the State of the Union Address to the Congress, January 6, 1941

What is it about these freedoms that make the followers of the evangelical church of trump so angry?

Any expression in favor if these freedoms cause a, to paraphrase CS Lewis, howl of sharpened famine that re-echoes at this moment through all the levels of the Kingdom of Noise down to the very Throne itself.

Let me focus on just one freedom, the freedom from fear.

Remember those days?

The days before we wondered, every minute of every day, what might happen next?

Remember that morning after the mid year elections in 2022?

That morning in America where we felt that America, the old America, the America that stood tall in the world, was still there and stirring.

We felt … freedom from fear?

For a few days anyway.

Now comes the 2nd chapter of the evangelical church of trump preaching fear, fear, fear.

Fear your neighbor.

Fear your friend.

Fear your family.

And … trust the evangelical church of trump.

And you will be free from fear.

I don’t know about you, but I think of Matthew 24:15 and I am waiting for the evangelical church of trump in bring about a golden statue of someone and set it someplace … “So when you see standing in the holy place ‘the abomination that causes desolation,’ spoken of through the prophet Daniel — let the reader understand.

For myself?

I am so tired of the fear.

I will rejoice in the Lord and tremble for my country as I know God is just.

Now that is something to be in fear of.