Trump and the New Religion

The 2016 US Presidential election is shaping up to be one of those inflection points in the nation’s history. At this stage it is hard to know what comes after November, even if you are confident of the outcome. In 1964, the Liberals clobbered the arch-conservative Goldwater, but that turned out to be their last hurrah as 1960’s radicalism was about to blow itself apart. Similarly, many thought 2000 was a shift toward a post-Progressive America, but it was the start of a new Great Progressive Awakening.

I’m fond of calling the prevailing philosophy among our rulers the New Religion because it has all the attributes of a religion, just adapted to the mass media era. For those unfamiliar with this, the New Religion is based on egalitarianism, multiculturalism and anti-racism. The last part is an outgrowth of the first two, but it is such a key part of the believer’s worldview, it really must be treated as a foundation item. Spend time on social media and you will inevitably run into people calling themselves anti-racists.

As Eric Hoffer observed, mass movements can get along without a god, but they must always have a devil. For the modern Progressive, the arch-demon is racism and everything is organized around fighting it. Abstract concepts make for useful devils, because they can be redefined on the fly to meet new challenges. A racist used to be some who hated blacks. Now it is someone hated by blacks or by the people who do the hating on their behalf.

As much as anti-racism is the star of the show, the other two legs of the stool are important too and we’re seeing that in the election. Trump is running on an explicitly nationalist platform. Nationalism comes with certain assumptions, like “our culture is better than others” and “our people are worth more to us than the people of other countries.” These are value judgments based on a shared history and a shared identity. America is not a blood and soil nation, but it is still a nation. My fellow citizens mean more to me than the people of France or Lichtenstein.

The internal logic of the New Religion excludes parochialism of any sort. All humans are equal, to the point where sex is even counted as a social construct. Therefore, no one can be morally better than another. Since culture is personality writ large and all personalities are equal, all cultures are equal. Anything short of embracing all cultures equally is racism. That means all the people who oppose the one-world globalism of our elites can only be driven by racism. They are evil so they must be fought at any cost.

That’s what we are seeing with Trump. He is a man who is the epitome of color blindness. He opened his first big club in Miami to all races, despite the fact the local residents opposed that idea. Those local residents were very liberal, you should note. His business associates look like the color wheel and his daughter converted to Judaism after marrying her very Jewish husband. Yet, Trump is running as a nationalist so the New Religion casts him as a racist. They even obliquely hint that he is an anti-Semite by calling him “Herr Drumpf” all the time.

The so-called conservatives in the media are just as smitten with the New Religion as their paymasters.  After all, a key part of being on contract at CNN or ABC is to be in the good graces of the fanatics that run those stations. Since the people in charge have defined racism as the worst of sins, no conservative will be caught dead associated with a racist. Nothing strikes fear in the hearts of these nancy-boys more than the thought of being cast into the pit alongside guys like John Derbyshire and Steve Sailer.

Years ago, back in the early Bush years, I met Jonah Goldberg at a NRO fundraiser event. We were chatting and I mentioned Peter Brimelow and he turned pale. The look on his face was what you would expect if he just learned Godzilla was approaching. He pulled himself together enough to say, “You should never even read anything they write. It’s very bad.” and then he sprinted away like I was chasing him. It was old fashioned, gut level fear like you see in horror movies. Goldberg is now a unhinged opponent of Trump.

On the scale of certainty, the modern Progressive is quite sure he is an anti-racist. He even has that on the profile of his social media accounts. The old Buckley Right has always existed on the edge of grace, with respect to the Left so they are desperate to prove they are just as anti-racist as their brothers on the Left. It’s why they are so over-the-top in their hatred for Trump. It’s not a case of self-doubt leading to overcompensation. They fear their brothers on the Left do not believe they have cleansed themselves of racism, so their animus toward Trump is their purification ritual.

This is why guys like Erick Erickson are constantly trolling for the attention of Trump supporters on twitter and Faceberg. It’s why NRO has given itself over to anti-Trumpism to the point of self-parody. It’s also why the most over-the-top outrage about the Khan flap was from the so-called Right. These performances are not intended to convince Trump voters. They are intended to convince the Left that the official Right is fully housebroken and ready to live in the master’s house. Anti-Trumpism is a public act of piety by those who wish to be initiated in the New Religion.

45 thoughts on “Trump and the New Religion

  1. For about 10 years I commented over at National Review, and that sadly came to a close yesterday as they have gone completely off the deep end. Their decline has tracked very closely with the decline in what used to be called conservative thinking over the last 15 years.

    There was a time when you could not comment on their columns. When they did finally open them up, access was limited, heavily moderated, and so what you read was generally pretty well thought out reaction to the opinion pieces posted. NR started to realize that, hey, they get a lot of traffic, and a lot (and I mean a LOT) of free ideas for their columns and think tanks to rip riff off. For a few years, they advanced their thinking to try and surface the best cream by giving out those gold stars for largely unmoderated commenting. Sure, there were still some basic rules, but each comment did not require approval. The idea being that not everyone is a lunatic, and that a small percentage of their readers were not knuckle dragging, obnoxious, reactionaries…therefore worthy of trust. This was back when Bill Buckley was excommunicating George Bush 43 from conservatism, and we were showing up to riff off of good commentary by the Stein’s and Derb’s at NR. But the slow decline of conservatism was not to be stopped. By the time 2008 rolled around, the GOP was eagerly trying to roll out TARP, and the monetarists, and we were beating a hasty retreat from the failed Iraq Project, and I’d read more and more “conservative” opinions on the value of money printing and the “right” kinds of government spending to “fix” the economy. They call themselves “reformicons” now, and my do they love the tax code! Right around then, NR moved to Disqus for their comments. Now, I don’t give a rat one way or the other what engine people use under the hood, but with that change came the end of even attempting to differentiate between the lunatics and the sane. The mods did their best, but really a lot of garbage started showing up…a trend which would inexorably lead to NR moving to Facebook comments…the trailer park trash of internet conversation. Is it any surprise during that 3-year stretch that NR would continue to descend into conservative intellectual incoherence by backing a Republican Party that had driven itself over a cliff? They scream and yell and stop their feet about Trump, but open their site to Facebook. Talk about projection!

    So, for the last time yesterday, I took a spin through NR’s “The Corner”, and viewed a website that is hilariously over-the-top anti-Trump. Here we have an actual felon being protected by an Official Government Party political machine, and NR is worried about a guy who is basically Mitt Romney with bad table manners. Their conversion to the Conservative Inc. business model is complete. And like all business models in America today, if you do not genuflect to the Government Party, you get banned from the cool kids club. So, off we go to a new frontier. Freedom is cool like that. Sure hope we get to keep it if the Red Queen wins in November.

    • I deleted the bookmark yesterday. The quicket thing is difficult to use and is already full of the anti-Trump cranks. I’m fine with criticizing him and his campaign, but I’ve had my fill of “he’s thin skinned!” type commentary. So, I suspect I will be in the dark about NR going forward.

      Welcome aboard.

  2. . . . where sex is even counted as a social construct.
    Try being antisocial and see how often you have sex.

  3. “I’m fond of calling the prevailing philosophy among our rulers the New Religion because it has all the attributes of a religion, just adapted to the mass media era. For those unfamiliar with this, the New Religion is based on egalitarianism, multiculturalism and anti-racism. The last part is an outgrowth of the first two, but it is such a key part of the believer’s worldview, it really must be treated as a foundation item. Spend time on social media and you will inevitably run into people calling themselves anti-racists.”

    There are rulers and not rulers. Rulers care about power, and always have with limited exceptions such as, indeed religious despots as well as, in many ways, the Absolutely Great George Washington. Rulers’ philosophy is any and all power for them is good; any and all potential power for others BAD! C.S.Lewis showed and I can only paraphrase why these tyrants could not conceive relenting anymoreso than a leapards spotless desires become magically fulfilled,”it’s for their own good we sacrifice, as befits an heroic martyr that is handsome and of same or a better-than-Shakespearian wit, so much to simply nudge them all, those wild washless masses, toward what we have always known and will always know science Lords oblige us to dictate by any means available what’s in their best interest.”

    But the believers you describe after the New Religion definition you chose (as distinct from the more accurate–I believe–New New New New New New New … New Religion) refer not at all to phoney rulers (as in Carlos Slim telecom types of that ilk and fakey fakers) but instead quite nearly diametrically opposite to the people that are not rulers.

    The other-than rulers do, to a point, believe the bullshit they spout, ego defense per Freud, but also believe any deviation from this Progressive (for Today at least; all that matters) advancement of Satan (I hate it but respect it with the big “S” as a reminder of who will be here on Earth after I am gone) we call Democratic Leadership and donors and media sellers-of-souls and the damn academia hurtling everyone toward conflagration Biblical.

    The key is this: if Idiocracy be, the best and brightest decided, to the best of their ability in many cases one assumes for sanity, to fight like Hell for it.

    Serenity.

  4. Trolls all over the web these last few days, skanking up the comment sections. I sense some money being thrown around for piecework.

    Back (sort of) to the actual subject of the post, I get the feeling that the Dems, watching the convention, just got reminded of how off-putting Hillary actually is. So the new strategy of the last few days is to only talk about Trump, not her. As Trump is willing to talk about Trump, the media and Obama are climbing on board, too, and now the GOPe has taken the other side as well. Talk only about Trump, hide the news of the $400 million to Iran, hide Hillary, and hope this can go on for another 3 months. In a campaign of relentless negativity, hiding out may be the best strategy. When all of the levers of government and the media are your surrogates, they can fight the fight for you and you can slither down into a hole somewhere, and pop up again five minutes after the polls close.

  5. “These performances are not intended to convince Trump voters.”

    An impossible standard.

  6. Why is racism ipso facto worse than interracialism? When you see how relentlessly that fountain of evil called Hollywood pushes interracialism, you know it can’t be a good thing. Someone who is opposed to interracialism might or might not be a true racist.

  7. They’ll let you live if you will just pour a little wine in front of a statue of Martin Luther King.

  8. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/03/us/politics/tim-huelskamp-roger-marshall-kansas-primary.html?_r=0

    The Times doesn’t tell you, but Huelskamp is a big time #NeverTrumper. I guess we’ll see what happens to Paul Ryan next week. I was going to respond to the troll earlier, but have decided it would be pointless. That would imply we could have a real discusssion, something the troll is not interested in. Lots of these trolls showing up on other sites as well.

    • Huelskamp got squashed like a bug, something like 56% of the vote went to his challenger. Think that’s called a landslide

      I just wish that Paul Nehlen had had more $ a lot earlier in his bid to primary Ryan the hell out of DC.

      Ryan won’t allow himself to be “Cantored”. Folk here might want to throw him some dough to help him out. The election is the 6th.

      (Oh, BTW, don’t feed the troll…)

  9. But…but…but… I thought race was a social construction? Every professor at every college I’ve ever visited says so! In all seriousness, though, the so-called Right’s bleating about Trump is the 21st century equivalent of a witch burning. Luther’s ideas were too politically useful not to be used, and the printing press can’t be un-invented, so to restore order the Elite picked an unrelated group, blamed everything on them, and lit a few of the uglier ones on fire. As nationalism emerges as one of the few viable solutions to a declining economy, our anti-racists will suddenly find themselves being very racist indeed… but they’ll find some way to justify it that doesn’t use the R-word. Today’s blue-haired bi-curious vegan slam poet is tomorrow’s obergruppenfuhrer. (My guess, for the record, is that they’ll claim IQ is heritable but not causally linked to race. That way they can fetishize IQ to exclude the darkies, because they “fucking love science”).

  10. The Rat Goldberg’s Tribe controls both the Left and the Neocon Right, heck, all Neocon thinking heads are backing Hillary and moving back to the Dems, their original home.

  11. Orwell, in the bad old days–“Spaniards are cruel to animals, Italians can do nothing without making a deafening noise, the Chinese are addicted to gambling. Obviously such things don’t matter in themselves. Nevertheless, nothing is causeless, and even the fact that Englishmen have bad teeth can tell something about the realities of English life.”
    Anti-racism–the war on noticing–is a Caucasian disease. Even anti-racist seem to restrict it’s devotion to their own kind. We never hear a word from the usual sources about the unflattering and unapologetic opinions Asians and Mexicans have for Africans.

  12. If I were the Devil, the real Devil that is, I would create One World and unify all the peoples into One. To do this, I would make reason unnecessary, turn discernment into prejudice and make truth exclusionary.

    Logic would then become relative and, thus, turn mathematics into my opinion. Then I would teach my people how 2 + 2 = 5. And, they will love me.

    And, for those who reject me, I will call mightily upon the herd instinct of my people to lash the undisciplined without mercy, prior to their public crucifixions in the Town Square.

    And, thus, will my disciples be entertained, love me with their whole hearts, and worship me everlasting.

    Amen.

  13. The joke is that everyone on the left is 100% certain that racism is the sole motivation for anybody on the right. They figure Jonah Goldberg is just as much of a practicing Klansman as Trump, but he’s just overcompensating in order to conceal his true beliefs. The louder he squeals, the more they assume he’s protesting too much.

    Pathetic.

    • I really believe that before this decade is over, the whole “racist” thing is going to play itself out. Certainly before the 2020’s are over. Mostly because there just isn’t going to be the number of jobs at large companies are going to be considerably less and the main driver keeping people fearful of the “racist” label is that if made publicly tends to make one unemployable. Take away the big thing to lose, and the “give-a-shit” factor will likely decrease markedly.

  14. How bad has it gotten? I was listening to the In Our Time BBC podcast this weekend. The topic was the Bronze Age collapse. The host, Melvyn Bragg, is an oldthinker. Try as he might, he could not get the academicians to talk about who exactly was burning the Hittite and Mycenean cities and assaulting the Egyptian coast lest they use the word “Indo-European.” You could almost see the guest panel squirm in their seats as they kept changing the subject to the Chinese Bronze Age, the Etruscans, the relative contemporary prosperity of towns in Spain, the unreliability of the written record (duh),… among many other diversions. It was crimestop in all its glory. Old Melvyn was exhausted and frustrated by the end. It was rather a waste of 40 minutes except as in illustration of how intellectually corrupt our elites have become.

    • Every once in a while, there will be a crime story where witnesses are asked to describe the perp. It’s great TV. “He was tall and maybe had a red shirt.” You see the pic of the perp later on and he is as black as the ace of spades with giant afro and gold teeth. No one dares mention it for fear of being called a racist. It makes reading crime stories fun though. The ext will have code like “a Milford man…” which means illegal alien. Or, “his motives are unknown…” means Muslim.

      It’s why I like comparing contemporary America to Iran.

      • uhhhh….not sure what circles you travel in big guy but this nonsense that average everyday Americans are so afraid of being labeled a racist that they wont mention the perp was BLACK is complete and utter nonsense and you should be ashamed of yourself for furthering that line of thought with your minions…Most Americans are more than proud to call a spade a spade for the entire world to see…and social media has made that easier than ever….suddenly any fool with an internet connection and a keyboard is suddenly a journalist/blogger speaking the truth as they see it….havent you noticed it with your supporters…why are they not afraid? why are you not afraid? get a clue zman!!

        • The key point here is SES, or socioeconomic status. When you link SES to college education and college education to ideological indoctrination and ideological indoctrination to liberal/progressive/marxist insanity, what you get is an ideological/secular religious “dead zone” radiating out from the upper-middle class (spiritually descended from the clergy) petrified of violating the edicts of the state religion.

        • “suddenly any fool with an internet connection and a keyboard is suddenly a journalist/blogger speaking the truth as they see it”. You are living proof, Lee-baby.

          • Danny boy I was referring to the zdog…last time I checked I was just a lowly troll disruptimg the echo chambers of self important bloggers like the zman! He certainly has an interesting take on things but imo the world is changing right before his eyes and instead of recognizing it for what it is, he tries to spin it with tired arguments based on racism for like minded folks like you to lap up! Good for the zman and good for you Danny!

          • Thank you for coming and giving us a living example of the dogma of the new religion and how it is enforced.

    • They didn’t want to mention the word “Indo-European” because the Indo-Europeans were White, because they swept down from the north in waves, conquering just about every pre-existing population in Europe, Central Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa, because “Indo-European” is now somehow linked to National Socialist Germany, or for some other godforsaken reason?

  15. The establishment isn’t done yet. I think they are going to very openly and matter-of-factly cheat to keep Trump out of the white house. It’s not just the GOPe. The democrat wing of the establishment are going to be on-board with these efforts. I expected them to do that at the convention but I think they have moved their last stand to the electoral college.in the spirit of “bi-partisanship.” Both sides are already putting forth the same message: “Trump cannot be allowed to become president!” It’s not like anyone will try to stop them. After the outright proclamation from comey that hillary would not be prosecuted for anything because of who she is and the total lack of public outrage,, I think they may be willing to take that as the all clear just ignore the voters if they don’t get on board.

    Failing that, their last firestop will be the most open act of petulance left to them…they’ll pour sand in the gears and smash the machinery on the way out. If Trump manages to become president elect, you’ll see a lame duck obama and a GOP controlled lame duck house and senate strip the presidency and executive branch of as much power as they can get away with. They’ll pass the TPP and may even give obama his supreme court pick as one last F-You! to Trump and his supporters.

  16. Come on Z-dog….you sure are hung up on race arent you? Trump makes his own bed Mr zman…no one is “trumping” up anything related to any of the racially insensitive comments he has made since he became a politician….get it z? Yes, Trump has been a lifelong NY liberal until his awakening..that is until he realized what easy marks the frothed up GOP constituency is circa 2016…whipped into a frenzy of hate/anger at the US Government, and an irrational fear of the nonexistent radical Islamic caliphate that is supposedly a coordinated effort to destroy the West! hahaha Trump’s comments are tailored to pull in a specific demographic of this country and it worked like a charm….he took over the GOP without so much as having to lift a finger…

    • I’ll complement the fact that this was designed to elicit a response (that is a component of effective trolling). However, you should’ve at least told everybody about how Trump is an anti-semite for the Hillary star meme. If you provide multiple silly examples, it becomes easier to move the goalposts when someone picks one example apart. Overall, the arguments are weak and unoriginal. C- trolling. You need to put more effort in.

      • stop…hammer time! Mr Hammer the arguments that the zman makes in his latest blog are the ones that are weak and unoriginal….thanks for the tip on trolling though…I’ll try to do better next time….here is a newsflash : the “real GOP” (stuffed shirts like Goldberg, and the carnival barkers like Erickson) that zdog refers to are the ones that are directly responsible for the current state of the GOP constituency…..angry and afraid good sir….so angry they hate their own politicians-including ex President’s Bush et al…what a laugh….Mr z’s attempt to explain how a guy like Trump being vilified by the Right and the Left is anything other than the fruit’s of his labor is comical to me….the Donald is the biggest buffoon to ever come this close to the Presidency but I still dont count the guy out….that would be foolish….he better tighten up his girdle and quit crying like a baby about how is being picked on and gamed by the system or Hillary is going to win in a landslide of epic proportions….thanks Mr Hammer!

        • If I may, it’s ZMan to you. Not Zdog or Mr z in your infantile manner of disrespect.

          And as for Trump taking over the GOP without so much has having to “lift a finger,” well, the GOP has been irrelevant for several years now and the environment was waiting for someone to step into the fold with some kind of vision, some guts and backbone who would not be cowed by the Lame Stream Media or the Corrupto-crats in DC (in both parties).

          Goldberg? Erickson? I don’t even recognize those names when I think of the RINO’s in the GOP. If you want names of those I blame, there are many but those at the top of the list include Boner, McConnel, Ryan, McCain, Graham, and the majority of the House who did not fight Obozo for the past seven years. And lets not forget the turncoats on the Supreme Court. What a disgrace.

          Your totally foolish statement of “an irrational fear of the nonexistent radical Islamic caliphate that is supposedly a coordinated effort to destroy the West” really shows just what a joke you are. With all the displays of “non-existant” violence being committed by Da’esh, you call those who take it seriously “irrational.” We will see who is irrational when they come for your head. Tell them you are on their side and see how much that matters. Fool.

          • Hello Mr Play! now let’s see….ZMan is a moniker that deserves alot of respect doesnt it? Anybody calling himself ZMan and pontificating from the mountaintop with the insight and wisdom that he does should not be referred to as zdog and mr z…those are REALLY disrespectful and so very different from ZMan…..gotcha…my bad Mr LP!!! haha….anyway, thanks for the input and I can tell that you are very angry and very very afraid but so are alot of Conservative Americans these days….if I may be so bold….let me say…..chooooo choooooo….I’m on board with you by the way!!

            “People all over the world (you dont need no money)….join hands (come on)….start a Trump train, a Trump train (dont need no ticket come on)…..People all over the world (join in ride this train)….join in (ride this train y’all)…start a Trump train (come on train)..a Trump train!!”

          • If you regard garnering attention as a measure of success, you have been successful today (although judging by the down votes , it has been negative). I look at commenting on another person’s blog the same way I do as if I was visiting their home. I don’t go into another person’s home and call them names. Perhaps you do.

          • What names did I call the zman Mr Teaparty? And by the way…have you read this guys ramblings? Talk about a disrespectful name-caller…Zman is about as high handed as you can get and he has no respect for anyone that doesnt think exactly the way he does…talk about an elitist! Enjoy the evening Doc!

          • Well Lee, it is not the moniker itself that deserves respect but the man and his efforts at creating and putting forth the efforts of his thoughts for the consideration of others. For discussion, for edification. I myself, learn a volumes from ZMan and his commenters just in vocabulary alone. Find myself looking up words and adding them to my repertoire.

            And on the serious side, since it seems you only want to clown around, why don’t you enlighten us as to why YOU do not view the Da’esh threat as a real and present danger to our way of life? Are you one of the progressives ZMan talks about who thinks as a globalist and if some don’t agree everyone is equal, then they are racist? Come on, speak up! We don’t want jokes here. Give us something to cogitate on.

            Maybe you think Trump wanting to build a wall along the southern border is racist? Well, advise him then as to how to best fight 4GW where the enemy has no home state, no borders of their own, no organized army as armies were defined in the past, and acts in a completely decentralized and guerilla like manner? You have to put up a defense starting with some basic moves. Seems to me that if you know they are coming after you, then you best shore up the castle walls first. Islam has stated, and this is not simply that faction called radical Islam, that they want to destroy the West, especially America. And they have also stated very clearly that they do not intend on taking any prisoners.

            So just what do you see? Get real. Stop joking here. Give us your thoughts … if you have any?

    • D+. Plus for literacy, D for lack of charm, wit, humor. But humor is the barb that extracts a hidden truth from something, which you can’t even find in a target rich environment.

      • thanks Jimmy! thank you so much for at least giving me a D/D+…..I will work hard over summer break and make you proud next year! I promise!

    • When you have an infestation of vermin, the best thing to do is seal the room so it asphyxiates. And the oxygen by which this sort of vermin lives is attention. Don’t give any, and it will soon die. Good riddance.

      • I’m vermin because I disagree with the zdog and his minions? Jeez Sauron, I know you guys dont like anybody putting forth an opinion that goes against the echo chamber but lets not get down in the gutter…we’re just having a little fun today right? Maybe you should go get that lazy eye checked out and after that why dont you pass by the liquor store and be back by quarter to twelve?!

        • I’ve let you go on for while assuming you would burn yourself out. You can take the honorable way out or the dishonorable way out. I don’t care which you choose.

          • Zman are you going ro block me good sir? That would be a shame but not surprising…Help yourself if it bothers you to have the ridiculous ideas you spout in “the history of everything” challenged by Joe Blow on the street…I understand that some people dont like to have their worldview challenged….was I too rough on you Mr Z? Somehow I doubt thats the case because Im sure you can take just as much as you dish out, right? Ar least I didnt call you vermin big guy! What would be the honorable way out in your view? Fill me in! Thanks for “letting me go for a while”

          • He should block you. You contribute nothing of any importance to the conversation. If I want to be annoyed, I’ll drive on the freeway, where ignoramuses like you are a dime a dozen.

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