It’s not about parties and voting. It’s about everyday people and what they’re doing with their lives. For the Right, that would be countering whatever is in front of their faces and preparing for whatever it is that is coming. You say the Leftists sharpening their knives, and won’t say you’re wrong there, but they’re unable to do it on their own, as is amply evidenced. They’re tools of those who also, it fully appears, commandeered Trump. The West, and the USA as the spearpoint, has been conquered and is being worn as a skin suit, and those Traditionals of the Right who in most respects keep the toilets flushing and refineries running find themselves between the tools and the conquerers. A strange situation indeed, but not unique. I’d say they’re exactly in the situation the White Russians were. I don’t know when they became fully aware of their situation, but it was apparently too late.

Leave it to the Leftists to be “Trump this…Trump that”. Not defending him, but it reflects in a light unbecoming to not understand that he has handlers and has had warnings, and when he submits, he is a tool himself. He has been chosen this 2nd time around as the one best suited to forward their aims. He is not of the Right, but he is being used to be able to blame the Right for everything that he is doing. Trump was a Hail-Mary pass, and if he falls incomplete, it’ll be no surprise. Those who said that Traditionals weren’t voting their way out of their situation will be proven right.

@ Richard,

Coincidentally enough, I also recently have been reading those old classics that almost no one reads because they’re forced on us too young to be able to appreciate, such as Canterbury Tales, The Divine Comedy, Beowolf & Paradise Lost. None were short of fantastic, and some were much better than that. I’m slowly making my way through Paradise Lost and must say it may be the best work of literature I’ve ever read. Amazing in imagery, scope & depth. That and the Divine Comedy are so much richer than anything remotely modern that I marvel at what depth of soul we’ve lost.

That being said, I thoroughly enjoy JM’s writing and particularly his style. I’m like him that things are exceedingly complicated and have not been able to find a box or creed to fit all that I see and feel into. I have come to the place where I feel that the Lord’s Prayer is the best that our soul can do; not that that should be taken as a resignation or disappointment in any form or fashion.

I’m even cautiously optimistic about Christianity. I think it will become a lot more Jewish and Buddhist which is to say, more ethnic and operative.

Thank you for the reminder about gnosticism. I’m actually not well-read and haven’t read Voeglin’s entire work.

Bad with the good, to be sure. One reason the Right has been playing defense is that it is naturally a minority party that comes to power when the Democrats screw up. Without Trump’s personality and a stupendously bad candidate in Harris, we would not be where we are at this moment. Rubio and Vance may be competent but they are boring, and it was Trump the showman that got lots of alienated voters out to the polls. Leftists are quietly sharpening their knives.

You have to take the bad with the good. The situation is dire and there’s no skirting the issue. The Right has been playing little more than defense (half-heartedly) at best for so long that any revanchism not effectively countered will be deserved. Still too much creature comfort to lose, I suppose – AKA weakness.

I expect the bulk of those who make it through the sub-fertility bottleneck will be persons with very short time horizons and no self-control. The movie Idiocracy is vulgar but prophetic. I often wonder why I write posts, but suspect it is for the same reason my whiskers grow. Posting is like shaving, just something I do. I think Voegelin used the word gnosticism for what you call ideologism, but don’t think ideology is going away soon.

It is hard to say what “close” means in this context. Does it mean less time or less effort remaining? Does in indicate decreased uncertainty? I agree with your syllabus, but that’s not how schools are run. The syllabus is determined by supply (what teachers want to teach) and not demand (what students need to know).

But Christianity does not work as a mythology or a convenient fiction, as can be seen by its rapid disintegration when people begin to doubt that Jesus rose from the dead. Pragmatic Christianity has been repeatedly urged, but without success. Faith in God only works so long as God is real in some sense of that slippery word. One smells this swindle behind a lot of modernist theology. It’s in many cases a well-meaning swindle, but a swindle none the less.

I’ve probably mentioned that I stopped maintaining my own blog after realizing, at a certain age, that humanity just keeps repeating the same errors over and over. I found it too tedious to write essay-length monographs of “publishable” quality (such as it was) about the same things. This time it’s different! (It’s not.) This changes everything! (It doesn’t.) We finally have adequate controls and eliminated all the confounds! (You haven’t.)

I’m glad I made it long enough to see Trump, and I expect to be around long enough to see post-Trump, by around fifteen years.

If I am optimistic about anything, it is to see the initial stirrings of a post-Enlightenment, post-ideological humanity. (Is there a word for ideology-ism?)

We should learn something of the rudiments of our technology in school along with law, accounting, and (home) economics. And respect for the miracles the Holy Spirit brings us from the Book of Nature!