“Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
Matthew 5:11-12
I do not wish to convict my enemy of the wrong he commits unknowingly. What kind of person would I be? What kind of Christian would I be? It is easy to say not as a Christian that your enemy is evil, and when he oppresses you that he deserves every awful punishment that could be willed against him. You fancy yourself a good person though, right? Your metaphysics aren’t properly ordered until they have accountability and an end sewn into them. You have to have morality that is clear as day, concrete, and keeps you on the straight and narrow. If you embody your enemy’s evil, likely because you have no coherent metaphysics nor belief in an all-knowing, benevolent God, then you are likely to fall into the same pit your enemy fell into. You will be usurped, and you will most certainly be judged by your Creator.
A consistent, and already contested characteristic of the DR is that they are rabidly wrathful of an undefined evil that they see in the world. They fail to even recognize the source of knowledge of good and evil stamped on their soul. What is “good” when it has no backing? Why are you so fixated on usurping evil with your “good” if not to be identical to your evil predecessor? Is it to obtain power for the sake of obtaining power, or are you just misguided?
This has embodied my distaste with an echelon of the DR that silently can pride itself as the center, but I have compunctions with how willing it is to not mimic its enemy when it is so bloodthirsty for heads on pikes in front of the White House. Frankly, the DR could learn some basic manners about civility and love, and it won’t get that without recognizing Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior; an ontology that will unite them and regulate them of spiritual evils they no doubt are ready and willing to commit.
Because what society that isn’t in collapse doesn’t end up in the hands of worse, less trustworthy, more despicable cretins who make promises they can’t fulfill? The only way to recapture or renew or even simply maintain certain levels of peace and civility in a failing empire isn’t to entrench it further into dismay, but that seems to be the bull’s eye of the DR, and even just the broader New Right and Populist Right (or whatever). They are fixated on winning then not being anywhere near as competent, trustworthy, or level-headed as their out-of-touch predecessors.
Almost reminds me of where this all started: Moldbug. The combined collaboration of different parts of the New Right that resulted in the hot new DR is really just a reiteration of Moldbug’s points with maybe more steamy, visceral hatred, and a touch of a spirituality. Am I wrong? Moldbug’s answer is really quite succinct compared to the layers of intellectual arbitrage going on among DR thinkers. Answers are almost always simple, or at least an easy sequence. Moldbug wants to retire the dispassionate old geezers from power and renew America’s oneness in the form of a businesslike CEO. Badabing. I am not a believer in this violet answer, but it is a lot more preferable, and frankly more realistic, than a coordinated, drawn-out obliteration of the elites; gallows and guillotines galore.
This mentality is sewn with a needle of soreness and whininess. If you are not forgiving of the elites, then no one will be forgiving of you. If you are not willing to send them on house arrest to bungalows in the Hill Country of Texas or Jackson Hole, Wyoming, then what does that say about your own character for operating a stable government? Well, it says you’re willing to be ruthless, maniacal, and wrathful.
And this is where, once again, I get off the NRx and DR train. See ya! Don’t worry, not gonna hit my ass on the way out. Because this childish mentality is the root of fascism and this absolute belief in elite theory that is stronger than the believer’s own metaphysics (normally because it takes an atheist to believe in it). Nothing to say about nations ruled by principle and God’s Law preceding the writing of Machiavelli? Oh, okay. You know what this is, right? It’s resentment. You can’t accept that people can be ruled without some lie, and that as Christians, we stand at the Right Hand of God and realize His Word can breathe life into the dejected and forgotten. You are too busy whining that you didn’t get to be born in le based eugenicist era when you “woulda coulda had a higher up position at a university” and are busy writing Amazon-published books for internet autists. Your worldview is built upon a trove of insecurities. This is why you will fail. This is why it is good you will fail.
The very concept of the DR is based in that fact that they (are):
Morally right (lol).
Competent (at what).
Understand the framework and innards of institutional makeup (public and private).
Okay, but how will you accomplish anything that isn’t founded in your own wrath of “the elites” and likewise your own fart-smelling? (the thin line between smart fella and fart smella is only growing thinner)
I will offer a solution that is honestly laid out for you pretty blatantly in the Sermon on the mount which takes like five minutes to read:
Maybe if you are going to lead a nation (of any sort), you should preclude your institutional creation/recapture/whatever with a very important qualifier. This qualifier is really the only way you can even run anything without being so arrogant and untrusting that you cycle through several different people before being hanged: be a good person.
Oh dammit, looks like the DR failed the first test. It has no combining force because it can’t even get past its own arrogance. In order to do better than your enemies, you must be better than them, and that quite literally means being the morally better alternative. In a pretty clearly collapsing era, when complexity continues to breakdown, and the trust and faith in the elites continues to sour, the last thing people will want are people with literally the political theory equivalent of having a tribal Big Man run your society.
Godspeed, and hopefully you will put Jesus Christ before your own ego. While you continue to resent, there will be people who continue to love, and when the wheat and the weeds have grown side by side, the weeds will be uprooted and thrown away, while the wheat is harvested.
It is love and a centralizing purpose that ultimately guides us, and you will only find that in the Son of Man who was also fully God. You will fall, just like your idols, if you reject His Forgiveness and Prudence for a heart of war, distrust, and manipulation.
“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Matthew 5:43-48
There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God , "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, " Thy will be done."
C. S. Lewis