The video above comes with a huge NSFW warning. However, it is a very important window into the deeply unsettling and unpleasant phenomenon of anti-social justice shamelessness, which has primarily arisen as an anarchic response to social justice’s overreach.
The remarks below follow from the argument of my previous post.
One of the most troubling features of the movement surrounding Trump has been the way in which explicitly and unapologetically racist and sexist voices have moved to the forefront of America’s conversation. The word ‘deplorable’ has been thrown around a lot over the last few months, but this phenomenon truly is deplorable and should openly be declared as such.
However, once again, it is crucial to appreciate the part that social justice and progressive ideology has played in this. In my earlier post, I remarked upon the strange phenomenon that social justice ideologues tend to prefer the notion that perhaps even the majority of the American population is irredeemably sexist and racist to the notion that they might often be well-meaning and intelligent people, with a measure of truth and reasonable concern on their side, people who need to be listened to and reasoned with, rather than merely condemned as hateful and stupid.
The question of why the former belief is the preferred one really needs to be reflected upon. Why are the austere lines of a Manichaean ideology preferred over a social reality that is more tractable to charitable persuasion, forging of common ground, maintenance of relations across ideological divides, and working together despite differences?
I suspect that the reason why has a great deal to do with the fact that it serves the maintenance of the comforting echo chambers of the privileged college students who tend to perpetuate it. Perhaps even more importantly, the Manichaeanism and the accumulation of the complex shibboleths of social justice terminology and ideology all serve to uphold the borders and the moral superiority of an enlightened elite academic, political, and social in-group. The oft-discussed phenomenon of ‘virtue signalling’ refers to the way in which deployment of social justice terminology, policing of other people’s language, expressions of outrage or approval, alignment with or adoption of particular causes, groups, or movements, can all have as its most immediate purpose, not deeply self-invested concrete involvement in ameliorative social action, but the establishment and maintenance of an elite and morally privileged group of enlightened right-thinking people. This phenomenon is especially pronounced in the world of social media.
Manichaean social justice ideology is ideal for the purpose of maintaining the pristine moral superiority of privileged groups on social media. However, most people have to live in the real world, with the very people that have been identified as vicious, evil, and ignorant. Progressives have prioritized their privileged politics of association in their social media cocoons over the politics of the actual relations of vulnerable groups in the real world.
Eavesdropping on social justice oriented groups on social media (Tumblr, blogs like Metafilter, Twitter, etc.), it seems to me that there are very important distinctions to be made between different members of these groups. In particular, there are a lot of very vulnerable and fearful people, who have a great deal of skin in the game. The social justice discourse heightens their sense of being hated and of being radically vulnerable to others who wish to destroy them. They cling to the discourse like fearful clients to a patron.
On the other hand, there are highly privileged people with very little personally invested, who nonetheless derive considerable social advantage from their employment of the discourse as social proof of moral superiority and group membership. There are those on the left who have been pointing out the toxicity of social justice discourse for some time (seriously, read people like Freddie deBoer). The problem here isn’t with the left in general, nor with liberalism in general. Both the left and liberalism have a great deal to offer the world right now. In fact, we need both more than ever. No, the problem is with the social justice ideology of the progressive left in particular.
Of course, hardly anyone in the real world is listening to what goes on in the bubbles of social media in which the progressive left function. Progressive social media is a sort of terrarium, filled with exotic and fragile plants, but sealed off from the wider world, where radically different environmental conditions pertain. Little penetrates into their bubbles from the wider world, and little escapes from them. However, the existence of these bubbles matter immensely because they form the values, associations, minds, and imaginations of the dominant social, political, and cultural classes. This is what occurs in their peer groups and it has become clear that the peer group dynamics of elite progressive liberals powerfully shape the way that they act towards and think of those outside of these peer groups.
It has never been more imperative to recognize that minority groups are used as pawns by the progressive left and weaponized against their ideological and political opponents. When the left is using women, racial minorities, immigrants, and LGBT persons as means to attack straight white Christian men, for instance, it is extremely easy to forget that these groups have never been the enemy. Women are our wives, mothers, daughters, sisters, colleagues, friends. Persons of colour are our neighbours, brothers and sisters in Christ, and family members. Immigrants are people we are knitting into our communities and churches. LGBT persons are our brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, our companions, and our compatriots.
The progressive left operates using the politics of guilt and fear. On the one hand, it exploits a status of moral superiority to incite guilt in lower status groups, who must accept dhimmitude. Men must become emasculated and self-denunciatory, constantly apologizing for the fact of their masculinity. Lower status white people must condemn themselves for representing by their very existence all that is wrong with society. Christians must engage in frequent public expressions of contrition for their faith, its history, and tradition.
On the other hand, it incites and exploits fear in its pet minorities, causing them to cling ever closer to it, to attack its enemies while maintaining their own moral impunity. Its uncompromising liberal ideology must prevail over all, and minorities and vulnerable groups are used to enforce it.
Rather than adopting a gentle approach to navigating the differences between groups, seeking for ways for people with different values and beliefs to live together in peace, progressive liberalism pushes them into the fiercest of opposition. The idea, for instance, that transgender persons, a highly vulnerable group, are best served by imposing an extreme transgender ideology upon the whole population in a merciless manner seems radically misguided. Such an approach may serve the self-idealizing Manichaeanism of elite groups, but it just provokes profound antagonism to transgender persons on the ground. The same is the case with the treatment of bakers, florists, photographers, and registrars who, for reasons of conscience, do not feel able to participate in celebrating gay weddings. Liberal progressivism idealizes the extreme and absolute conflict, not countenancing the possibility that the two groups could coexist happily if only ad hoc arrangements or accommodations were made, if we strengthened the bonds of civil society, and learned how to make space for each other and our differing values. There are a great many LGBT persons who feel exactly the same way as Christians here: we should establish common cause with them against progressive liberalism’s Manichaeanism and collaborate to form strong communities and a robust and hospitable civil society.
The same is true in the discussion about immigration. Liberal progressivism consistently presses to make the immigration debate about white Americans’ hatred of outside groups, refusing to permit a conversation about the justice and prudence of certain radical and unchecked changes to communities and places in which people’s sense of self are powerfully invested.
Liberal progressivism has repeatedly attacked people, not just on account of their actions, ideas, or misplaced values, but on account of what they are. The venomous contempt directed towards ‘men’ or ‘white people’ (of course, coded to refer especially to rural populations) is pure sexism and racism and people often react to it as such. The fact that so few people accept feminism has much to do with its polarizing conspiracy theories, and the ways in which it can often perpetuate itself by practically essentializing a conflict and deep antagonism between the sexes. However, most men and women respect and care for each other enough to resist this framing: they love each other and are deeply invested in each other’s well-being.
When someone like Lena Dunham, so prominent a face of Clinton’s campaign that she was even given control of Clinton’s Instagram account at one point, celebrates the ‘extinction of white men’ it should be clear that Clinton’s campaign will probably be entirely irrelevant to Rust Belt working men concerned about their fate as they face renewed threats of migrating jobs and automation. While those Rust Belt men won’t follow Dunham on Twitter, Dunham’s video illustrates the ideologies of the sort of peer groups at the heart of the Clinton campaign. For such people, a world in which working white men are crushed is often celebrated with a deep schadenfreude, rather than regarded as something to be prevented at all costs for the good of whole communities. They don’t seem to be able to imagine or desire a world in which white men truly thrive and grow to their full stature as persons and members of society. They are so locked in atomizing identity politics that they fail to realize that the interests of working white men are also the interests of their wives, mothers, and daughters (and vice versa). Such ideologies shape policy visions and priorities, which is where the toxic waters of social justice ideology can result in the poisoning of actual communities downstream from the elites’ echo chambers. Or, as happened in the election, those communities will simply turn elsewhere for political patrons.
This racist and sexist social justice ideology has greatly empowered toxic reactionary movements in our national discourse. If white men of a lower social status are expected to adopt a position of cultural dhimmitude before culturally dominant moralizing ideologues, to consent to their cultural and economic obliteration, and to engage in a sort of self-loathing, there will come a time when they start to push back. The power of social justice elites rests heavily upon their supposed moral superiority and their authority in ideologically framing the world of the rest of the population.
As I argued in my previous post, the overreach of progressive liberals, who are chronically out of touch with social and natural reality, has played a prominent part in provoking the rise of a movement that is resistant to shame and guilt, as these had formerly been weaponized to control them. This has taken an especially pronounced form on social media, where a subterranean sewer of racism, misogyny, and hatred has overflowed and its vile contents slop into our conversational thoroughfare.
Once again, it is noteworthy that the leading figures in this are to be found in the abstract bubble of social media, among people who are close to the world of social justice ideology. This movement is one of people deeply ‘street smart’ in the ways of the online world, people who know how to spread hatred through memes and troll humour (most of it is initially provoked less by hatred than by the nihilistic delight of triggering the thin skinned for sport). Trolls don’t function in a vacuum. If you don’t feed them, they die. The trolls of the new racism succeed because they have a vast reservoir of social justice ideology to feed upon near at hand. They derive great pleasure from attacking it and from ridiculing the people who hold it. They purposefully go out of their way to trigger people from a movement that has used triggering as an instrument of ideological control. They have credibility among so many of their peers because they can see that they are attacking incontinent sacred cows. The credibility of the sanctimonious and shrill social justice ideology is utterly destroyed for an increasing number of white men, who have adopted a gleeful nihilism in reaction against it.
People like Milo Yiannopoulos are loved by these young men, not least because, in contrast to the self-flagellation of their social justice believing peers, Milo and his followers are clearly having a great deal of anarchic fun. Milo has credibility with them precisely because he is publicly ridiculing the emperor who has no clothes, directly resisting the social demand that we pretend that movements such as the prevailing form of feminism have deep intellectual integrity and moral authority.
In fact, Milo has public recognition and respect beyond this circle, precisely because he has been one of the leading early voices in exposing the ways in which social justice warriors have asphyxiated public discourse in the university and other fora. Milo goes to a campus, social justice warriors make themselves look like utter fools and lose ever more credibility, their childish tantrums are videoed, shared online, and endlessly remixed for the lulz, and a movement increasingly unchecked by and dismissive of even the many valid concerns within the social justice camp arises. It is essential to recognize that Milo would have no profile whatsoever were it not for the social justice ideologues. The anti-social justice movement has largely been created by the social justice movement. In an ideal world, nihilistic trolls like Milo wouldn’t be in the public conversation. However, in a country of social justice inflicted blindness, the man with one jaundiced eye will become king. Milo was a loud supporter of Donald Trump from early on, calling him ‘Daddy’, and being highly instrumental in the rise of Breitbart as a journalistic organ of the troll right. It is crucially important that we recognize how such forces are created.
The racism of the anti-social justice movement has credibility because so many white men of a lower social status rightly recognize that they have been suppressed by protected lies of social justice ideology. They delight in trolling the sensibilities of social justice ideologues and flaming them, in getting them to react in a way that reveals the impotence of the moral disapprobation that once held them in its thrall. However, this nasty yet seemingly abstract game in the detached world of social media has real world victims as it steadily legitimizes and emboldens some of the most unpleasant elements in society. When the sacred cows of ideology have become so identified with particular racial or minority groups, justifiable attacks on the former can easily be seen to legitimate attacks on the latter.
Against the ugly world created by social justice ideology, we must reject both the politics of guilt on the one side and the politics of fear on the other. We need to learn how to recognize, love, and no longer fear or hate our neighbours. We must turn away from social justice ideology, without dismissing genuine social justice. We must prioritize seeking peace and community in the concrete and real world over the abstract squabbles, status signalling, shibboleths, and group boundary policing. Withdrawn from the abstract context of the absolute and polarizing demands of detached ideologies, it is surprisingly easy by contrast to find common cause and seek a common good with people who differ from us when we relate to them in the concrete world of flesh and blood.
President-Elect Donald Trump (Photo: Gage Skidmore)
I didn’t sleep at all last night. As the election results came in, I had a familiar feeling of growing concern, the same feeling I had experienced watching the results of Brexit. However, this time around, I was more than half expecting a Trump win, albeit not by such a convincing margin.
In both cases, there would have been little joy to be found in any of the results on offer. Both the Brexit referendum and the 2016 American election have exposed deeply and poisonously divided societies. Scott Alexander is right: the result last night shouldn’t change the narrative. It only makes the divisions harder to deny. The election exposed the nation’s climate; the election result is just the immediate weather forecast.
All of the protestations of her supporters notwithstanding, Clinton was a truly terrible candidate. That the same nation that twice elected Barack Obama preferred Donald Trump—Donald Trump!—to her should give an indication of just how terrible. This can’t simply be chalked down to sexism. Exit polls suggest that Trump beat Clinton by 10% among white women. These women voted against the potential first female president for a man who boasted of—and has a string of women accusing him of—sexual assault. The narrative of deep misogyny robbing Clinton and her entire sex of the win to which they were entitled is understandably a reassuring one, but one at risk of becoming a comfort blanket for people unwilling to face up to an unwelcome reality.
On the other hand, the fact that America, in large measure through the white evangelical vote, has elected Donald Trump, should be a cause of profound national and Christian shame and deep concern. Nothing about the result changes the fact that Trump is utterly unsuitable for office: temperamentally, politically, and morally. I think there is great cause to be fearful for the future of America. I unreservedly stand by all of the questions that I asked of people considering voting for him.
Our response to the result and our posture in the coming weeks and months must fundamentally be one of prayer, love, grace, and compassion for our neighbours. There are a lot of people justifiably fearful right now. Many are feeling deeply betrayed. Some are wondering, not without good reason, what this result means for their continued stake in American society. A great many relationships have been fractured or poisoned, some beyond repair. It is increasingly clear that the practice of Christian virtues of kindness, grace, love, mercy, and compassion aren’t merely preferable to their alternative, but essential to the fragile health of America as a nation. Reach out to your neighbours today and show kindness. Pray for President-Elect Trump and for the good of the nation as he leads it. Volunteer in your community. Invite someone to your church.
The Need to Reflect
Alongside such practical responses, it is imperative, however, that we address the question of why this happened. Such reflection, as it may involve unwelcome and painful charges, may be regarded as unloving. I don’t believe that it need be, although it will be difficult and unpleasant. The fact that a man as patently unfit for presidential office as Donald Trump has just been elected to it wasn’t an accident. We need to understand why.
Next year will be an interesting one. I look forward to running against Hillary Clinton, a totally flawed candidate, and beating her soundly
I have been seeing a number of moderate and progressive Christians blaming evangelicals for Trump’s election. There is much truth there and is essential that we reflect upon it. I hope that you read such pieces. However, my purpose here will be to stress a different aspect of the story, one that might deny progressives the balm of moral superiority with which many of them are dressing their wounds today. This isn’t intended to elbow out or deny the great importance of those other accounts, but to supplement them.
Within this post I want to draw attention to one of the major reasons why this has happened, which is the toxic effect that social justice ideology has had upon American society and politics. This ideology has empowered a candidate who shouldn’t have been allowed anywhere near the Oval Office.
Some people have regarded the debates about social justice and political correctness in universities as a pointless and exaggerated sideshow to the political, economic, and social issues that really matter, something ginned up by conservatives to create self-serving outrage. However, the capitulation of universities and the establishment liberal mind with them to the social justice cult is arguably one of the primary causes of our current dire situation.
At their heart, the struggles for free speech in the university are a fight for the ailing mind of the Democratic Party. As long as the various ‘studies’ programmes (women’s, gender, race, etc.), critical theory, and the culture they perpetuate have sacred status in universities and form the prestige religion of the educated elite and their various institutions and organs, our situation will only get worse.
Liberal Obliviousness
For several years, I have been a habitual eavesdropper in the comments over on Metafilter. I appreciate Metafilter for the window that it gives into the minds and habits of discourse of highly intelligent liberal progressives. It has always been very important to me to understand how liberal progressives think, to be able imaginatively to get inside their ideological framework and sense of the world, to understand how deeply well-meaning and smart people could relate to the world radically differently from the way that I do.
Throughout the election period, and over the course of last night (here and here), I regularly lurked in the comments of election threads. What struck me more than anything else was their frequently profound and often utter obliviousness to non-liberal ways of thinking.
This obliviousness isn’t just extensive, it is often insistent. It isn’t merely that people don’t get it: they often completely refuse to get it. I have seen attempts to represent the thinking of Trump voters with any degree of charity treated with great hostility. On account of people’s professed vulnerability and the illegitimacy of giving sympathy to hateful voices, most discussion didn’t stray too far from a narrative attributing everything to misogyny and racism. It was a telling window into another group’s echo chamber.
Within the cushioned walls of their safe place, many of the liberal progressives of Metafilter may take comfort and confidence in the absolute justice of their cause in the Manichaean battle against the countless evil and hateful supporters of Trump who have overrun the country. The American population have unambiguously voted for racism, misogyny, and ignorance.
The troubling thing is the frequent unwillingness to attempt to believe better of their fellow Americans, to explore the possibility that perhaps many Trump voters are intelligent, well-meaning, and, yes, fearful people just like themselves, people who are actually opposed to misogyny and racism and only voted for Trump because they believed there was no other choice. The fact that such liberals seem to find it more reassuring to believe that an overwhelming multitude of their compatriots are irredeemably hateful and evil than it is for them to believe that a well-meaning and intelligent person might support an opposing candidate is immensely revealing. Perhaps it suggests that such people have more of an existential stake in the cocoons of ideological communities than they do in the world of social reality.
The narratives of feminism, gender, and race theory provide a comforting prophylactic against the intrusion of unwelcome reality on many fronts. Being assured that you are a victim of evil social forces, hateful individuals, and dark structural processes conspiring against your success can be a comforting belief when the alternative is to admit the possibility of a natural reality or a broadly unavoidable social reality that doesn’t function according to our egalitarian prejudices. The possibility, for instance, that historic male dominance in social power might largely be a naturally grounded phenomenon is much less palatable than the belief that this order results from a profound and more or less universal evil disorder instigated and maintained by the male sex.
The problem with such sacred narratives and the communities that coalesce around them is that they rigorously preclude intellectual exploration. As genuinely wounded, vulnerable, and fearful people are heavily invested in them for their sense of psychic worth, the community-sustaining narratives cannot be interrogated and stress-tested. Alternative theories are precluded from consideration. Challenges to the narratives are perceived to be an attack upon the people who take refuge in them.
These narratives identify a great many genuine social wrongs, but they consistently overplay their hand, in a ‘motteand bailey’ doctrine fashion. Unfortunately, when they have assumed a sort of sacred status, one cannot challenge the overplaying of the concepts without being presumed to dismiss the genuine wrongs they identify. The cancerous theories that result can grow unchecked by healthy critical processes and steadily metastasize until they destroy their host institutions.
The result of all of this, unfortunately, is an adherence to a comforting ideological script at the expense of charitable engagement in an open public square. Indeed, far from charitable engagement, this ideology encourages ever shriller and angrier attacks on and denunciations of people who differ. Faith in the possibility and power of discourse, persuasion, and the possibility of forging common ground with people who differ are swiftly eroded. When ideological security requires protection from the cognitive dissonance of recognizing, or at least being open to, valid points in opposing arguments, or to the goodness of our critics, politics will rapidly devolve into condemnatory shouting matches. Prevailing social justice ideology is great for virtue signalling for the purpose of in-group membership among progressive liberals. It is useless and, indeed, entirely counterproductive when it comes to the tasks of persuasion or understanding.
Liberal Contempt
One of the prominent themes in the liberal discourses that I have seen throughout this election has been deep contempt for the demographics who would vote for Trump. ‘White’ people (‘white’ primarily serving as code for ‘red tribe’ white people), men, straight and ‘cisgender’ people, evangelicals, older, and more provincial people are frequently spoken of with an unmasked loathing. Their bigotry, hatred, and oppressive actions are responsible for everything that is wrong with the country. They often speak as if these groups have an unrelenting hatred for them and they hate them in return.
While they flatter themselves that they are compassionate and open—they are standing for love!—their vicious vengefulness and hostility towards people, or the way that they sacrifice even the closest relationships on the altar of political and ideological differences, is truly terrifying. The other side isn’t just driven by different yet valid group concerns, or well-meaning but mistaken, or even compromised yet open to moral suasion. No, for so many they are evil and beyond redemption, a group that cannot be won over by reason, service, or love but can only be eradicated. For instance, here is one of many such comments from the Metafilter threads:
This chart showing how The Youngs voted is very, very nice. All we need to do now is get rid of all The Olds.
The contempt that social justice ideology drives can be galvanizing for opponents. The unedifying spectacle of privileged Ivy League students attacking the misogyny and racism of people in struggling American communities who voted for Trump, for instance, and failing to summon up the slightest compassion for people in difficult economic straits, simply because they are white, sticks in the craw of people who haven’t swallowed the ideology. Reading liberal progressives’ own words, one can see that many of them have undiluted hatred for these demographics and just want them to perish. They complain about Trump’s statements about immigrants, but one wonders whether they listen to themselves talk about Midwesterners.
‘How are you feeling about the extinction of white men?’ Lena Dunham, a prominent figure among Clinton supporters, asks her father in a video she posted last week. ‘Well, white men are a problem … straight white men are a big problem, that’s for sure,’ he answers, ‘but I actually feel pretty good about it…’
It is clear to many Trump voters that liberals don’t just disagree with them, but truly hate them for who they are. Another comment from the Metafilter threads:
Bit of a story here, but I’ll tie it into this election—bear with me a second.
So, I own a small business and we’re in the midst of seemingly never-ending renovations. We’ve got a contractor who I strongly suspect screwed us on a flooring job and used outdoor-only sealant on part of the space (we’re doing one half at a time). The fumes have taken a week to subside; it was only when we rented (at our own expense) a super-serious, heavy-duty ventilation system and ran it all weekend that they finally died down enough that our employees said they could bear to work in the other side of the space and NOT have to wear gas masks to work.
We’re in a retail space with apartments above and behind, and our landlord has had to pay for hotel rooms for some of the tenants, chemical testing, and a variety of other things, and has told me he intends to bill us for it. Shit just keeps rolling downhill, and I don’t have the money to pay for this crap.
I’m talking with our attorney and insurance company to see what our options are—long story short, it looks like we’ll be going after this dishonest contractor and/or his insurance company for damages. Whatever he and/or his insurance company (assuming he has one) can’t cover, our insurance should be able to. I wasn’t sure I wanted to do this, because the guy seems kind of like a dumbass and overall kind of nice, and he subbed out the flooring job, and I suspect he honestly didn’t know what happened.
But I’m also about 90% sure he’s a Trump voter. I can just tell.
After tonight . . . fuck it, I’m going after him, guns blazing. Fuck this guy.
Oh, and while I may be a business owner and in the top 4%, income-wise, I’m also a person of color who’s heard my own customers say stupid shit about my own ethnic group on My. Own. Fucking. Sales. Floor. (My skin tone is kind of ambiguous; people don’t necessarily know my ethnic background by looking at me.) And one of my stores—my flagship store, and the one currently under renovation and the one that just got fucked over by said contractor—happens to be in the capital of the old confederacy. So I suspect this guy’s a good ol’ boy.
Well, fuck this guy. You get the next four years. In the meantime, I get your house.
(Yeah, we’re supposed to be better than this, and eventually I will be. But I also have a 21-month-old girl who was born during Obama and who I wanted to see grow up during Hillary’s administration, even if I was initially a “BernieBro.” Now I won’t see that happen. I need somewhere to put this anger. Eventually, I’ll channel it somewhere more productive. Right now, at 1:08 AM on election night, it’s going toward this contractor who could potentially kill my business.)
The sort of open and unapologetic hatred of particular demographics that one sees on the left are a good explanation for why it lost—and, yes, deserved to lose—yesterday. That social justice ideology systematically provides cover for such venomous hatred is part of the problem (‘And let go of the illusion that ANYBODY but white people—particularly white males—gave this election to Trump. White men are scum.’). The fact that this hatred often comes from the more privileged people educationally and socially and is directed at those with a much lower socio-economic status merely makes it all the more reprehensible. Until the ideology that permits such hatred is uprooted, the progressive left will lack both the power to persuade and moral credibility.
Liberal Mercilessness
“When you surround the enemy Always allow them an escape route. They must see that there is An alternative to death.”
—Sun Tzu
White men (well, apart from the enlightened college-educated progressive men who support social justice ideology) have repeatedly been told that they are everything that is wrong with the world. The same is true of evangelicals as a group. They must assume a crippling guilt and much vanish into cultural dhimmitude until demographic changes eliminate them from American society. As they represent evil, no allowances must be made for them, no quarter must be given to them. They must be eradicated.
The last few years have revealed the mercilessness of liberal progressives, their refusal to provide avenues for Christians to shelter from their cultural domination. In a whole host of cases, Christians have seen that liberal progressives intend their cultural extinction. Progressive liberals care little for conscience protections, the integrity and independence of their institutions, their capacity to speak freely in the public square, work and sell without coercion in the marketplace, and enjoy freedom of association.
Liberal progressives have established a cultural total war. Photographers, florists, bakers and others will have their livelihoods destroyed if they don’t sacrifice their consciences and fall in line. If you don’t accept prevailing transgender ideology and socially orthodox views on homosexuality, you can be hounded out of academia. Equality and anti-discrimination laws are expanded as far as possible, with no concern for religious freedom. You must bow the knee. You don’t have a choice. You will be made to care.
The Supreme Court and the Presidency have gained new powers or exploited existing ones in the context of these battles. Christians know that liberals, who have demonized them and have a profound contempt for them, desire to destroy them completely and to use these weapons to do so. With Scalia’s death this threat became a lot more real.
At this point, moral principle and honour can easily be abandoned. It is a matter of survival and evangelicals refuse to consent to the fate designed for them. What they need is not a moral exemplar as a president, but more of a fighter who will act as their defender. The fact that they voted in such numbers for a man as reprehensible as Trump is not surprising, and is in large measure the fault of progressives.
What Identity Politics has Created
The monster of Trumpism is in large measure a monster created by the social justice ideology and identity politics of the progressive left. The more that a demonizing and merciless ideological narrative is used as a weapon against particular demographics, the more that they will resist it. The social justice narrative calls for white people, and men in particular, to assume a crippling guilt, to be the scapegoats for America. Trump’s movement is exactly the sort of resistance that such a narrative will provoke.
White people and men refused the narrative. For all of the progressive left’s insistence upon the evilness of America on account of straight white Christian men, Trump’s movement is founded in large measure upon the counter-claim that, for all of its undeniable faults, the nation of America was once great, and it was predominantly white Christian men who made it great.
Trump is a shameless and guilt-free candidate. This is exactly the sort of candidate who will thrive in the current context. As Michael Story has observed, the progressive left so radically overused the necessary antibiotics of shame and guilt that they produced a shame and guilt resistant candidate and movement. When people appreciate that guilt and shame have been weaponized to force them into cultural dhimmitude, they will start to celebrate shamelessness and guilt-freeness.
As the progressive left constantly demonized their intersecting demographics, non-college educated white Christian men became more assertive about their identity and communities. As their hastening demographic collapse was celebrated on the progressive left, they became more open in celebrating their identities and communities and in reasserting the importance of their immense historical stake in the nation. In some quarters they started to exhibit the patterns of polarized identity politics voting. If every other demographic will play identity politics, why shouldn’t they do so too? And because they are such a big demographic, this is very bad news for the left.
The more that the untreated cancer of social justice ideologies spread through the once public institutions of government, the political parties, academia, big business, the mainstream media, and Hollywood and rendered them tribal, the more that white Christian Americans will simply dismiss their authority and cease to trust them. In place of the old public authorities, they assumed more tribal identities, rather than playing a part in a public square they had come to believe was rotten. In this context, the celebrity figure of Donald Trump, who was trusted as a familiar celebrity and who identified with their demographic was a natural person to rally behind.
They pushed back against the narrative of historical inevitability that condemned them to the ‘wrong’ side. Sabotaging the election of Hillary Clinton, who symbolized the unrelenting forward thrust of a progressive vision of history was especially satisfying for them in this context. Indeed, her manifest weakness as a candidate meant that her presidential bid rested very heavily upon identity politics and the progressive vision of history. A large number of people in America voted against this vision of history yesterday, a vision in which they must consent to cultural death for their past and present sins.
The election of Clinton was also presented by so many on the progressive left as if an action of pure identity politics. The unpleasant particularities of Clinton as a candidate disappeared beneath the claim that people were at long last being given the chance to assent to the inexorable forward march of history and cast a vote for the fairer sex, whose time had finally come. Repeatedly, when Clinton faced challenges or questions, the gender card was played by her supporters, as if the prospective holder of the most powerful office in the world merited gentler treatment by her critics. I am sure that many in the nation envisaged four long years of interminable feminist hot takes, by which Clinton’s sex would always be treated as if it were the most important thing about her. Voting for Clinton was a vote for a particular brand of identity politics and yesterday millions across America said ‘no, thanks’. Reading the pieces that followed America’s decision, I am sure that I am not along in feeling, on this front at least, considerable gratitude.
The Failure of the Liberal Mind
I have already discussed the failure of progressive liberal discourse, with its inability to tolerate ideological dissent and argument. As Heterodox Academy and other groups are highlighting, the modern college is increasingly granting social justice ideology sacred status. The modern college, especially in subjects such as the social sciences, is characterized by radical lack of viewpoint diversity: conservative voices are absent from the conversation.
Liberal progressives cannot understand conservatives, not only because of the Manichaean demands of their social justice ideologies, but also because conservative voices simply aren’t present in their environments. They’ve never been forced to understand intelligent conservatives on their own terms, let alone practice intellectual sympathy. Consequently, they routinely resort to caricatures and weak man arguments.
The sheer scale of progressive liberals’ insulation from the rest of the country is remarkable. Not only do they not understand it: they have virtually no relationship with it. Once again, progressive liberal bien pensants on Twitter have been made to look like fools, completely out of touch with public opinion. The journalists, the comedians, the pundits, the pollsters (with a few exceptions) all now look ridiculous. They really do not have a clue and we should ask why we are still listening to them.
The fact that they are so out of touch also relates to their demonization of Trump supporters and voters. Perhaps this ignorance also drives their hyperventilating warnings about the prospects of a Trump win (Fascism!!! The end of Democracy!!!) as it is rather easy for them to believe that his victory in the presidential election is a victory for all that is evil. After years of their crying wolf about various candidates, one isn’t surprised the public ignores them. Trump’s presidency will almost certainly be a poor one, but there is no reason to expect the apocalypse. When you are largely oblivious to and disconnected from the population that exists outside of your cosmopolitan circles in big urban centres, it is much easier to believe that the rest of the country is a racist and misogynistic religion-addled wasteland. Alternatively, it is easy to believe that John Oliver’s latest smug rant truly ‘destroyed’ Trump.
The Failure of Liberal Anthropology
The liberal mind has also failed in other ways. Only a few days ago, the Huffington Post was saying that it was 98% certain that Hillary Clinton would win and dismissing those who suggested otherwise. One should attend to such signal failures and let the stock of the opinions of such news sources plummet in your mind. Such exceedingly poor predictions are a good sign that they are of limited value when it comes to informing you about the social reality of America.
It is interesting to look back and to see who actually predicted the election. From what I have seen, the people who best predicted the election were generally people who were attentive to human nature and psychology and the values that drive us, the dynamics of human societies and cultures, the qualitative differences between particular demographics, etc., rather than people operating with liberalism’s skeletal anthropology. A number of the people in question, people like Steve Sailer, for instance, are pariahs of the establishment, condemned for noticing things that one is not supposed to notice. Their analysis was primarily qualitative, rather than quantitative. Liberalism’s anthropology needs to be identified as a deep part of the problem here.
People don’t function as mere detached and interchangeable economic individuals, whose differences are primarily on the surface. They form various types of communities, with contrasting characteristics. Groups have deep cultural differences in their structures, values, and behaviours. Sexual differences are real. People have networks of trust, complicated psychologies and attachments, and dynamics of group behaviour. People want to be part of something greater than themselves and desire meaning in their lives. Sadly, the study of these sorts of things is increasingly taboo within the social justice order.
The left’s impoverished vision of humanity is exposed in its failure to read the election. The thin understanding of the fungible homo economicus with the thin veneer of identity politics simply does not do justice to the sort of beings that we are, the sorts of communities that we form, and the manner in which we make decisions. A movement that works with such a poor understanding of human nature will not be able to understand why human beings act in the way that they do. Consequently, hatred is constantly introduced as an explanation where it really need not be. Where a number of us were trying to grapple with the complex motives of hypothesized Trump voters, the progressive left tended to indulge itself in the ideological fantasy that their opponents were merely racists and misogynists, whose hate was leading them to vote against their interests.
The Failure of the Progressive Liberal Social Vision
The progressive liberal social vision has taken aim against the politics of local attachments and championed ever-increasing diversity. It has operated on the assumption that human populations and persons are interchangeable. It has operated on the assumption that economics is the most determinative consideration for human action and values. Immigration has been celebrated as an economically empowering practice, raising the wealth of a nation. The diversity that it establishes has been lauded as that which makes America great.
Unfortunately, the progressive liberal paradigm fails to recognize that importing people is not like importing apples. People have deep and contrasting values, behaviours, forms of community, etc. When you import people, you import their values. When you change the demographic constitution of your nation, you will invite significant changes of its culture, institutions, and values. America was never formed by diversity as such, but by particular regionally differentiated mixes of cultures, some being more successful, others less, and most retaining something of their original and distinct characters, long after their origins retreated into the distant past.
They have wilfully ignored the evidence that high ethnic diversity often directly undermines the intangible communal values and meanings that many people most care about: trust, affinity, belonging, heritage, etc. They have failed to attend to the marked differences between cultures and to the much deeper affinities that certain groups have to America’s historic values and identities. While this definitely need not mean that diversity is undesirable, it should allow for a conversation about a more prudential immigration policy.
Liberalism, and perhaps progressive liberalism especially, has celebrated a sort of cosmopolitanism of shallow and indifferent differences, all curated by its ideology. It has attacked the concern of non-cosmopolitan white voters for protection of national and regional identities against radical demographic erosion as racist and xenophobic. While the Democratic Party took borders seriously in the 90s, it increasingly ideologically fetishizes the absence of them. All while white liberals frequently perpetuate a NIMBYism and gentrification, whereby their communities and schools are spared from the most serious effects of demographic change.
Any suggestion that the integration of the values of specific religious and national communities might pose significant challenges has been dismissed as racist, Islamophobic, and bigoted, despite extensive evidence of the real effects of the cultural divides in question. Liberals have loudly condemned concerns about Muslims, while signally failing to address very real issues of Islamic terrorism. When people ideologically refuse honest discussion of pressing problems, they leave the door wide open for others who will.
Failing to honour the multigenerational stake of particular communities in America and the particularities of American identity, they have practiced an extreme universalism and an indiscriminate welcome, often wilfully pursuing the displacement of America’s historic demographics. When progressive liberals frequently gloat that white Americans will be a minority themselves before too long, those white Americans have good reason to resist demographic movements designed to secure their marginalization. Proud American identity has frequently been treated with a sniffy disdain and the attachments of the majority of the American population regarded with scorn. The fact that many white Americans find deep meaning and identity in the particularities of their national, regional, and even various ethnic attachments is ideologically abhorrent to many progressives.
The more than liberalism has rejected these human realities, the more it has opened up the possibility of a natural attachment to one’s place, one’s people, and one’s culture to curdle into an ugly xenophobia and rampant racism. Sadly, just such a phenomenon has risen to the surface around and been partially legitimized by Trump.
This election has also revealed that progressive liberals don’t actually have quite the power among minorities that they might think. The identity politics of social justice ideology involves progressive liberalism’s ideological curation of a range of different tribalisms, especially within the academy. Whether one is an Asian, a Muslim, a woman, an LGBT person, an African American, progressive liberalism provides you with an ideological framework within which to assert your tribal identity.
Progressive liberalism can easily fall into the trap of thinking that, simply because minorities currently largely align with it and the Democratic Party for the pursuit of their best interests, it will always remain that way. It assumes that a progressive liberal ideology grounded in a European tradition will always enjoy the privileged place, encouraging and accumulating tribalisms like pet lion cubs.
It fails to recognize that the alignment is often opportunistic and cannot be banked upon in the long term. Latinos didn’t come to heel for the Democratic Party as they needed them to this time around, for instance. As demographics shift and minorities gain more power and progressive liberals lose credibility in wider American society, one should not presume that minorities will fall in line behind it. While Islamic scholars may often be treated as if pets of their movement by progressive liberals, for instance, one should not simply presume that this relationship will be sustained in the long term, as little natural affinity exists. It is dangerous to treat tribalisms as pets. When they grow big enough, they may turn on you. Minority groups as groups often have much more in common with social conservatives than with their current liberal patrons. A great many of the things that cosmopolitan liberals most hate about rural white Americans have their analogies in minority groups.
Conclusion
Progressive liberals represent the enervated heart of a culture without deep civilizational confidence, energy, and vigour. As people, they are obsessed with discussing transgressive sex and sexuality, yet are increasingly struggling to reproduce themselves. While they expect the ever-continuing expansion of what they deem civilization, its conveniences, and its pleasures, they are afflicted by a deep and wasting decadence. They have failed to feed the hunger for meaning and purpose in the human soul, perhaps the most devastating failure of the movement of all. Despite its current cultural dominance and power, such a movement cannot survive indefinitely. The future of America and Europe belongs to peoples who have the cultural energy that liberalism lacks.
In an ideal world, progressive liberals might take some important lessons from this election. Perhaps some might develop a principled appreciation for more limited government powers and reach. Increasing the reach and power of government seems great to those who are convinced that the arc of history will always bend in their direction, less so to those who recognize that history doesn’t work that way.
Sadly, I fear that most won’t and social justice ideologies are much of the reason why.
The dynamics of the social justice movement reinforce the echo chambers within which it is trapped, preventing it from encountering, hearing, or listening to challenging voices. Sacred egalitarian values prevent them from grappling with differences. A commitment to a merciless Manichaean vision leads them to demonize, alienate, and even radicalize opponents. An impoverished understanding of human nature prevents them from appreciating and engaging adequately with the human drive for meaning, purpose, and self-transcendence.
The fight for the university as a realm of open and pluralistic discourse, unshackled by social justice taboos and sacred values, has never been more imperative. The cancerous growth of unchecked ideology must be arrested and the valid concerns of social justice thought must once again be situated within the realm of public contestation. On account of the systemic failure of the university to resist the metastasization of social justice ideology, its growth has spread to all of the major institutions of liberal thought and expression. The result has been devastating for the political health of the country, saddling us with a cultural elite that is incapable of understanding or engaging with the nation that they are living within, and fiercely hostile to many of the people within it. This elite is rapidly losing its credibility and moral authority and radicalizing its opponents, rendering those opponents dangerously immune to the antibiotics of guilt and shame.
It should not be forgotten that the current social justice movement is one that is profoundly invested in not noticing the unwelcome contours of reality. If it consistently succeeds in its purposed failure to see realities such as sexual difference, we should not expect it to recognize its own systemic failings in these regards. While it may still seem to enjoy considerable cultural power, we shouldn’t bank on this continuing indefinitely. The election of Trump—something they brought upon themselves—may just be the first of many cracks to appear.
On this week’s episode of Mere Fidelity, Derek and I are joined by J. Mark Bertrand of the Bible Design Blog for a stimulating discussion of the importance of Bible formats and designs. Mark has written about the rise of digital Bibles and their effect on printed Bibles, not least in the development of new Reader’s Bibles.
We discuss Crossway’s beautiful new six-volume ESV Reader’s Bible (and their single volume reader’s Bible here) and Bibliotheca‘s forthcoming reader’s Bible, reflecting upon the ways that these change our relationship and forms of engagement with the biblical text. The article I reference on the movement from the (vo)codex to the co(in)dex can be read here.
In the second of the Republican presidential debates, the issue of vaccines was raised. Donald Trump presented an anecdotal case for an association between vaccines and autism, brashly dismissing the general medical consensus on the matter. Repeating claims he had made in the past, Trump became the most prominent of several celebrities to argue an anti-vaccination case.
In response, Ben Carson pointed to the extensive research on the subject and, albeit not in quite the forceful terms that many of us might have hoped for, challenged the association Trump made, while Trump characteristically smirked and shook his head. Rand Paul, another candidate with medical experience, expressed his belief in vaccines, while declaring that he was ‘also for freedom’ and spoke about his preference as a parent to decide how (and, perhaps by implication, whether) his kids should receive their vaccines.
Amidst the slow-motion multi-car pileup of the Republican primaries and the presidential race, this moment registers as just one relatively minor embarrassment within a long litany of embarrassments for the Grand Old Party. However, it was, I believe, a revealing one, exposing something of the diseased sociology of thought that has given rise to our current febrile political moment.
Many have suggested that Trump voters must be stupid to support such a man, and have implied that one’s voting choices will follow fairly naturally from the level of one’s brain power. The problem lies with the individual, in their lack of intelligence: you’d be a fool not to vote for Clinton.
Yet I believe that this is badly to misplace the issue, which has much more to do with the social character of thought and knowledge. If we were to plunge directly into a scientific debate about vaccines, virtually every layperson could soon be shown to be out of their depth. At some point, all of us have to take someone else’s word for it. The difference between anti-vaxxers and the rest of the population typically lies less in their level of smarts than in their level of trust in authorities.
Trump’s argument against vaccines works because people no longer trust the authorities—the governments, the scientists, the medical professionals, etc.—who tell them that they are safe. The biased mainstream media, the liberal elite, lying politicians, activist judges, crony capitalists, politically correct academics, the conspiring government, scientists bought off by big business, hypocritical religious leaders: all are radically corrupt, motivated by self-interest, and radically untrustworthy. In such a situation, people’s realm of trust can become more tribal in character, focusing upon people of their own class, background, friendship groups, family, locality, ethnicity, nationality, religion, etc. and deeply suspicious of and antagonistic towards people who do not belong to those groups. This collapse of trust hasn’t occurred because the general public has suddenly become expert in the science behind vaccinations and discovered the authorities’ claims concerning vaccines to be scientifically inaccurate. The trust that has been lost was never directed primarily at such scientific claims. Rather, it was a trust in the persons and agencies that presented us with them.
The loss of trust in the persons and agencies happened on many different fronts. It happened as people ceased to believe that the persons and agencies were being open with and transparent to them, that they were committed to their well-being and had their best interests at heart, that they were devoted to truth over power and self-advancement. However, with the loss of that trust, a lot of beliefs that those persons and agencies guaranteed, which formerly would have gone unquestioned, became collateral damage.
Trump encourages and takes advantage of this radical distrust of authorities. Trump isn’t a man renowned for his veracity and the reliability of his statements, even among his supporters. However, he has something that his opponents lack—people’s trust. This seems counterintuitive: don’t we trust people only to the extent that we believe that their statements would hold up well when fact-checked? No. There can be high trust in situations where we believe that what people are saying is inaccurate, and no trust in other situations, even when we deem a person’s statements to be accurate. Trust attaches to people over statements.
Trump has his supporters’ trust because truth is a great deal more than factual accuracy; Trump is ‘true’ in a way that Clinton and other politicians don’t seem to be. Trump’s unreservedness, plain-spokenness, and preparedness to say politically incorrect things mark him out from the slipperiness most people have come to expect from politicians. Trump’s willingness to speak his mind—with all of its inconsistency, reactivity, dangerous impulsivity, and confusion—is a dimension of truthfulness that can be intoxicating to people accustomed to the rigorous self-censorship, spin and polish, and artful evasion of regular politicians. His preparedness to spark outrage and damage his reputation among the rich and powerful in going against political correctness can serve as an effective signal of his commitment to telling it as it is. People will forgive a great deal of inaccuracy when they think that you are being open and candid with them, unfeigned in your sentiments, and not purposefully trying to deceive or withhold your true opinion from them.
Furthermore, by openly flouting the regime of political correctness, Trump creates a space within which people finally feel able to voice truths that have been censored. In this respect, Trump seems to be on the side of truth for many people. Even though hateful falsehoods may also be released, Trump genuinely seems to have provided an escape valve for some inconvenient truths and unpopular opinions that were repressed. To be given the breathing room to say things that you firmly believe to be true can be remarkably liberating for people.
Finally, Trump also seems to be ‘true to’ people. He openly identifies with marginalized white Americans and stands with them at the receiving end of the derision that bien pensants habitually direct at them. He is willing to become a pariah and to sacrifice the once valuable prestige of his own name. Although I believe that Trump’s track record provides plenty of evidence to suggest that this apparent loyalty isn’t all that it seems, his semblance of it is more than many other politicians can offer.
People’s hunger for truth is easily mistaken for a pure rational desire for accuracy and certitude. Yet our hunger for truth is, at a deeper level, our desperate need for something or, more typically, someone to trust. Where radical distrust in the ordinary organs of knowledge and thought in society prevails, most don’t cut themselves off from everyone else in unrelenting suspicion. Rather, in such situations we typically see a dangerous expansion of credulity, of unattached trust, just waiting for something to latch onto, for someone or something—anything!—to believe in. Alongside this expansion of credulity, we also see a shrinking of the circle of trust. Hence, wild and fanciful conspiracy theories gain traction, and new dissident and tribal communities form around them.
People like Trump thrive in an ecology of untruth. However, although they contribute to, take advantage of, and exacerbate the problems of such an ecology of untruth, the blame for it can seldom be placed primarily at their door. It takes the participation of many different groups and the coming together of many different factors to establish the conditions within which someone like Trump succeeds.
Some of the factors that have given rise to our current situation are related to the current form of our media. The unrelenting and over-dramatized urgency of the media cycle, especially as that has been accelerated on social media, heightens our anxiety and reactivity. It foregrounds political threats and changes and makes it difficult to keep a cool head. When our lives are dominated by exposure to and reaction to ‘news’ we can easily lose our grip upon those more stable and enduring realities that keep us grounded and level-headed. Both sides of the current American election have been engaging in extreme catastrophization and sensationalism for some time. This has made various sides increasingly less credible to those who do not share their prior political convictions and has made us all more fearful of and antagonistic towards each other. It has also created an appetite for radical, unmeasured, and partisan action.
The Internet has occasioned a dramatic diversification and expansion of our sources of information, while decreasing the power of traditional gatekeepers. We are surrounded by a bewildering excess of information of dubious quality, but the social processes by which we would formerly have dealt with such information, distilling meaning from it, have been weakened. Information is no longer largely pre-digested, pre-selected, and tested for us by the work of responsible gatekeepers, who help us to make sense of it. We are now deluged in senseless information and faced with armies of competing gatekeepers, producing a sense of disorientation and anxiety.
Where we are overwhelmed by senseless information, it is unsurprising that we will often retreat to the reassuring, yet highly partisan, echo chambers of social media, where we can find clear signals that pierce through the white noise of information that faces us online. Information is increasingly socially mediated in the current Internet: our social networks are the nets of trust with which we trawl the vast oceans of information online. As trust in traditional gatekeepers and authorities has weakened, we increasingly place our trust in less hierarchical social groups and filter our information through them.
Our news online is increasingly disaggregated. A traditional newspaper is a unified and edited body of news, but online we read from a multitude of competing sources, largely sourced by friendship groups. As our news no longer comes as a package, exists within a click-driven economy, and is largely sourced for purposes of social bonding, sensationalism, catastrophization, ideological reinforcement, outrage, and the like are incentivized. In a world of so much easily accessible information, news is a buyer’s market and pandering to the consumer by telling them what they want to hear becomes a greater temptation. Coupled with the growth of non-mainstream media sources that are often much less scrupulous about accuracy, the result is a much less truthful society. Even formerly respectable broadsheets are now not above publishing tabloid-style articles and hot takes and clickbait akin to popular websites.
The traditional mainstream media also seems to be increasingly partisan and left-leaning, serving as the organ of privileged opinion. Even the comedians that one would traditionally expect to criticize those in power seem to spare the progressive left their ridicule.
The place of traditional gatekeepers within this new environment is much less certain for several reasons. As people have more unmediated access to information themselves, they can often become distrustful of the gatekeepers, thinking that they have been keeping information from or misguiding them. Faced with a growing number of competing gatekeepers, people can adopt a self-serving pick-and-choose approach. There are many hundreds of articles online saying that vaccines cause autism: why should I believe the doctors, who are clearly in the pockets of Big Pharma?
Gatekeepers can also fail when the contexts of truth they protect and serve grow too large. They end up speaking beyond the realm of their knowledge and swiftly lose credibility, especially when their ignorance is discovered in a realm of another’s knowledge. The failures of the gatekeepers—real and supposed—are also increasingly exposed, in a manner that surrounds them with a suspicion and uncertainty that effectively erodes the authority that they once enjoyed. A great many cases of abuse and subsequent institutional failures in exposing them and bringing the perpetrators to justice have made people distrustful of traditional gatekeepers.
The more that the failures of traditional gatekeepers are reported and known, the more cynical and distrustful the public can become. Cynicism has a devastating effect upon any society, because we cease to hold leaders and gatekeepers to a standard of truth: we expect them to be untruthful, unreliable, and untrustworthy. In the process, we can become inured to lies. We presume that we are being lied to, to the point that we no longer bother to protest. Cynical and jaded, we are also inured to truth, gradually shutting ourselves off from voices that might challenge us with a truth we don’t already know.
The power of traditional gatekeepers was largely established by public, civil, and religious institutions. These institutions typically had established standards to which their gatekeepers were held and processes by which they were selected. The trust in the gatekeepers arose in large measure from a trust in the institutional means by which they were selected, tested, and held accountable. These institutions—universities, political parties, churches, newspapers, publishing houses, etc., etc.—themselves provided the ‘gates’ to public discourse and participation. The keepers of the gates—selection committees, publishers, editors, pastors, theologians, etc., etc.—were produced by and defended their institutions. They were subject to training and a standard of excellence.
There are neither gates nor gatekeepers in the same way online. Instead of a well-ordered and bounded public square, a realm of discourse is thrown open for all and sundry. Much of the Internet functions as a radically egalitarian society, where no clear differentiation is made between people who are qualified to speak and those who are not. Everyone can now be a self-appointed opinionated expert, courtesy of Google and Wikipedia. It is also so much easier now to form movements and discourses that are independent of the institutions and agencies that could once maintain the standards of the public conversation and vet its participants.
In the rampant populism of the Internet, the notion that everyone has the right to their own opinion can go to seed. An egalitarianism and democracy of opinions neglects the reality that most people’s opinions on most subjects are unformed, untested, and quite worthless. The differences between mere opinionators and people with the authority and responsibility of office, extensive experience, or advanced research become blurred.
This populism is encouraged, not only by the lack of structural and institutional differences between voices online, but also by various breaches that have been created between people and traditional gatekeepers, breaches that make it increasingly difficult to see them as being for and with us. These breaches take many different forms. The breach between cosmopolitans and provincials is one such breach: more than just a difference in wealth, this is a deep and fundamental difference in identity, values, and loyalties. The breach between locals and experts is another breach: the sort of abstract knowledge of experts has been valued over local, particular, and situated knowledge. There is a geographical breach in the US between the ‘coastal elites’ and the people in ‘flyover country’. The growing racial, religious, and cultural diversity of the country introduces further breaches. The collapse of mediating institutions between those in power and the rest of the population, such as the mainline Protestant churches is another breach. Alongside these breaches has occurred a far more fundamental breach in affection, resulting in mistrust and often antipathy.
The quality controls of the institutions that we once trusted have also become suspect. The university, for instance, is increasingly regarded as a highly politicized and tribal institution, to the point of excluding challenging, though rigorously formed, views from the conversation. Critical theory and various ‘studies’ courses are associated with an extreme hermeneutic of suspicion and various notions (e.g. the ‘Patriarchy’) that often function much like conspiracy theories, while holding considerable authority and being immune from most direct challenge. The extreme confirmation bias, closure to opposing or questioning voices, political partisanship, shutting down of debate, enforcement of politically correct codes of speech, action, and even thought, and the seeming detachment from reality on issues such as sexual difference have all profoundly harmed the credibility of the university as a public and open institution in the eyes of many.
The sort of people who would vote for Trump are often at the receiving end of the shrill outrage of the conspiracy theorists that certain university departments now churn out. As the university has been overrun by certain left wing sacred cows, we all have to live with an officially sanctioned excess of protected ‘bullshit’. The transformation of certain universities into propagators of a left wing authoritarian social justice ideology is one of the crucial factors behind the rise of Trumpism as a sort of anti-‘social justice’ movement. That so many non-college educated white males rally behind Trump has a lot to do with the fact that they are treated as scapegoats for so much that is wrong with America by economically and socially privileged people in colleges. The old organs and guarantors of truth and truth-driven discourse are no longer regarded as trustworthy.
The current atmosphere of distrust in experts, authorities, and the proliferation of conspiracy theories is one that arises in large measure from a deeply felt alienation, stigma, and betrayal. It also results from the disorientation caused by an excess of information and a growing number of competing voices claiming the authority to make sense of the world. In such situations, there will be fundamental shifts in people’s circles of trust and in the ways that they come to their opinions. As circles of trust change, people’s beliefs can shift in surprisingly rapid ways, ways that wouldn’t be predictable to those who aren’t attending to the social dimensions and processes of belief and knowledge.
Evangelicalism’s Shifting Networks of Trust
To this point, I have been focusing upon Trump supporters. However, the social dynamics of trust in our determination of truth are no less important in understanding current shifts in evangelicalism.
Once again, what we determine to be true is in large measure a function of whom we trust. As in the case of vaccine science, most in depth theological debate is beyond the level of understanding of the average person in the pew. The average person in the street can be given a basic understanding of why it is important to get their kids vaccinated, more than enough for them to act on that belief. The same is true of biblical truth: any good pastor should be able to instruct a congregation in sound and orthodox theology in a manner that equips them to live out the truth in their lives.
However, the limits of such an understanding can easily be exposed when subjected to cross-examination. While the average person in the pew could articulate the fundamental truth of the Trinity and worship God faithfully as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, most wouldn’t be able to master the philosophically and exegetically dense theological arguments that have been presented on various sides of historic and continuing Trinitarian debates. Nor should they be expected to: such theological arguments were produced for and by the most brilliant thinkers in the Church, not primarily for the person in the pew. While many could rightly direct you to passages of Scripture that teach particular doctrines, hardly any could make the sort of rigorous exegetical and lexical cases that their readings of those texts are founded upon. Ultimately, they largely have to take scholars’ word for it.
When such a person claims to have ‘researched’ an issue, it is important to bear in mind that their ‘research’ is chiefly second hand: a matter of picking and choosing which supposed first-hand researchers to trust, with rather limited understanding of what constitutes good and bad front line research. This is much the same as in the case of people who claim to have ‘researched’ the connection between vaccines and autism online. They may regurgitate the research of first-hand scholars, but will often struggle truly to digest, process, and theoretically metabolize it. Once again, this is less of a failure on their part than a significant limitation.
In the past, theologians and pastors typically heavily mediated theological thought to their congregations. The edification of church members was crucial, but theologically trained pastors were expected to pre-digest Scripture and theology for the sake of their congregations and feed them with it to the point that they could process ever more solid food.
The rise of the Internet, however, has posed serious problems for this model. Increasingly, the person in the pew is receiving their theological and biblical understanding independent of pastoral oversight and guidance, often through a sort of personal ‘research’ akin to that of the Googling anti-vaxxer.
Church leaders are increasingly facing a situation where members of their congregations have an ever-growing and diversifying interface with a dizzying array of different figures. Congregants are following people on Twitter and Facebook, reading various blogs, listening to podcasts, watching Christian videos on Youtube, participating in online forums and communities, reading a far wider range of books than they probably would have done in the past, watching Christian TV shows, listening to Christian radio stations, etc., etc., all within the comfort of their own houses. The sheer range of sources that the members of a congregation will be exposed to nowadays is entirely unprecedented. Although some may expect pastors to keep on top of all of this, I really don’t see how they realistically can.
The result has often been a situation—similar to that faced by vaccination programmes—in which pastors and church leaders urgently have to protect the spiritual health of their congregations against false teachings that untrained people have adopted through their independent ‘research’. In such a situation, few things are more important than a strong bond of trust between lay people and those in authority over them, who are responsible for their well-being.
However, that bond of trust has come under extreme and sustained assault in the last couple of decades. With the revelation of scandals of spiritual and sexual abuse and subsequent cover-ups and gross mishandling, pastors and church leaders are subject to much more suspicion. Pastors, prominent Christian leaders, and teachers may commonly presume that authority is something that comes with the job position. However, this election is just going to provide further evidence of how profoundly mistaken this assumption actually is. Especially among the up-and-coming generations, the older generation of prominent evangelical leaders has less and less influence. Their widespread support of Trump will just be the final nail in the coffin of their credibility for a large number of younger people. ‘Authority’ counts for little where trust no longer exists. Not only will this mean that their future statements won’t carry weight: they will be actively distrusted. Once again, there is a dangerous situation of unattached trust, ripe for the establishment of counter-communities.
Many people now privilege online bloggers, speakers, and writers over the pastors that have been given particular responsibility for the well-being of their souls. The result is growing competition among Christian gatekeepers, which increasingly positions the individual Christian, less as one fed by particular appointed and spiritually mature local fathers and mothers in the faith, and more as an independent religious consumer, free to pick and choose the voices that they find most agreeable. Sheep with a multitude of competing shepherds aren’t much better off than sheep with no shepherds whatsoever.
The egalitarian online environment also makes it difficult to discern the difference between those who hold ordained pastoral office and responsibility and people who are simply self-appointed online ‘influencers’ (in case you need a reminder, I am just a blogger: I am not your pastor). It makes it difficult to discern the difference between trained and orthodox theologians and untrained people who are simply regurgitating error. Everyone appears to be a peer online, which dulls our awareness of the fact that some people have authority over us and others have other forms of authority resulting from privileged knowledge, training, or experience. Everyone is expected to make up their own opinion in such a world, but very few people have the means to make up their minds well.
Once again, when information overwhelms us and traditional gatekeepers are no longer trusted, we can renegotiate our networks of trust and find a new sense of orientation in tight-knit communities. In my recent ebook on the ‘new storytellers’, I described the manner in which many—Christian women especially—now turn to a class of people who act as what one might call ‘super-peers’ in order to navigate the confusing new world without trustworthy authorities. These ‘super-peers’ are typically untrained non-experts, whose significance arises from a situation of alienation between traditional Christian gatekeepers and persons in the pew.
The power of these ‘super-peers’ is the power of trust. Many of these ‘super-peers’ are advocates for women, who contrast with the pastors and churches they believe have betrayed them (most recently in their open support for the misogynist Trump). They give voice to truths that have been officially suppressed or downplayed—to the truth of women’s sense of marginalization in the Church and to the truth of abuse. These ‘super-peer’ women are ‘peers’ who are relatable and likeable, who form close communities and ideological consensuses around themselves. They are typically near in age to most of their followers, not least because there is a crisis of alienation between the generations in many churches, and people are looking for leaders of their own generation, rather than attending to fathers and mothers in the faith.
As they are the key influencers within their communities, they are appropriately termed ‘super-peers’. They represent a peculiar kind of populist leader, leaders who illustrate the way in which our determination of truth depends on more than merely narrow concerns of accuracy and veracity.
Whereas in the past, communities of trust would tend to be locally based, typically rooted within church congregations, extended families, workplaces, and neighbourhoods, in the age of the Internet, communities of trust are increasingly abstracted from locality. Twenty or thirty years ago, one’s community of faith would primarily have been found in one’s local congregation, and would have been overseen by pastors and church leaders. Nowadays, our communities of faith are much more diffuse and much less pastorally guided. Where once pastors, church leaders, and mature Christians could keep watch over a congregation, ensuring that error didn’t creep in, this is much harder to do today. Likewise, dissenting and disaffected persons are much more able to form their own independent communities online.
Jen Hatmaker is a good illustration of some of these dynamics. Hatmaker isn’t a trained theologian, yet her changed position on same-sex marriage has recently received an immense amount of discussion among Christians. In some respects, there isn’t a huge difference between Hatmaker on same-sex marriage and a celebrity anti-vaxxer who has claimed to have extensively ‘researched’ the issue. In both cases, even supposing they were correct, the person’s position is of little academic worth (because they only have very limited ability to engage in first-hand research themselves). Nevertheless, it is of deep social consequence and danger. The opinions of such persons hold weight on account of their popularity, likeability, and people’s instinctive trust of them, whereas the official authority figures challenging them are distrusted, despite their greater learning.
To understand the future of evangelicalism, there are few things more important than attending to currently shifting networks of trust. If people are confident that evangelicalism will generally be opposed to same-sex marriage in twenty-five years’ time, for instance, I wonder whether they have been paying close attention to the movements that have been taking place. The most prominent voices that have opposed same-sex marriage are now regarded with deep distrust from many quarters, especially by the younger generations, not least on account of their politics and the abuse scandals that have tarnished their reputation. People no longer trust them as leaders, so their position on same-sex marriage is now thrown into greater question. Although they may officially have authority, practically they have little authority over the younger generations. Most of us have LGBT persons in our families and friendship groups and many of us have a much closer bond with them than with an older generation of Christian leaders. Many people’s trust in Scripture’s power to speak to issues of gender and sexuality has also been damaged through the influence of purity culture and the often hateful extremism and callousness that they associate with traditional evangelicals’ opposition to homosexual practice and same-sex marriage.
Again, younger generations have grown up and live in a context of overwhelming information and competing gatekeepers. As a result, they have learned to function more as independent theological and religious consumers, assembling their own faith through picking and choosing among authorities. As much biblical and theological reasoning lies beyond the power of their independent understanding, yet they must now determine what positions to hold based on their own research, they are increasingly inclined to treat theological positions whose truth lies beyond their power to determine as adiaphora. Alternatively, they introduce different criteria for assessing truthfulness, criteria more amenable to minds without rigorous theological education, privileging impressions or their sense of what is most ‘loving’. In such a context, a heavily contested view such as the legitimacy of same-sex marriage is likely to come to be regarded as optional by many.
As with the social crisis of truth, thought, and knowledge facing America, the crisis facing the Church will only be addressed as it is addressed precisely as a social problem. Where trust has broken down, a crisis of truth will soon follow in its wake. Rebuilding trust once lost is an immensely daunting and difficult task, yet it is the task that faces us. Where trust is lacking, there is little to be gained from directing ever more information and arguments at people. Repentance must be made, forgiveness must be sought, bonds of trust must be repaired, and then truth might begin to do its work.
If you are considering casting your vote for Donald Trump tomorrow, you have almost certainly had quite enough of listening to his critics, with their many wild claims and accusations. Fear not, within this post I am not asking you to listen to another critic make hyperbolic and shrill prognostications as he pontificates about Trump’s unsuitability for office. Watching this election from the other side of the Atlantic, I think I can see why many Trump voters might have had their fill of his critics. Nor do I have any desire to encourage you to vote for Hillary Clinton, Evan McMullin, or any of the other third party candidates tomorrow. None of them would get my vote.
No, I want you to put all of the critics to one side for a while. They have had their say and you are probably justified in doubting the accuracy and trustworthiness of many of them. For now, I want you to close out their voices and to listen carefully to your own. I will offer you ten sets of questions and I only ask that you reflect carefully upon the responses that you give.
You are entirely free of any duty to give an account of yourself to me—that is not the purpose of these questions. They are for your sake, not for mine. We must all give an honest account of ourselves to ourselves and before God and the question of whether it is possible to vote for our favoured candidate in good conscience is a question that we must all ask of ourselves. In an election where so much seems to be at stake, there is no easier time for the voice of conscience to be drowned out by other concerns. To be capable of acting in good conscience we must be people committed to asking the toughest questions of ourselves and unflinchingly addressing them, without deflecting attention to the failures of others. The only person that you need to persuade of your answers to the following questions is yourself.
What do I believe will happen to the credibility and moral authority of Christians who support voting for Donald Trump? As the demographic advantages that once gave Christians social and political power fall away, will we still have moral authority in standing against the evils, depravity, and corruption that exist on the left? Are we in danger of sacrificing immensely important moral authority and clarity for short-lived political capital? At what cost am I prepared to win or hold onto political power? Is there profit if, rather than to gain the world, I compromise my soul so as not to lose it?
Is Trump someone with a track record of being faithful to his promises and of loyalty to others when things get tough? Do I believe that Trump is someone who consistently puts others before himself? Do I believe that Trump is prepared personally to sacrifice to ensure the well-being of American Christians and keep his promises to them if he comes to power? Do I believe that Trump is genuinely committed to and capable of wisely addressing issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage?
What bearing does Trump’s personal morality have upon his suitability for office? Do I hold to a double standard for my political opponents in this respect? If Trump were running for election as the Democratic Party’s candidate, what would I be saying about him?
Considering Trump’s self-reported treatment of and attitudes towards women, and the many outstanding accusations against him, what does my willingness to support him nonetheless say of the relative importance that women and their concerns have in my view of the world? How do I square Trump’s widely reported statements and actions with my honouring of my wife, my mother, my daughter, my sister, and/or the many other women in my life?
While the blow his election would strike against the current political order might be cathartic, is Trump the sort of person that I trust to build an America where truth and righteousness would prevail in its place?
Do I believe that Trump has a suitable temperament for a world leader? Is he a person I trust to bring calm and peace to volatile and divisive situations? Do I trust him to respond wisely to crises, rather than to react impulsively? Do I believe that Trump is someone with the prudence and judgment to make wise policy decisions, to follow through on his promises, and to respond to situations in an effective manner?
Is President Trump someone I expect to represent me and my compatriots and America’s interests with dignity and moral credibility on the international stage? Is he the face of America that I want the whole world to see?
Do I believe that Trump’s presidency will be a successful and a popular one, largely free of scandal, producing a better, happier, and less divided America? Merely from the perspective of political prudence, will a Trump presidency place us in a stronger electoral position in four years’ time, or will we have established the conditions for a devastating blowback, a situation far worse than a loss this time around?
How does Trump make up his mind on issues? What place does book reading have in his life? Is his mind one formed by a 24-hour TV news cycle and an entertainment culture? Is he someone I trust to read and digest briefings, to reflect deeply on events, and to deliberate carefully in considering an appropriate response to them?
What do I believe the election of Donald Trump to the presidency would mean for minority American groups? What do I believe his election would mean for the future of race relations? On what basis do I believe that my Christian interests will prevail over those of his supporters who have a more racist animus?
Self and Leadership A summary of Edwin Friedman’s A Failure of Nerve and some reflections upon the relevance of his thought to Christians and the Church.
A piece of mine has just been published over on the Theopolis Institute. Within it, I explore the broader scriptural themes that are in play in the story of the Levite and his concubine in Judges 19.
The story of Judges 19 and the subsequent chapters are some of the most shocking and appalling accounts in all of Scripture. The callousness of the old host and the Levite, and the monstrous brutality of the men of Gibeah, leaves us feebly scrabbling for words by which to surmount our dumbfoundedness. Yet the actions of the old man and the Levite in chapter 19 are only some of the initial events in a litany of cruelties, crimes, and catastrophes, as the evils of that night in Gibeah exploded into a conflagration that engulfed the entire nation, and almost eradicated the tribe of Benjamin from Israel.
Despite the violence and wickedness of Judges 19-21, this dark passage in Israel’s history is not excluded from the musical order of Scripture. Rather, its meaning is only truly perceived within the broader context established by that order, as within that order it is related to other events and times. Indeed, its presence at the end of Judges—although out of historical sequence—serves to frame it as a narrative that climactically expresses the moral state of Israel without a king, bringing themes of the book to a head (much as the events of 2 Samuel 24, also out of historical sequence, serve to highlight the movement of the themes of the book towards the future establishment of the temple).
I have an essay in the latest issue of Primer, a publication that is a cross between a journal and a book. Each of the two issues every year is devoted to a particular topic, with several essays designed to orient pastors, church leaders, and Christians more generally to the theological matters that are at stake. Primer is designed for engagement, for readers to put notes in the margins, to underline, etc. They would be useful for discussion groups, for instance.
My essay offers a biblical introduction to maleness and femaleness from Genesis 1 to 3, following by an application of some of the principles drawn from the exegesis of those chapters to the debates surrounding same-sex marriage and transgenderism. The following is the opening of my essay:
Although the Scriptures address the topic of the sexes on many occasions, it is within the opening chapters of Genesis that its foundational treatment of the subject is to be discovered. That
so much of the fundamental teaching on the subject of the sexes is contained within the first three chapters of the Bible is itself an initial indication of just how closely entwined this subject is with the scriptural narrative more generally, and how important a theme it must be for any theology that faithfully arises from it. The more closely we attend to the text of Genesis 1-3, the more apparent it will be that gendered themes are subtly diffused throughout.
Yet the foundation offered by Genesis 1-3 may initially appear unpromising in some respects. As a more literary and poetic narrative text, it does not present the same robust propositional statements that we find in such places as the Pauline epistles. Those searching for clear theological propositions may rummage around in the packing chips of narrative and come up with relatively little reward for their efforts. Not only do literary readings of narrative texts demand very sensitive and delicate forms of interpretation, they also seem much more vulnerable to contestation. Without definitive propositional statements, such passages seem considerably less serviceable for direct theological controversy, which has provoked the majority of the writing on this subject over the last couple of decades. The strength of a literary reading is seldom as straightforward as the strength of a logical argument. The former is incapable of forcefully securing assent: if and when it persuades, it does so through its elegance, fittingness, and attractiveness. To those who refuse to be persuaded and insist upon reading a text against its grain for their own purposes, it may present little challenge.
There are, however, advantages to building our theology upon such a foundation. As much of the theological teaching of Scripture is conveyed through subtle literary means, any approach that attends closely to narrative will be much more securely grounded. It also offers a considerably broader base than many doctrinal arguments, which depend upon a few heavy load-bearing texts for support. Such literary readings can expose the hidden root systems of biblical teachings in scriptural narratives, revealing how deeply embedded in the text certain claims are, and the impossibility of removing them without considerable violence. Although a theological case established upon such a literary reading may be lightly dismissed, it can only truly be answered by a more sensitive and attentive reading of the passages in question. It is precisely at this point, rather than in the clash of competing propositions and their arrayed battalions of proof-texts, that the weaknesses and flaws of unscriptural positions often emerge, as they fail to offer a compelling reading of the Scriptures in their breadth.
If you are interested in reading the rest, you can buy a copy of the latest issue of Primer from The Good Book Company here. The two previous editions are also available for purchase. Issue 1 is on the doctrine of Scripture. Issue 2 is on the doctrine of Sin.
On 
If you are considering casting your vote for Donald Trump tomorrow, you have almost certainly had quite enough of listening to his critics, with their many wild claims and accusations. Fear not, within this post I am not asking you to listen to another critic make hyperbolic and shrill prognostications as he pontificates about Trump’s unsuitability for office. Watching this election from the other side of the Atlantic, I think I can see why many Trump voters might have had their fill of his critics. Nor do I have any desire to encourage you to vote for Hillary Clinton, Evan McMullin, or any of the other third party candidates tomorrow. None of them would get my vote.
I have an essay in 
My essay offers a biblical introduction to maleness and femaleness from Genesis 1 to 3, following by an application of some of the principles drawn from the exegesis of those chapters to the debates surrounding same-sex marriage and transgenderism. The following is the opening of my essay:
If you are interested in reading the rest, you can buy a copy of the latest issue of Primer from The Good Book Company 
Alastair's Adversaria 
