The Clash of the Tribalists
July 27, 2016 Leave a comment
Do you find it ironic that the two major political candidates and their parties each rail against and denounce a “rigged system” but went ahead and rigged their own respective conventions for a certain outcome?
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When someone cuts in front of you in the grocery store line (as happened to me this past weekend) and then looks the other way pretending that no such thing ever happened, well, that is pretty much what happened at the Republican National Convention. Conservatives were approaching their turn to speak during regular order and in come Trump supporters and the RNC Rules Committee between them and order.
Dissenting Conservative voices were kept from speaking while those who got their “way“ looked the other way as if nothing happened. This type of strong arm bullying tactic, often used by supporters of banana republic dictators, is being employed to “Make America Great Again!”
The Rep party has become diluted with a Victim Tribe so large that it will never be the same. This tribe includes the likes of the KKK’s former leader David Duke because Duke agrees with Trump or, better, Trump thinking matches Duke’s thinking.
The GOP, in forcing the nomination of a reality TV persona, could have just as well nominated Kim Kardashian. Kardashian has been successful at what she does and she knows how to market her herself just like Trump Towers. And Kim Kardashian also knows how to negotiate a deal to get what she wants. And Trump is only a hair to the right of her politically, if one were ever able to put a fork in Trump’s waffling values.
Trump’s The Art of the Deal is effectively about getting what you want at any cost to others. And that is exactly what America’s victim tribes are all about. So enter Trump, the “negotiator” who gets what he wants. This time he is saying, in effect, that American values are negotiable in order to “win.”
“I would renegotiate so much of everything.” — Donald Trump
With the convention of the New Progressive Right (fka, the Republican Party) mercifully behind us now and the Democratic National Convention upon us we can clearly see that both 2016 Presidential Campaigns offerings are bestial bones thrown out to the Victim Tribes who stand barking before the altar of government.
Who are the Victim Tribes? Those who have a certain grievance, who are hashtag myopic; those who demand attention and some form of protection provided by government. The Victim Tribes gather around the Twitter trough and feed off of each other’s misery. Daily we are inundated with their melodrama.
Briefly, The Victim Tribes:
The middle-class-blue-collar-folks-who-hate-change-and-the “rigged system”-and-demand-a-rigged-system-of-their-own tribe.
The OWS-anti-Capitalism-$-pro-Socialism-$-college-is-my-right-so-pay-$ tribe.
The Black Lives Matter-except-when-aborted-or-murdered-by-another-black tribe.
The LGBTQRSTUVWXYZ1234-narcissism-is-an equal-right-and-is-to-be-normalized tribe.
The Feminist-we want-whatever-men-must-have-to-succeed tribe.
The environment-and-climate-change- “settled science”-Inquisition-and-apocalypse-now tribe.
The “I am an Illegal Immigrant and America is all about me” tribe.
Added 7-28-2016: Here is a recent example of the Tribalist’s Litany of Demands. It is delivered using the Rhetoric of the Perennially Aggrieved and Ungrateful and of the SJW Flag-wavers in the Long March of Cultural Marxism. These are the ones who are held “hostage” to “all forms” of injustice within the world’s freest nation:
Presumptive Green party presidential nominee Jill Stein appeared at the Occupy DNC rally across from CIty Hall in Philadelphia today (or at the “Bernie Sanders rally” as one cop put it) to speak before a cheering crowd full of Bernie Sanders supporters and other activists.
“Power concedes nothing without a demand,” Stein said, quoting Frederick Douglass, “and we are that demand.”
Stein told the crowd that they stood for “economic justice, for racial justice, for workers justice, for climate justice, for indigenous justice, for women’s justice, for LGBTQ justice.”
“We will be a unified movement, an unstoppable movement,” she said, “because we are for all the forms of justice.” She criticized the mainstream for trying to divide and conquer the crowd. “They would like us to be a movement to stop fracking over there, and a movement to stop police violence over there, a movement to stop deportation over there,” Stein told the crowd. “We need to be all of those movements, all together, that’s how we’ll stop the unstoppable.”
…
Stein also called for an “emergency jobs program to end the crisis of climate change,” healthcare as a human right, a “welcoming path to citizenship,” and an end to police violence and student debt. (emphasis added)
-Jill Stein Addresses Disenchanted Sanders Supporters at Occupy DNC Rally
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Long before the petty over-leveraged and unhinged jejune shtick of a life Trump received a majority popular vote during the primaries for saying nothing of import I left the Republican Party. I could see that the RNC was no longer a party for conservatives and certainly not for Christians. As a Christian who is politically a self-governing classical liberal, I cannot align myself with the Moral Relativism Platforms of either the DNC or the RNC.
This November I will vote down ticket. I will not vote for Trump or Hillary. I will vote down ticket for the Conservatives who are still left out there, any who are like Ted Cruz. By all accounts Ted Cruz is a Conservative and one who will keep his word while seeking to honor God and our country’s Constitution. It was Cruz who stood before the RNC barbarians and told those who had ears to hear, “Vote your conscience.”
Sadly, the conscience of the many has become calcified due to persistent media inflammation and a lack of Living Water.
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Cindy Wity 
Your Personal Populism
March 3, 2017 Leave a comment
I will deliver
You know I’m a forgiver
Reach out and touch faith
Reach out and touch faith
Your own personal Jesus
Someone to hear your prayers
Someone who cares
Your own personal Jesus
Someone to hear your prayers
Someone who’s there…
-Personal Jesus, Depeche Mode
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When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, “Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him (Exodus 32:1).
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Does any of this ring a cow bell?
Malignant populism…
…is impatient, short-tempered. “You shall know them by their outrage.”
…is self-referring.
…demands tokens of assurance, of victory, of winning.
…uses fear mongering to gain and remain in power.
…avoids all risk to obtain security and protectionism.
…believes that draining the swamp removes lethargy and guilt.
…is a left-brain big government solution and a right-brain protest of big government.
…seeks to replace the timeless with the temporal; throws the baby out with the swamp water.
…obtains identity from sympatico sources and by denigrating and mocking all others
…is self-centered and narcissistic in its demand for self-preservation.
…makes everything personal, including its self-protected version (SPV) of Jesus.
…has no problem inflicting pain on others; “You’ll get yours now because we won”.
…shuts down discussion and debate with, “Grow up.”
…makes graven images (“Come, make us gods who will go before us”) to obtain instant gratification and to mollify their anger at not being “represented”.
…is “here and now or else”.
…as social justice: “We won. Accept it. Get over it”. (Other than using the remote, they have changed nothing.)
…uses words like “smashed”, “owned” “destroyed” and “crushed” to describe another “win” for the team.
…lives and dies by its icons: a flag, a cap, a brand, a golden representative.
…becomes what it worships: hollow, static, lifeless.
…says, “I’m the bully, now. I’m the elite. I’m the ruling class, now. The last is first, now, you’ll see.”
…has acolyte exculpatory messaging: “we are not represented…” (“As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.”) …so give us what we want here and now. Make us feel great about ourselves again.”
And last, for this post…such populism defines itself as a direct rebellion against the powers that be – powers they say have not represented them and their concerns. So, they will repeal and replace with whatever is handy. Enter the Replacement.
Feeling unknown
And you’re all alone
Flesh and bone
By the telephone
Lift up the receiver
I’ll make you a believer…
-Personal Jesus, Depeche Mode
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The idea behind our republic (we are not a democracy) was for the public to be well-informed and for the well-informed public to inform the directions and decisions of our representatives. But, information gathering today is decidedly myopic in scope and typically occurs via a highly partisan media, a media whose main concern is to be profitable (to “win”) at any cost. As such, anger and outrage is coaxed on by a very ‘sympathetic’ media’ who want you to come back for more. Hence, the seemingly ‘righteous’ anger directed toward the powers that be the many unabashedly express: “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!”
There is also, it seems to me, a rejection of the printed word, including Scripture and our Constitution. In its place: an obstinate presumption of black and white rightness. Well, one does not have to become a malignant populist screaming out of his Twitter window at passersby.
Not all populism is bad. The Convention of States (C.O.S.), as one example, represents a more thoughtful and orderly populism. Issues are debated to create informed and orderly change.
Regarding national issues, there should be a Convention of Churches so that Spirit-informed-“on earth as it is in heaven” Kingdom of God matters are discussed, debated and then direct our national polities…as we wait for God’s Representative to return.
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Filed under Political Commentary, Politics Tagged with Obama, politics, populism, Trump