The first midterm elections since the establishment honeypot setup that ended Trump’s presidency are upon us. Now the MAGA movement faces a crisis – in the original sense of a trial or a test.
Can it survive the shift from two-party presidential politics to put up effective dissent against the de facto one-party system?
The biggest hurdle former president Trump’s supporters must overcome isn’t election fraud, deep state surveillance, or even demographic winter. Instead, it’s the contradiction that now occupies the heart of its ethos.
A commanding majority of Trump’s supporters are convinced the last election was stolen. They warned that letting such fraud stand would amount to a coup. It now seems a distant memory, but large numbers of them toured the country in the months following Trump’s loss, urging republican lawmakers to audit the suspect results. Republican officials, being the Generals to the dems’ Globetrotters, sat on their hands.
For a while, it looked as if the MAGA crowd had learned the right lesson from their supposed representatives’ betrayal. Encouraged by many of the same influencers who’d spearheaded Stop the Steal, Georgia republicans stayed home in droves from the 2021 senate runoff race. As a result, a couple of insider trading GOP establishment hacks were shown the door. And Mitch McConnell was sent a message that his party might want to consider keeping a promise now and then if it wanted its base’s votes.
A year later, the social media goldfish brain effect has done its evil work. Everyone has forgotten the hard lessons learned from the last elections. Republicans are promising new forever wars and corporate tax breaks in what can only be called an attempt to throw the midterms. Meanwhile, cockeyed MAGApedes are beating the bushes for votes in what they’re calling the MoSt iMpOrTaNt eLeCtIoN EvAr!
To someone who’s old enough to remember the last 20 Most Important Elections Ever™ seeing Gen Zeds zooming around rehashing Rush Limbaugh’s old calls to action is as bitter as it is comical.
Back in the 90s, political junkies could be forgiven for saying that voting harder was the solution. The Blue Team and the Red Team still maintained the illusion of being opposition parties, not high and low echelons of the same regime. The last election dispelled that illusion, and the only ones who don’t see it are those who don’t want to.
Hence the MAGA paradox: If the last election was stolen, a coup took place. If a coup happened, the people who seized power are now running the elections. So trying to vote them out of office amounts to asking mutinous despots to please give up the only leverage that keeps them from life in prison or worse. If tyrants bowed to the will of the people, they wouldn’t be tyrants.
In short, Trump’s supporters are embracing the same self-negating meme they rightly roasted the dems for after Trump left office.
That contradiction extends to US voting as a whole. Stop the Steal and the current midterm campaigns are based on the premise that election outcomes matter. That understanding is what gave dissident activism such urgency last year. But if the beneficiaries of national-scale voter fraud can be voted out, then the big steal had no major effect on future elections after all. On the other hand, if Stop the Steal’s forecasts of doom were right, the regime cannot be voted out, so elections don’t matter.
It’s here that faithful Catholics face a dilemma. Because the Catechism and the USCCB both assert the duty to vote as a moral obligation.
How to resolve that paradox? The Magisterium’s guidelines themselves give us the clues to untie this Gordian knot.
First, as She Who Thinks in Centuries, the Church has been known to lag behind current events when offering practical guidance. That’s not to question any theological or moral dogma. It is to point out that the hierarchy’s instruction on how to apply inerrant doctrine has a tendency to lag behind the rapidly changing social milieu.
That just means we need to nail ourselves to the wood of our desks and do our homework.
The first clue is the hierarchy’s stated reason for asserting a duty to vote. It’s the true statement that Catholics should submit to legitimate authority out of responsibility for the common good. So the efficacy of voting to demonstrate just submission to authentic officials and obtain the common good is the context in which the moral duty to vote is binding.
Recent history has given us ample reason to doubt that either condition is now in force. First and foremost, voters have only a negligible ability to secure the common good through voting. You don’t even need to prove election fraud to make that conclusion. We have the data.
But if those in power currently hold office as the result of a coup, there goes the legitimate authority criterion.
Now, that isn’t to tell people not to vote. The contradictions discussed above pertain mostly to the national level. Local officials have far more contact with, and a much bigger effect on, the average citizen than the federal government does. It’s been said that your county sheriff is the one elected authority with the greatest direct impact on your daily life. So I plan to vote local and encourage you to do the same.
But make sure you do your diligence to ensure you’re not voting for anyone who supports some form of grave intrinsic evil. “Vote” comes from the Latin for “will”, so casting a vote for a candidate constitutes at least remote formal cooperation with his platform.
Tl; dr: Don’t give votes or money to people who hate you.
Brian,
Thanks this was a helpful post. I live in a different country where the local elected offices are much less that in the U.S. It’s just the municipalities and these are creatures of the provincial governments with much less autonomy that I like. In any case, I’ll reflect on your article and figure out how to apply it to my country’s local politics.
xavier
You are welcome.
True, we do place too much importance on elections, especially given the problem with the “present administration”. But couldn’t someone argue that, given that there are more properly conservative MAGA candidates in the party this year, and given that at least some of the states where “fortification” occurred have tightened up their laws, that voting might at least do some good, even nationally? Sure, I’m far from thinking we can “vote our way out of this”, but I still think you’re being a little bit too negative. The party hasn’t completely transformed, but neither is it entirely unchanged from 2020. Maybe it’s just me coming from a liberal European country where your only choices are between Death Cult Socialism and More Death Cult Socialism, but… put it this way – things are so bad in my homeland that I would be downright excited to be able to vote for half the people in the GOP, even knowing everything you’ve told me about them.
Go back and review the chart above closely. The people’s vote has no more effect on federal policy than a single oxygen molecule has on an asteroid impact.
Who voted for open borders, abortion on demand, or proxy war in the Ukraine?
Again, I’m not telling anyone to abstain from voting. That’s a matter of individual conscience. What I’m cautioning against is continuing to vote in national elections while expecting a different result.
Unfortunately, it looks like several parts of the country did vote for abortion on demand last night.
That was my fear when Roe was overturned–that much of the country is so sunk in sin and blindness that returning it to the people simply means that they affirm the ‘right’ and call down God’s judgment without even the fig leaf of ‘it was imposed on us.’
Kyrie, eleison. Christe, eleison. Kyrie, eleison.
Your comment shows that you are still laboring under two demonstrable misconceptions: 1) Election results are accurate reflections of public opinion. 2) Public opinion matters.
The left isn’t even hiding the fact that they consider voting against them a treasonous act. If having Republicans in power is a threat to the very fabric of our democracy (especially for “Mega-MAGA Republicans”) and try to get them into office by voting for them, then you are destroying “our democracy.”
Our rulers are obsessed with democracy because it’s their only means of justifying their power. Pursuant to my reply above, in a debate with Destiny, Nick Fuentes argued that no one voted for open borders. Like all regime water carriers, Destiny countered that the people elected Hart, Celler, and Ted Kennedy, so the 1965 Immigration Act democratically expressed the people’s will.
Good point. You can notice another manifestation of this fact in the way they hate Poland and Hungary far more than places like Saudi Arabia or China. All four are anti-Progressive, at least by Death Cult standards, but the latter two, not making serious pretensions to being democratic, do not threaten the regime’s self-image – they Don The Devil Horns, so to speak. Poland and Hungary open the dangerous possibility that The People could genuinely remove the elites’ mandate, and so come under much heavier fire.
Hi Brian, just returning from the future to say that you were proven right once again.
Forgive me for my tangent ahead of time, Brian. I’ve been trying to sort these thoughts out.
I was telling my wife this morning that it doesn’t really matter if the Democrats rigged the election, because they don’t have to. The DailyWire/Louder With Crowder, “Let’s Go Brandon! RedWave Imminent!” crowd massively underestimate the spiritual sickness in America. As St. Thomas once stated, “sin darkens the intellect.”
I have family members (one of whom was the best man at my wedding) who have not left their house, nor let anyone visit their house since the lockdowns began because they believe in their hearts that COVID will kill them. Even after him and wife vaxxed and boosted themselves and (tragically) vaxxed their 3 year old son.
Another one of my groomsmen saw his wife abandon him and their two children so she could start a life as a liberal journalist in California. His oldest son refuses to go to school, see friends or even leave his bedroom.
My wife’s childhood best friend left her one year old at home to be watched by babysitters so she could start a position at a feminist corporation who designs pro-choice propaganda.
I have countless amounts of family members and friends who truly believe that the unvaccinated are killing people, cops and white supremacists are hunting down and lynching innocent black men, and that the pro-life movement wants to rape women so they’ll be forced to have pregnancies. They’ve been that swayed by the incessant propaganda on their screens.
Mind you, this is a teensy tiny sample size but I cannot imagine that my family is an aberration. We were all brought up in stable environments and raised by respectable Boomer parents who placed little to no emphasis on the faith and preached the importance of “being a good person” and “going along to get along.” Multiply my family over a broad scale and I can tell you that we’re not voting our way out of this.
God has promised that the gates of Hell will not prevail against his bride, the Church. God said nothing about the gates of Hell not prevailing against America.
You just made an excellent argument against democracy.
Prayers for you and your family
I repent of my earlier folly. I had not fully internalised just how brazenly wicked and corrupt the system, as well as the people in general, had become. I submit to this in the knowledge that an all-just and all-powerful God has arranged these events for our ultimate good. The events of last night may themselves be a blessing in disguise. For one thing, they are the final nail in the coffin of the notion that America has free and fair elections. You may argue that this should have been obvious in 2020, but many, including myself, wrote it off as an aberration or something that could only be done to a limited extent. Even the dull and slow of wit can no longer deny it, for it is clearly the norm now. What remains is to turn to the Lord and pray for the strength to endure the coming Collapse. The question now is what form that will take – a boog? Foreign conquest? Stagnation? Political breakup? Something altogether different? Only God knows. I will leave off with the consoling words of James Hervey:
Since all the downward tracts of time
God’s watchful eye surveys,
O who so wise to choose our lot
Or to appoint our ways?
Good when He gives, supremely good,
Nor less when He denies;
Ev’n crosses from His sovereign hand
Are blessings in disguise.
Why should we doubt a Father’s love,
So constant and so kind?
To His unerring, gracious will
Be every wish resigned.
God is due penance for our sins as a matter of justice. In His mercy, God sends suffering and gives us the option to embrace it for our sins. The chastisement is now upon us. Act accordingly.
Seeing a lot of Republicans adopting a cope of “Trump’s poor behavior sabotaged the midterm races!” I don’t know how that even makes sense considering the reporting on him in the last year was minimal at best, but that’s what they’ve chosen.
We’re back to the good ol’ GOP strategy of “Woops we didn’t do anything worthwhile THIS time but trust us, next time will be the red wave where we save the country!”
I never voted Republican in any major race until Donald Trump, because they were worthless throughout the W Bush years and at resisting Obama. (Voted for third party candidates instead.) With Trump I actually hoped the Republican party would do something, but they’ve made clear they won’t. I’m back to writing them off in the major elections and focusing on local stuff.
You are among the few whose mind can be changed by reason and experience. Democracy would work if everyone were like you. At the same time, democracy can _only_ work if everyone’s like you.
I only voted to ensure that Texas’ post-Roe restrictions on abortion wouldn’t be overturned. I have a notion that God’s patience is near an end, and that perhaps those jurisdictions that stop or greatly curtail the slaughter of the unborn may enjoy some measure of protection from the chastisement to come.
I have no illusions that the state government will otherwise improve the lives of the citizens, but that was important enough to get me to the polls.