The Religious Right’s martyr-making machinery is in full gear after the publication of an ill-advised BuzzFeed story about the anti-LGBT views of the pastor of the church attended by a couple who have a home improvement show on cable TV. The story seems to have become an unintended Christmas gift for right-wing groups and pundits by giving them another example of the supposed persecution of conservative Christians in America even after Donald Trump’s presidential victory handed them even greater political power. The story, picked up by a couple of online media outlets, has been falsely portrayed as if it were part of a (nonexistent) campaign against the couple and their show.
The latest to jump on the bandwagon is right-wing Iowa radio host Steve Deace, whose commentary in Conservative Review on Monday says the BuzzFeed story is an example of “the left’s insatiable bloodlust.” The art accompanying Deace’s column shows a gunsight and blood splatter.
The ranting column does not get any more reasonable, as Deace rails that the couple, Chip and Joanna Gaines, have been “targeted for cultural extinction.”
The Rainbow Jihad’s bloodlust is insatiable, and if it isn’t the Gaines that they come back for to conquer, it will certainly be someone else.
We aren’t dealing with people who merely disagree with us or are skeptical of our faith and logic. If that were the case, the strongest desire they would have would be to best our arguments in the standard intellectual fields of battle. That is the last place they want to make their case, though, for they know at least to some degree how unstable the ground is on which they stand.
No, they seek something far different than debate, honest or otherwise. They seek destruction.
And make no mistake, that can’t be dismissed as mere hyperbole. Those who seek to be the salt of the earth and a city on the hill are Enemy No. 1 to a significant swath of the American public, which hasn’t just forsaken our heritage but seeks to unravel it.
Deace’s hyperbolic rhetoric slips into outright falsehood when he says that Kellogg’s cereals is among companies that “have gone on record to say they don’t want people who voted for Trump working for them, or that they will refuse to provide services to Trump supporters.” Adds Deace, “Because not even Sugar Frosted Flakes can be exempt from the Rainbow Jihad.”
Notably, Deace provides no links or evidence to back up this claim, which is presumably a fantastical offshoot of the campaign Breitbart has launched against Kellogg’s after the company decided to keep its advertising off the site, which has provided a platform for the so-called “Alt-Right”—the term adopted by a collection of white nationalists, anti-Semites and anti-immigrant activists. Breitbart’s war on Kellogg’s may not be having its intended effect; CBS reported a few days ago that other marketers “are heading for the exits, directing their advertising dollars away from Breitbart,” suggesting that “attacking a major advertiser isn’t likely to make the site more appealing to other brands.”
But Deace doesn’t seem to think it’s enough for right-wing activists to post Twitter pics of themselves dumping their Rice Krispies into the toilet when “our moral, legal premises are coming apart at the seams.”
There is really one legitimate response to such a state of affairs, and that is a persistent and uncompromising reliance on the application of “Satan, get behind me.”
They don’t intend to bargain or negotiate a compromise. They intend to overrun the land, choke the life out of it, and leave it for dead.
We didn’t choose our enemy, but he has most certainly chosen us. It does us no good to spend time trying to wish that fact away. Instead, we must respond in kind, with all the existential force of both the powers of heaven and our barely-still-there status as free men and women governed by the greatest political compact ever devised: the U.S. Constitution.
No more cultural and civic autopilot in a land with enough comfort and resources to allow us to pretend we will indefinitely control our own destiny. We must embrace that taking our country back from the forces of darkness will require a D-Day-like effort of cleansing and reconstruction, which can only be accomplished if our will to survive is stronger than the progressives’ will is to kill us.
They are doing so in all but body at this point. Such is the way of a swarm of locusts. They don’t intend to bargain or negotiate a compromise. They intend to overrun the land, choke the life out of it, and leave it for dead.
Deace’s column is so overflowing with red-meat rhetoric that it feels like it could be a peace offering to right-wingers who were unhappy with his Never-Trump stance. Deace has also expressed his delight at Trump’s pick of “culture warrior” Jeff Sessions to be attorney general.
