Welcome to the post-Christian right
The Trump administration is pushing Romania to lift travel restrictions on Andrew Tate, who is a pimp being prosecuted for human trafficking, sexual misconduct, money laundering, and starting an organized crime group. But he’s also a hero of the new right and has a huge online following despite efforts to censor the hell out of him, and obviously someone in the Trump administration is a Tate fanboy and wants to help him out. There is a guy who works in the State Department who is on his eighth Jake Paul energy drink and taking a victory lap through Discord right now.
But wait, how did a European pimp become a conservative hero? Welcome to the post-Christian right. The Moral Majority is out. Ned Flanders is out. In, instead, is paganism. In is strength, sun, and harems. Basically that movie The Northman is the new vibe of all your favorite conservatives.
Nellie Bowles, 2/21/25.
So much “winning”
Andrew and Tristan Tate left Romania for America on a private jet after prosecutors lifted a travel ban. Andrew, a social influencer, is popular in alt-right online spaces. The pair are under investigation for human trafficking and money laundering, charges they deny. Romanian prosecutors say the case remains open. They also face sexual misconduct allegations in Britain, which they deny.
Economist World in Brief, 2/27/25. See also WSJ and NYT.
Tribalismn
I can’t think of a single institution in which I really believe — that is, that I consider to have the common good and the best interests of the American people in mind. The System is collapsing? Good. It’s about time. David Brooks, at ARC, said that conservatives are supposed to conserve, not destroy. He’s right — which is why Shadi Hamid is correct to say the Democratic Party has become the conservative party, the party of the System.
Maybe it’s better to think of myself and people like me not as conservatives — I sure as hell don’t want to conserve most of what the ruling class and its conquered institutions have done to America — but as right-wing antagonists to the System. Donald Trump is very far from my ideal president, but you know what? He’s not One Of Them. More power to him. I say that with great trepidation, because history shows that revolution against a corrupt ancien régime can produce worse. Still.
…
The future is not fated. We can change. Maybe that’s what’s happening in Washington now. I hope so. But I know this: it could not go on as it had been doing. The old paradigm is over, because at least half the country has lost faith in it. Maybe what’s being born now will be worse, I dunno. We’ll see. But bring it on. I’ve had it.
Thus (emphasis added to show that he is without excuse) does my longtime fellow-traveler, Rod Dreher, take a nihilistic fork in the road that I refuse to take.
Let me quote Rod to Rod:
A second major factor present in pre-totalitarian societies is loss of faith in institutions.
Living in Wonder, October 2024.
The kind of trolling yard sign I’d consider
Mike drop
To a certain kind of guy, Donald Trump epitomizes masculine cool. He’s ostentatiously wealthy. He’s married to his third model wife. He gets prime seats at UFC fights, goes on popular podcasts, and does more or less whatever he wants without consequences.
That certain kind of guy who sees Trump as a masculine ideal? That guy is a teenage boy.
Jill Filipovic, The Adolescent Style in American Politics
The problem with those two paragraphs is that they’re too perfect. I didn’t want to risk spoiling them by reading the rest of the article.
I suffer more from the humiliations inflicted by my country than from those inflicted on her.
Simone Weil, from a letter to Georges Bernanos.
[N]one of the things that I care about most have ever proven susceptible to systematic exposition.
Alan Jacobs, Breaking Bread With the Dead
I don’t do any of the major social media, but I have two sub-domains of the domain you’re currently reading: (a) You can read most of my reflexive stuff, especially political here. (b) I also post some things on the only social medium I frequent, because people there are quirky, pleasant and real.
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 