College Republicans & The Rally to End Child Mutilation
Live from the fall of Sodom and Gomorrah
BY THOM
Introduction
For as long as I can remember, I have been addicted to interacting with conservatives. There is a straightforward reason I usually use to explain this obsession to coworkers and girlfriends—right-wingers are extremely funny. But there is some other diseased part of me that has always been interested in what the conservative mind can teach us. Important lessons about society can be learned just by understanding the different kinds of hysterics it generates. In this sense, the modern grievance-driven conservative is the prime subject to study if one wants to grasp the general character of the structures in which we live.
What brought the Belmont University College Republicans to my attention was a friend and fellow alma mater of the school, who told me about their exploits over a cup of coffee. The club invited one Gib Kerr, a right-wing author and the father of one of the members, to speak at a meeting last April without seeking approval from the university administration. His sole novel is a piece of speculative fiction named States of Rebellion, whose narrative has U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez being elected president in 2024 only to enact some sort of communist mass murder program. At the event, Kerr had apparently cast doubt on the validity of the 2020 election.
For this, the College Republicans were taken to task by the Belmont Vision—the student-run news outlet—in an article entitled, “College Republicans invite unapproved speaker; spreads misinformation.” The College Republicans were enraged by the piece and took to the article’s accompanying Instagram post to initiate a 140-comment-long flame war with the Vision’s well-to-do liberal readership. In a stunning turn of events, two of Kerr’s daughters entered the fray to defend their father. The Republicans made their own post denouncing the Vision story shortly thereafter.
I was not interested in the inciting incident so much as what these escalating reactions meant. Two parallel sets of political discourse had met, come into conflict, and nicely demonstrated the impossibility of any reconciliation between them. Fundamental disagreements about policy are nothing new, but this fight had its opponents quibbling over the actual course of national and local events and what those events mean. Neither the College Republicans nor the Vision and its readership began from anything like a shared epistemological reality, much less a shared political reality, yet they both act as if what they say should hold weight for those with whom they disagree.
One thing clear to me was that the Belmont Vision was inadequate at bridging this divide and had been foolish to try. The College Republicans are interesting both as a group of individuals and as a case study, but the Vision was not equipped to deal with them in either sense. Instead of explaining the significance of the events, the article attempted to show that their behavior contradicted the university’s policies and well-known political facts. In effect, the Vision castigated the Republicans for violating a narrow set of values they already openly despised. Take, for instance, the Vision’s negative emphasis on “spreading misinformation.” Suppose that Kerr had really said the election had been stolen, wasn’t that something that the Republicans he was speaking to all already believed anyway? Could it even be said that he had “spread” any information at all?
If the real significance and voices of the Republicans and what they have to teach us were going to be reported and explained, then it must be done in such a way that they cannot be compartmentalized. And it would be me who would have to do it. So I decided to infiltrate the Republicans to witness them firsthand. Time for some good old-fashioned shoe-leather reporting.
Meeting the College Republicans
The bells begin to sound from the tower in something approaching harmony, and the rabble pours out of the great glass doors. The east side of campus is growing dark in the afternoon sun, and the facsimile marble columns stand like great tan phalanges above the lawn. Groups of students stand around and chat or walk past me staring blankly ahead. Some notice my shirt with CNN logo on it, only the C has been made to resemble a hammer and sickle. They either smirk or roll their eyes. I figured it would help add credibility to my conservative persona, and it looks like I was correct.
By the time I find room 131, it is already full, and everyone is sitting forward at attention like a real class is taking place. I notice that the majority of the club is women, about 15 or so, compared to the mere handful of guys present. Near the front of the room, three people unfurl a red banner with the Belmont University logo accompanied by “College Republicans at Belmont,” and they drape it over the top of a folding table. They set posters and pins and t-shirts with conservative slogans on top. I walk towards the back row, and a girl sitting near the aisle looks up. Her face brightens as she shows me a grin that is almost more gums than teeth.
“I really love your shirt.”
Sunlight streams in from the windows to the room’s rear, washing out the projector screen as an introductory Kahoot game begins the proceedings. Their game involves guessing whether a given quote has been said by Biden, Trump, or Kamala, and it is just as interminable as it sounds. I finish next to last, in part because I had to download the Kahoot app and so missed the first couple of questions, but also because many of the students are actually engaged and playing to win. After the game, the cabinet members give themselves a short and conceited Powerpoint introduction.
The club and its presiding cabinet are composed mostly of women. There is Emma the president, Miranda who likes horses, Allison, and Elliana, my sole contact within the club. Elliana is a musician and the writer of a song called Dragon Slayer which had recently gotten her into a bit of hot water on social media. In the song, she describes pining for the titular Dragon Slayer, who is basically a man who still subscribes to traditional gender roles and isn’t “effeminate.”
Jackson, the sole male representative in the cabinet, appears to be the Platonic idea of a button-down shirt.
The slides end, and the cabinet members look back and forth at each other to choose who will carry the meeting forward. Jackson stammers a bit before opening up the floor, “Is there anything you guys want to talk about? Anything you see going on around campus or in the world that you want to discuss? This is something that we want to do more often going forward. It's part of the reason why this club exists in the first place so that you all have a safe space to—”
Emma interrupts him, laughing and covering her mouth with her hand.
“Jackson, please don’t ever say the words safe space again,” she says wryly. Jackson, already a little nervous to be speaking in front of a crowd, seems to feel like his conservative bona fides might be in danger. He speaks like he has something to prove, his voice trembling at first, then rising until it assumes a false bravado.
“Ah yes, I meant to say that this club provides a public forum for all of you to freely exercise your first amendment right to free speech without any fear of repercussions.” He pauses a beat. “This is America, after all.”
Everyone laughs, and the girls in the cabinet begin mock clapping and cheering. Two of the geeky-looking guys in the back sing “America, Fuck Yeah,” the theme song to the Matt Parker and Trey Stone film Team America World Police. One of them is wearing a McLovin from Superbad shirt, but he just looks like McLovin. Jackson appears to be pleased with this reaction.
“There is something that I wanted to discuss actually,” the girl on the front row who had complimented my shirt says. Everyone turns to look at her. “As many of you no doubt know, we’ve been battling the administration for a while now about the vaccine requirements for honor students to go on study abroad trips. We’ve finally gotten them to admit there’s nothing in university policy mandating this, and we think there’s a good chance they’ll let us go.”
No one really seems to care about this issue in particular, but the broader point about taking the administration to task resonates. The discussion moves on to the topic of liberal professors and academic bias against conservatives. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say they discuss what to do in the case of a liberal professor showing any such bias. Any bad experiences about the faculty they share are both bewildering and hardly political. Emma says that a professor tried to convince her not to be a Southern Baptist for some reason. Jackson, seemingly emboldened by the success of his previous contribution, explains that he wouldn’t advise taking a specific political science professor's class because “she went on a rant one day about how the Belmont campus is 70% female, so all the men in her class should be getting a lot of action. She made a point to ask every single guy in the class if we had gotten laid recently at each class meeting.”
I can’t believe that Jackson is admitting his own sexual inadequacy to a room of his closest female peers. Allison steers the conversation back to the topic at hand.
“Yeah, just know that we, us here in this room, will always have your backs about stuff like this. If, no, when we need to go to war with the administration about something it’s always better to do it together.” The squat-looking guy in the front row nods furiously.
“Hell, most of you guys know me, it seems like the only thing I do is battle the administration. Professors love to pick fights with me, calling me a racist or a sexist pig, and I’m like, what are you talking about?” he says. The club members let out sympathetic groans. “I mean my roommate and his family are from Africa, so they’re black—blacker than the ace of spades, and when I told them that my professors were calling me racist, they just laughed! So yeah, if you ever need backup, just let me know.”
With this said, the rather pointless meeting drew to a close. The students file out or gather to talk amongst themselves at the front of the room. I take a look at the merch table, grab a few “socialism sucks” pins, and the girl with the large gums gives me some “Let’s Go Brandon” stickers that she had specially ordered. Before leaving, I decide to join the big group discussion and introduce myself. Emma points at my shirt.
“That’s hilarious,” she says, “I love that.”
“Oh I didn’t even see that,” says another girl, “that’s so good.” Emma turns to me.
“Oh by the way, I’m hosting a sort of unofficial club meeting at my house this weekend. We’re going to watch Matt Walsh’s new movie. I just wanted to let people know to RSVP in case they want to come.”
“I’ll be there.”
Politics always begins with a general feeling of dissatisfaction, which at its simplest is just that something is wrong, things are getting worse. An individual by their interaction with others living under the same coercive structures may raise this vague feeling to the level of an understanding of a common plight, of the possibility of a better world to be achieved, and of the concrete actions necessary to achieve it, the individual enters into something which has meaning over and above themself. But if in the final analysis a change in the social order has not come about and the social bonds uniting a common interest have been eroded, then politics can only continue mechanistically.
Under the guise of its former pursuit, politics is assimilated into culture war. No longer is the open antagonism between opposed material interests indispensable for the existence of discourse. As soon as politics turns into a battle for the dominance of a set of norms, values, and identities, the conflict between them becomes an end in and of itself. And the constantly shifting cultural terrain provides ever-new conflicts which arise and are forgotten overnight. Concerns about the state of discourse, are therefore only concerns that one side is not abiding by the norms expected by the other. With the loss of an underlying shared basis, this is all political cross-talk can ever be.
It is a simple step to reduce one’s status as a subject to that of a political subject. All facts of life can be reduced to their political content and either affirmed or denied on that basis alone. The range of emotions, experiences, and relationships that exist outside of the political arena diminish to the size of a monad to the same degree that the areas of life with the most potential for change disappear from view. This is why the College Republicans treat Belmont University’s professors and administration as ideological actors rather than as the quirky professionals and bog-standard bureaucracy they really are. It allows them to ascribe meaning and purpose to their own place in higher education, to live in the fantasy world of politics while the real meaning of events escapes their grasp. The College Republicans are not alone in this pathology. They are only the worst at hiding it. This is why we continue to battle the culture war without end, why we never really intend to win it. Without it, who would we even be?
What is a Woman?
It is past dusk by the time I arrive at Emma’s. She lives with her parents in a secluded suburb outside of Nashville, her house easily identifiable by the large number of cars in her three-car-wide driveway. The neighborhood stood upright in frozen, world’s end stillness. The wind blows and lightly rustles the trees outside of the houses, illuminated blue in the moonlight. I notice an older man who I presume to be Emma’s father struggling to pull lawn chairs out of the garage. I walk up to the front porch to greet him.
“Hi, is this Emma’s house?”
He pauses, turns around, and looks me over. I’m wearing a red trucker-style baseball cap with text that reads, “COUNTRY AF'' and a black National Rifle Association t-shirt with a graphic depicting an Eagle cradling a cache of guns in each of its wings. Accompanying the image are the words: “YOU KEEP YOUR OPINION AND WE’LL KEEP OUR GUNS.” He sort of shrugs his shoulders.
“Yep, this is the place. Come on in. I think the others are already inside or out back or something,” he replies.
I figure the in-character thing to do would be to ask to help carry the chairs in. He declines, so I settle for holding the door open for him. He tells me not to mind Mitzy, the family’s rat-like little purse dog and shows me the way to the backyard. I follow him through the living room into the kitchen, and we exit the back door. The only people outside were Emma, her boyfriend Matthew, and a girl I had not seen at the meeting. Mitzy bolts through the door after Emma’s father and is followed close behind by the family’s second dog, Reagan. Emma’s mother comes out next and chases them around the perimeter of the backyard fence. The projector screen is near the house facing out into the yard and surrounded by blankets and lawn chairs. I see that Emma and Matthew are busy fiddling with the projector so I begin talking with the other girl. She introduces herself as Madison and immediately begins the conversation by listing every place she had been in the U.S. one by one.
“... and I went to California once and only once for a competition. Did not like it at all. Nevada and Arizona were a lot like it but much better, you could tell. California... just too much, y’know?” I struggle to get a word in edgewise.
“Did you say competition?”
“I do competitive archery, have since high school. I shoot barebow. In California, my sight was actually off by about 40 degrees, so I had to really adjust my aim...”
As we continued talking about the complexities of collegiate archery, the rest of the Republicans filed into the backyard. Allison and Miranda are both wearing red shirts that read “LIBERAL F WORDS: * FAITH * FAMILY * FACTS * FOSSILS FUELS *.” Madison and I join their conversation. I recognize a guy named Justin who I used to work with at my old on-campus job. We talk about movies, and he tells Madison and I that he has a membership at the local cinema that lets him see as many movies as he wants for $30 a month. He says that he usually watches each new film that comes out at least twice. Miranda asks him if he’s going to see the new gay comedy movie, Bros. He screws up his face.
“I saw the trailer. It looks like woke bullshit. And painfully unfunny. Actually, let me pull this up. You’ve got to see this.” They gather around the back of his chair to watch the entire 3-minute trailer, and they groan and sigh all the while. Emma and Matthew get the projector and Beats BlueTooth speaker to work and search “Joe Biden moments” on YouTube. Matthew throws some store-bought firewood into the metal tub serving as our makeshift fire pit. The clip of Biden falling on the stairway up to Air Force One plays on the screen, first at regular speed and then again in slow motion.
“You ever seen this movie?” Justin turns and asks me.
“You mean, What is a Woman? No, I don’t have a Daily Wire subscription.”
He cocks his head sideways. “Really?” He turns back to the rest of the crowd and asks the girls if any of them have seen it. Nearly all of them raise their hands to indicate that they already have. He leans back in his seat.
“This will be my fourth time,” he says as if it were some kind of accomplishment, “trust me, you’re really gonna like it.”
The film is a slog. Walsh goes around interviewing gender academics, trans healthcare professionals and transgender people themselves, and acts incredulous that their answer to the question “what is a woman?” does not line up with his. The film’s singular two-gender joke is repeated about a dozen times, and by the end, Walsh himself comes off as both boring and contemptibly smug. How anyone could watch this movie more than once, much less four times, is beyond my comprehension.
“Who wants food?” yells Emma’s mom from the back door. She’s made four or five frozen pizzas for everyone. Before anyone could even raise their hand, Justin gets up, runs to the door, and grabs a plate for himself. Matthew stands up, a little indignant.
“Let’s serve the girls first.” He grabs three plates and hands them out to the girls sitting next to me. He turns back, grabs three more, and begins walking toward the row of lawn chairs where I’m sitting. He makes a big show of feinting handing me a plate but pulls his hand back and passes me.
“Whoops,” he says, “I wasn’t sure if you were transitioning or not.” Everyone laughs. The group makes the bewildering decision to stop the movie while eating. The Republicans talk about their favorite conservative influencers. Justin brags that he was at the event in Nashville where DailyWire+ had been announced, and he saw Candance Owens for the second time.
“I love Candance. It’s funny, my dad is obsessed with her. He says that he’s her biggest fan. He waited outside Barnes and Noble for 2 hours so that he could be the first one to get her new book,” says a girl sitting in front of me. Justin smiles.
“I’ve also seen Jordan Peterson twice.”
“I’ve always wanted to see him. I wonder if he’ll do more speaking events in Nashville now that he’s joined the Daily Wire. It’s so cool living in the same city as them.” Just then, the meek girl who had won the Kahoot game, also named Emma, speaks for the first time.
“I actually decided to move to Nashville because I knew that’s where the Daily Wire was based.”
I feel like I just got punched in the gut. How is it possible that this is one of the saddest things I’ve ever heard, and I have no sympathy for this girl? I look around to see if anyone else is concerned with her confession and am genuinely surprised to see them treat it as if it were the most natural thing to feel.
“Are you going to Matt Walsh’s rally next weekend?” asks Justin. Emma 2 nods. “Sorry, what rally is it?” I ask. Emma 1 turns and looks at me.
“It’s the Rally to End Child Mutilation. I think we’re doing a carpool if you want to come.”
As the movie drags on, the Republicans become increasingly angry and vocal at what was ostensibly supposed to be a fun Saturday night get-together. What seems to set them off the most is the issue of trans women competing in high school girls’ sports. Madison gets frustrated to the point of starting a mid-movie discussion about how unfair that is.
“Let me tell you, neither I nor any of the girls I do archery with would ever take a man trying to compete in our competitions lying down. We train to shoot for a reason.”
Matthew says, “No offense to any of you girls, but I know that when the men’s hockey team back in high school would scrimmage the girls’ team, we wiped the floor with them every time. I don’t believe for a minute that that would be a fair competition.” The girls agree.
Justin leans into me and whispers, “This next part is good. Watch this.”
Walsh begins interviewing a transgender woman, and the Republicans are disgusted. Madison, already pretty angry, is incensed.
“You. Will. Never. Be. A. Woman,” she says, hitting her palm with a fist to emphasize each syllable.
Consumption, an inherently passive affair, is conflated with the (now defunct) idea of working towards a collective goal. No longer do people see themselves as the active producers of change, instead, they view the world as immutable. Despite this, everyday politics still shambles on as if nothing has changed. What’s more, its function clearly becomes that of an untapped market.
Notice that the Republicans treat the college experience much like a commodity that they expect to have certain features. They expect to be affirmed and respected as serious political agents by their fellow students and faculty. When that expectation pales in comparison to the ideal fantasy world of politics, they feel the need for reality to be whipped into shape. Political goals can only be articulated using the language of consumer relations as if one were speaking to a manager about poor service. The conclusion that a strategy of mere complaining will never amount to fundamentally changing anything is obvious, yet it is treated as incontrovertibly true that the opposite is the case.
The grievances people have, whether legitimate or not, can never become issues around which to organize but can only be taken more personally. And when political dissatisfaction is taken as synonymous with personal dissatisfaction, the easier it is to amplify every ambient anxiety to the level of public issue.
The Rally to End Child Mutilation
“Sweet Home Alabama” caterwauls down Deaderick Street, bouncing off the slick plexiglass walls of skyrises on either side of me. I can see the memorial pediment looming up on top of the hill set against the stark cloudless sky. The song becomes a concatenation of syncopated midrange.
“Well I-South-Hope-ern-Neil-Man-Young-Around-Will-Anyhow.”
The closer I get to War Memorial Plaza, the more Ronnie Van Zant merges back together until, as I crest the great wide steps up to the plaza proper, he assumes his familiar univocality. At the top, I see Pandemonium.
They move through the crowd silently, listlessly. They hold signs with artifacted images of circumcisions and of infants with barcodes on their foreheads and commands to “MUTILATE THE MUTILATORS.” They hand out pamphlets on the end of days. They reveal the identity of the incarnation of Satan to me by proffering a book full of pictures of Jared Leto and a xeroxed photocopy of a defamation affidavit. They smile for their Facebook livestream and demand justice for the January 6th protestors. They wander around gibbering into squeaking bullhorns about the slavery of forced injections. No longer are they relegated to standing near the entrance or across the street. They finally have a rally that is for them.
There are pairs of content creators flitting through the crowd, manning cameras and lavalier microphones pinched between thumb and index. There is something insectoid about them, not least because they are actively seeking out people dumb enough to talk to them on camera. The palpable bloodlust in the air is matched only by the frantic sense that the opportunity to capture this on video must not be wasted. Then, a group of ANTIFA counter-protestors square up and argue with two megaphoned guys in camoed tactical vests. The crowd immediately encircles them, phones out and recording. They’re hoping this turns to violence. The tension everyone around me feels has been building not just since they got here, but for their entire life. Now there is an avenue and a direction, and filming it might just make their ecstatic wish come true. One of the camo-clad men takes five steps backward and begins sermonizing into his bullhorn. “And this is what happens when you are living without God. You think that it’s acceptable to go around cutting off little kids’ dicks! That is evil. You are not normal.”
ANTIFA advances towards him, but their megaphone plays an indiscernible Huey Newton speech. The impromptu scrum tightens in, and more people rush into the surrounding circle with their phones up. I see a woman opposite me reach into her pocket.
A Glock 19 handgun falls onto the pavement.
Of course, before it fell to the ground, it had been loosely stuffed into the pocket of a pink sleeveless puffer jacket the woman was wearing.
She had brought the gun and the pink puffer jacket to the rally.
Doubtless, she loaded it.
Next thing you know, the gun has fallen out of the jacket pocket and lays there on the ground, looking like a plastic toy.
And the way the barrel is pointing slightly to the left of my feet.
And the crowd presses in anyways, not noticing the weapon while megaphones continue squealing.
“You’re all freaks!” You’re a bunch of freaks. Everyone here is a freak!”
The woman who dropped the gun makes a shocked face and bunches up her shoulders, and she freezes for a second before scooping up the gun and putting it back into her pocket. Her husband grabs her around the waist with both his hands and ushers her away.
I trace the gun’s trajectory pointing back to my left straight at the Belmont University College Republicans, all standing with their backs turned to the altercation. I detach myself from the spectators and go over to greet them, but most do not even look at me. The few that do either mutely wave or quickly look back at the empty podium outside of the War Memorial Auditorium. I realize that my getup, which was supposed to become more oblique and parodic with each interaction with the College Republicans, has just made me look like a member of the contingent of crazies: all camo everything, a shirt featuring Uncle Si from the hit reality series Duck Dynasty accompanied by the phrase “NOT SAFE FOR WORK” in red. Madison looks me over with obvious disgust, apparently not recognizing me as the guy who she had bombarded about the finer points of competitive collegiate archery just a week prior.
The rally actually begins, and the Republicans are giddy with excitement. They scoot to the right a few feet so that their pictures of the speakers are unobstructed by a “Doctors Who Mutilate Children Should BE KILLED” sign. After a short introduction, Matt Walsh walks out, and the crowd goes berserk. The Republicans are practically jumping up and down with joy. But something isn’t quite right; there’s a disturbance down front. A large group of counter-protestors has amassed in the middle of the crowd, and they are chanting and blasting air horns to try and disrupt the proceedings. As Walsh talks, I can tell he is annoyed. He stops to chastise them.
“These people are cowards. All they can try to do is shut us down and silence us, but it’s not gonna work. We’re not going anywhere! We’re still here.”
A murmur passes through the crowd, and necks crane to spot another source of commotion near the eastern entrance. I see a band of potbellied forms swaying arm in arm around a great yellow banner that declares them “PROUD WESTERN CHAUVINISTS.” As I draw closer, they break their huddle and form into a single file line, flag bearers bandying about in front, and make their way towards the shouting ANTIFA counter-protestors in the crowd’s center. Up close, they all look like frogmen miraculously marching upright on stubby legs. One after another, the black and yellow-clad members of the procession waddle through the audience and are words of encouragement or ball cap doffs from 50-something suburbanites as though they were going off to fight a war. The only skinny one amongst them can’t contain his excitement.
“Someone needs to shut these pussies up!”
The Proud Boys body their way through the audience. As they get closer, the crowd notices them and is infuriated. I can see them mouthing fuck you and fascist, but I can’t hear them over the sirens and speakers piping out Walsh’s voice. They file in and form a wall around the ANTIFA protestors. The two groups start staring each other down. The Proud Boys stand there smirking. Everyone feels it. They are poised to start beating the ever-loving shit out of each other. The leader of the Proud Boys begins walking towards the ANTIFA side, and he puts as much force as he can muster into shouldering one of them onto the ground. And for a few tense seconds, it looks like an actual brawl might break out. But the bloodlust dissipates just as quickly as it began, and the defenders of western civilization content themselves with trying to block the ANTIFA flags with their own.
A Rolodex of conservative politicians, pundits, and influencers grace the stage. There’s Senator Marsha Blackburn and the recently heel-turned Tulsi Gabbard, who the Republicans correctly point out is “pandering and trying too hard” to court a conservative audience. There’s also the perpetually viscous-looking Robby Starbuck, who completely bombs his first applause line about how good the midterms look for Republicans. All the while, counter-protestors remain chanting and yelling to the point that Walsh can’t resist the urge to make an unplanned final statement.
“If you try to shut me up or drown me out, I just keep talking, and that’s true of everybody here, right? The more they try to drown us out, the louder we’re gonna be.”
Then it's over, and Sweet Home Alabama starts playing again, and it's twice as loud, probably to encourage people to disperse. The College Republicans group up and show each other the long-distance pictures they took of Marsha Blackburn before working out a plan for carpooling back to campus. But all the freaks just stay.
“You little FUCKER!”
The man drops the bouquet of fake roses he’s been carrying the whole rally to the ground, and he grabs the ANTIFA kid by the back of their collar. He rears back a fist, but the kid struggles to escape and runs an arm’s length semicircle around the man. He can’t keep his grip or his balance, and he falls on his knee next to the flowers. The kid goes flying into the pavement headfirst and scrambles to get up. Everyone stares glibly. They don’t even film. People in green safety vests step in the middle to separate the two, and the kid runs off. The man rises to his feet, points his finger, and shouts,
“That thing just spit on me!”
The rally didn’t even have the integrity to end in any real violence. At the end of history, there is no resolution, no victory, no final moment of clarity. Things stay exactly as confusing and cruel as they were before, and the sum of all these efforts is that everyone is more frustrated than when they started. When Walsh says he’ll only talk louder when he is met with resistance, you have to believe him because talking louder is the one and only response we have left at our disposal. The accelerating frequency of increasingly hysterical moral panics won’t stop, but the panics themselves also won’t move the dial as they used to either. This latest child mutilation canard wasn’t even converted into tangible GOP electoral gains in the midterms. Perhaps the frankly lackluster turnout for the rally was an early sign.
Of course, the violence doesn’t really stop. It just gets absorbed and disseminated elsewhere. If change really is impossible, if we cannot even conceive of a vision of a better world, then the only real choice we have is who to dole out punishment upon. Some college kids get to see their hero speak, and somewhere out of view, a gay bar gets shot up, and some hospitals get bomb threats. They get to put the blinders on and pretend to divest politics of its meaning the moment it manifests into real consequences. But all of this will be forgotten in short order anyways, and the world will move on. Because there will always be another rally. Culture war is endless war.
Don’t be so Open-Minded that your Brain Falls Out
HOMO SEX IS SIN
Trans Your Heart to God
STOP MUTILATING US
HELLFIRE AWAITS
I Identify As A Mama Bear
I read through this long drawn out spy novel of you critiquing your fellow classmates at College and wondering what the point was ????
very well written.