Should you Fear the Offensive Rev. Wilson?

Call Me When He Takes Boise

Video making for me is often exploratory. Thinking out loud. I recorded this last Friday but have been chewing on it all weekend.

A few years ago I heard about Doug Wilson's relationship with Christopher Hitchens. Talk about an odd couple. It made sense though. While many "new atheists" have zero regard for what they see as "religion" they also don't respect religionists who are also cultural sycophants.

Part of what I think makes Doug Wilson attractive to people is his boldness, sincerity and, dare I say it, authenticity. In the realm of the secret-sacred-self, authenticity is for many sufficient truthiness.

Any true believer worth their salt is frustrated by the condition of the world and confident that if there is a God in heaven their cause will be vindicated by history.

This is part of the reason for the collapse and mistrust of "Big Eva" in the minds of many. They come off as trying to be apologists for what the cool kids believed ten years ago while still keeping their Jesus and their Bible.

This while the cost of being SEEN as one of the cool kids no longer requires the charisma and genetics need in high school but rather some cool-conformity postings on social media. https://cactus.substack.com/p/firehose-of-bullshit-2-the-permanent

The COOLER Eeevangelicals (like former youth pastors whose qualification for that job often was just coolness in high school) have simply decided that there was little sunk cost in putting Jesus in the friend zone and lit out for the territories.

This relegates Christian soldiering to a perpetual rear-guard action meaning that on the culture war front the Overton Window just always seem to be drifting left.

This helps my understand the hatred from the Christian right of "Big Eva" headliners like @SkyeJethani and @DavidAFrench even when I think they give a measured and sound analysis of culture war topics.

The stage is set for someone who can quote Saul Alinsky "to own the libs" in defense of Canadian Truckers.

Christopher Hitchens saw something he admired in Doug Wilson and it is still there. Unfortunately for many no Jesus was required for that admiration.

When Wilson notes that "the Overton Window is not moved from the inside" and says so from Moscow ID he lands a solid point that Saul Alinsky would agree with. Skin in the game moves hearts and minds and matters more than punditry. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/21/opinion/ukraine-russia-zelensky-putin.html

This same weakness holds to the right as well as the left. Like, Subscribe, Retweet and Share are easier than moving to Moscow ID. Call me when he takes Boise.

I found the Power/Escape/Dominion rubric in his Big Eva takedown video helpful and I'll likely lift it for an upcoming video. I of course wanted to check out the source and here it is. https://www.garynorth.com/public/21705.cfm

A peek under the hood of Reformed Re-constructionism is probably a bit like job or house hunting in Moscow ID. You don't really escape the century you're living in.

The Ortho-bros and Trad Caths I've been spending time with over the last few years are not going to miss the Locke Smuggling happening beneath the Biblicism. Coalitions are easy on social media, harder in the meat space of terra firma.

Doug Wilson may say some nice things about @roddreher but the fact they don't go to the same church is not an incidental thing, and that non-incidental thing shouldn't be too quickly overlooked.

You shouldn't NOT listen to Doug Wilson because of our culture of pervasive bulverizing we're living in. If he can profit from Saul Alinsky then maybe we can also find strong points made in out-of-the-way places.

My guess is that you're not moving to Moscow anytime soon and if you did you would probably find you didn't escape all the knotty complexities of life you're living in right now.

Overton Windows have Zip Codes. Know that God is great, and we are small.