You want to be where everyone knows your name
Watching the returns on this here Election Night. I don’t vote, and I have no illusions what the results will mean for me and mine personally – whether good or bad. But I will have a nice strong drink on the deck chairs – nodding to my brethren – as we all float on.
Wood Faileth 
This election really shows the limits of populism. While I was excited in 2016 and contended that entering the fray then was worthwhile because positive change was possible under those unique circumstances (and positive change did come I would contend in the form of Dobbs chiefly) the inherent limitations are becoming more clear in recent years.
I personally think the cracks emerged with some of the over-the-top responses from most of the Right to COVID. The Right’s literal adoption of the “my body my choice” mantra saw the reintroduction of libertarian elements that had been put out to pasture in 2016. The renewed emphasis on individualism crippled any ability for the MAGA movement to cohere into a force with a positive vision that could seize and decisively change the destiny of the country in the way previous, cohesive movements have (like the New Deal movement). You had some Catholic thinkers like Adrian Vermeule and Patrick Deneen try to move the Right in this direction but it simply isn’t enough to overcome the inherent liberal and Protestant legacies in America. None of this is an endorsement of the way COVID was handled, my only point being the fact that much of the Right’s go-to response on this issue was based on libertarianism.
It is simply baked into the US’s DNA to be beholden to this secularized Protestant form of individualism. What’s more, I am not convinced —barring divine intervention—that the trajectory can be arrested. The U.S.’s constant desire to transgress nature has reached absurd levels (whether it is gain of function research or transgenderism) in ways that threaten the survival of the human species itself and no authority, political, cultural or religious seems willing or able to curtail this drive. This is going to end very badly.
LikeLiked by 2 people