Advice on Dealing with the Right’s Crack-Up
The fractures in the political Right world seem to be deepening. A glance at social media feeds over the past week reveals that all is not well.
The split on the Right regarding the war in Iran, which is closing in on its third week, is widening. The battle was reignited on Tuesday as Joe Kent resigned as director of the National Counterterrorism Center. He issued a scathing public letter blaming Israel for dragging the U.S. into the war.
The mood is grim, which does not bode well for the midterm elections. Or for the future of the Right as a political force. There is a growing sense that those in the Trump administration who are not aligned with the MAGA movement have been racking up wins while its supporters are mostly discouraged and disappointed.
Podcasters are at each other’s throats. Fights are breaking out at almost breakneck speed as coalitions, old and new, are splitting and finding new enemies to fight seemingly every day. The radical normies, a group of the president’s right-wing supporters who are mostly anons, are challenging the “Retard Right” (aka popular podcasters and social media celebrities) and back the president to the hilt. Former travelers in the MAGA movement are breaking away, with some being used by—or actively working with—the Left.
Even the usual Protestant-versus-Catholic online bickering seems more vociferous than usual.
How should Christians respond?
For starters, they should seek out places that wisely provide spaces to listen and ponder rather than those looking to generate immediate reactions. A good example of this is the two most recent episodes of the Rufo & Lomez podcast. They feature Curt Mills of The American Conservative, a harsh critic of the war, and Will Chamberlain, a supporter, on sequential episodes. Rufo and Lomez interviewed each of them for an hour separately, allowing them to make a complete case for their side while peppering them with questions and pushback. None of this is possible with pithy posts or short clips alone.
The fault lines on the Right can start to be mended through conversations featuring people who can fully articulate their views. The Right needs to have more spaces that can provide this service rather than relying on the mainstream media to define both the players and the splits on the Right.
Much to the chagrin of older voices in the movement, the question of Israel and American foreign policy will not go away anytime soon. The only way to address this issue without sowing deep levels of cynicism and mistrust among younger generations is through open and honest discussions. Yes, this might make some uncomfortable. But conversations like this need to happen on a far more frequent basis for the Right to push modern liberalism to the side and finally become the driving political force in America.
Since the online Right has its share of grifters, self-promoters, and influencers who have never seriously studied politics in any detail, finding individuals you can trust is all the more important. Instead of listening to the people who seemingly came out of the womb with a microphone in hand, or those who never violate your presuppositions, find people with experience in the fields in which you are interested.
If you want to know about the history of Iran, for instance, read historians whom you find are trustworthy—don’t go to your favorite influencer or online pastor first. Demonstrated competence and having skin in the game should be two chief traits of the podcasts you spend time listening to and learning from. While this is not a cure-all, it will lead to more productive thinking than a seemingly endless cycle of game-chair influencers who too often peddle a stream of hysterical, convoluted—and many times contradictory—theories that are proven false again and again in real time.
Another way to make your time on social media more productive is to log on with a purpose in mind, and when that’s been completed, log off. Spend more time with your fellow congregants and people in your neighborhood and community than in online spaces. While you shouldn’t withdraw from every group chat or necessarily delete all social media apps, give a preference to analog life.
A network of people you can rely on is going to be a very valuable commodity in the years ahead. Apart from the many blessings that flow from forging personal relationships, doing so may also help you navigate our cultural and political moment. For one, the rhetorical strategies you’ve likely imbibed over the past years are mostly for a world that’s already decaying. Fresh thinking is needed, which is not always available in public online spaces.
One major tendency to push back on that the online world exacerbates is zero-sum thinking. “It’s so over” memes, cries of betrayal, and calls to burn down the Republican Party are not the answer. While it’s perfectly fine to be for or against the war in Iran, it’s doubtful that MAGA is over. After all, Donald Trump has a habit of eking out victories even in situations that look dire.
The GOP remains the only national vehicle for a political realignment. Perhaps that has already stalled with the second Trump administration. But in any event, Trump’s main job was always smashing through the door and trying to wrest some semblance of control over our government back from the administrative bureaucracy and the intelligence community. The harder tasks were likely always going to need to be done by future presidents. To usher in the much-talked-about golden age, consecutive presidential administrations that have a systematic plan of action, along with an improving GOP, are needed.
Another tendency to avoid is thinking you need to have an immediate opinion on every breaking news item. Consider the ongoing Joe Kent saga. It’s difficult to parse what exactly is happening since there are political allies on both sides.
Kent became a darling of the Right for good reason. He served our country honorably in the military and ran as an America First candidate in Washington soon after his first wife was killed by a suicide bomb in Syria. But there are questions about Kent’s own position on going to war with Iran over the years and the prudence of his very public disagreement with the president.
While some claim that voicing strong political opinions is somehow a violation of the Gospel—in reality, it’s a violation of the Ethic of Civility—some caution is warranted. Simply consider the strong narrative on Richard Nixon and his presidency concocted by the media and the political class that’s been blown apart in recent decades.
Monitor the situation. There are times when you need to take in all the facts before coming to a judgment, much less voicing a well-grounded opinion.
Finally, one immediate step Christians can take to be more grounded and not feel pulled to and fro with every new political story is to take the Lord’s Day far more seriously. Standing on the rock of Christian worship, Bible reading, and theological study will provide you with solid ground. Use the day the Lord set aside to focus on the eternal things. When “doing something” is too often equated with clicking the like button, the inflated sense we can sometimes use as an excuse to scroll our social media feeds will begin to melt away.
Sunday shouldn’t be a time where worship takes up an hour and a half at most while the rest of your day is filled with listening to Tucker Carlson, writing long diatribes about the state of the war with Iran, and coming up with endless doom scenarios about the future of the U.S. Christians must take the Lord’s Day as seriously as their forebears did—especially for those who are seeking to revive America’s Christian roots, and Christendom more broadly.
