Amnesia Can Kill

Winds of change are set to blow!

Where has everybody been?

The story unfolding around you today has been around a very long time. Great writers and investigative journalists and one very talented and courageous college freshman have been trying to let you know what was coming, what was percolating in quiet corners of power, a silent coup being orchestrated secretly in plain sight. It was working, and baby step by baby step, with patience and cunning the overthrow of a country happened without a whimper, seemingly business as usual, the normal pendulum swing of American politics.

Then came Trump, and his ineptitude, clumsy cretinism and total lack of shame blew the whistle on the whole canard, and suddenly we are shocked to find there are white supremacists and power crazed madmen in power that are hell bent on the destruction of what had always been a flawed and tenuous dream to begin with.

In 2009, Jeff Sharlet wrote an explosive book documenting a many decades old secret society that had gained strength slowly, gradually, playing a long game on American politics that had as its goal a reinvention of American government. The Family meticulously documented a group that had influenced government on the down-low since 1953, blending their curious reading of the message of Jesus Christ with their desire for a more imperial government, a government not of the people but of their people.

It was the pursuit of Dominionism, a belief system that would have government bow to the curious interpretation of Christianity that imagined Jesus to be exhorting them to take over the world, to be the catalyst of a global takeover of power that would accept no resistance. It was a robust, macho and unapologetic version of Jesus that they invented for their purpose, and the purpose was unfettered power.

The book is chilling and uncompromisingly documented. Few remember it. No one talks about it.

That was just how they liked it. They are very savvy, knowing the attention span of the American public barely exists, that today’s outrage is tomorrow’s fading concern. Patience. Patience. One step after the other.

People like Kavanaugh blast onto the scene, coming from seemingly nowhere to the highest court in the land, but he had been groomed for the position, placed and guided, prepared for the overthrow when the opportunity arose. His ascension came with the highest recommendation of the Heritage Foundation, a think tank developed to justify the Dominionist’s highest aspirations with quackery faux-intellectualism. A long slow slog, coming together like a million tiny shards of iron finally coming home to the magnet. They could see the end, the light glowing brighter and brighter. McConnell was delivering the courts, turning them into a monolithic defense of their way even if the other branches were lost. Great legislative strides would only need to be challenged and the courts could take care of the rest, slowing progress long enough to wrestle the other branches back into line.

They even had their own universities. Dominionism had strategized to infiltrate the American system on three fronts: Media, Government and the Law, and allies like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson built institutions that would appear to be cathedrals to higher-learning but in fact were indoctrination centers for the next generation of power hungry sycophants to a re-invented Jesus.

Enter our intrepid college freshman, Kevin Roose. A bright Brown University student, he took a leave of absence and enrolled in Liberty University, going undercover as a fellow evangelical. He is far more forgiving about his experience than I am after reading his book, The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University. His core classes included the History of Life biology class that instructed in the way of creationism, and Evangelism 101, training in the ways of converting the lost. Tests including final exams were True/False and multiple choice, and the study materials would include the questions they would have to struggle with. The education wasn’t really the point. The degree was, the entry papers into legitimate institutions with an ideology bent on destroying them. The school would expand to include a a Law School. It was inevitable, as the graduates would have a very tough time matriculating into the existing ones. That degree would be made available, too.

Pat Robertson had created a mirror image in Norfolk, Va., just a bit over a three hour drive from Falwell’s farm. Regent University was founded to create “Christian leadership to change the world”. From its humble beginnings when its law school graduates would rarely pass the bar examination, the university continued to work hard to get its graduates into the profession, and the Bush administration richly rewarded them with more than 150 alumni entering into federal government after his election in 2001. One of them was Monica Goodling. Remember her? A product of Robertson’s legal petri dish, she ascended to top aide to Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez having graduated in 1999 from Regent’s law school. Her meteoric rise to the heights of power crashed quickly, however, turning a spotlight on the suspect quality of the education that had ostensibly qualified her. She found herself in the middle of a scandal of firing judges across the land, being replaced by more useful jurists to the administration. Does that sound like an introduction to a current refrain? Does a consistency of effort over decades begin to seem less conspiracy and more reportage? After pleading the 5th to avoid testifying to Congress, she resigned, and the schools came under intense scrutiny.

Which would pass of course. They knew it would. It always does. The public doesn’t care about much for very long. This was no exception.

Then came the Regent Law School graduate who would be governor. Bob McDonnell graduated from Regent’s law school and worked himself up to Governor of Virginia, was indicted for federal corruption charges and convicted in September of 2014. The appeals went all the way to the Supreme Court who remanded the case back to the lower courts who refused to try him again. He and his sister would eventually start a real estate consulting firm and he would receive a professorship at Regent.

This is rarely remembered here in Virginia.

None of it is. It all becomes old news very quickly, no patterns recognized, no long term play being imagined. Just the ebb and flow of a two-party system, tidal flows as predictable as the moon requires.

Trump has blown it all up. So transparently inept, grossly cruel, crass and shameless like no politician before him, and initially so successful at it, he has revealed a grotesque underbelly that has been there for a very, very long time. He gave permission for other lawmakers to drop the subtleties, the careful pretenses of serious representatives of American government, unleashing the Gohmerts, the Kennedys, the Gowdys and Gaetzs to reveal the truth.

These are thugs trying to seize power for a very privileged, white, tiny minority, and it is now something to be proud of, a flag to carry, a banner to wave, and a middle finger to the people. Forty percent of those people want to hop on the finger and ride it.

So take this lightly if you like. They will wait again. They did a phenomenal job with the courts. We will be hurt by that for decades. They aren’t thinking in election cycles. They plan farther ahead than that. Elections are brief inconveniences. The gerrymandering was an attempt to make them largely irrelevant, and they mostly succeeded there, too. In North Carolina Democrats regularly win the popular vote and lose. The elections are immaterial to the outcomes.

Trump has exposed the game.

Will anyone notice?