Rod Dreher's Blog, page 546

St. Francis Counsels GOP Christians

As Donald Trump’s campaign reaches its terminally suicidal phase (putting the Breitbart chief in charge of the campaign is a move that makes The Onion read like Grant’s Interest Rate Observer), it will be clear to politically engaged conservative Christians that they have reached a dead end with the jackassification and ruin of the Republican Party. Be of good cheer! G.K. Chesterton, in his stunningly wonderful biography of St. Francis of Assisi, has some words of wisdom taken from the life of the late medieval holy fool and radical ascetic:

In so far as even the secular authorities and hierarchies, even the most natural superiorities and the most necessary subordinations, tend at once to put a man in his place, and to make him sure of his position, the man who has seen the human hierarchy upside down will always have something of a smile for its superiorities. In this sense the direct vision of divine reality does disturb solemnities that are sane enough in themselves. The mystic may have added a cubit to his stature; but he generally loses something of his status. He can no longer take himself for granted, merely because he can verify his own existence in a parish register or a family Bible. Such a man may have something of the appearance of the lunatic who has lost his name while preserving his nature; who straightaway forgets what manner of man he was. “Hitherto I have called Pietro Bernardone father; but now I am the servant of God.”

Now is a time for clarity among Christian conservatives regarding their relationship to the GOP. “Hitherto I have called the Republican Party father; but now I am the servant of God.”

Amusing Ourselves To Death

From Sean Illing’s commentary on Salon.com:

There is no such thing as television news in this country. There are networks that peddle entertainment under the guise of news. Networks care about narratives, stories they can fit into familiar boxes and bundle for audiences. If a suspicious package was left at a mall in Toledo on Sunday, cable news would’ve covered it with greater care than they did Louisiana this weekend. Why? Because it’s Islamic terrorism, and that’s scary and an obvious ratings boon. Hurricane Katrina received non-stop coverage, but that was about race and class and privilege and a famous American city – human suffering was merely incidental. It’s not that such stories aren’t deserving of coverage. The issue is how comparatively little attention a story like this receives, a story of devastating consequence, and, clearly, a story that doesn’t fit neatly into pre-established media narratives. It’s just regular people living out their Sisyphean nightmares in places no one cares about.

He’s right, obviously. Obviously. But we all have a responsibility to refuse this garbage when it’s fed to us — and a responsibility not to add to it with stupid offense-taking. For example, I woke up this morning to this completely ridiculous, manufactured controversy attacking the comedian Ellen DeGeneres:

ITEM: Ellen DeGeneres accused of racism because of comic tweet:

Ellen DeGeneres says she’s not racist after receiving backlash on social media for posting an edited photo of herself riding on the back of Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt.

The talk show host said Tuesday on Twitter that she’s “highly aware of the racism that exists in our country” but that’s “the furthest thing from who I am.”

DeGeneres posted the photo Monday with the caption: “This is how I’m running errands from now on.”

This is how I’m running errands from now on. #Rio2016pic.twitter.com/gYPtG9T1ao

— Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow) August 15, 2016

Meanwhile, back in the real world:

And so on and so forth. This photo below has been going around Facebook. It pretty much sums up the view from here. LSU had a meeting the other day of its football team. The guy in the camo is the team kicker, Colby Delahoussaye, a Cajun who had been doing what Cajuns all over south Louisiana are doing right now. Perspective, folks. Perspective:

Flood Shows True Colors Of Black Lives Matter

Black guy riding around flooded Louisiana has a pretty great set of questions:

“Where are the Black Lives Matter and Black Panthers? I ain’t seen one Black Panther boat or one Black Lives Matter boat. All I see is our own people in the city, the Wildlife and Fisheries, and the police going in and rescuing people.”

And:

“All the drama that was going on with the Alton Sterling killing, they came out with guns ready to go to war. But here we go, all these people flooded out and truly in need of help and we can’t find not one of them.”

Nothing against him, but I wouldn’t contribute to this guy’s GoFundMe campaign. Give instead to a relief fund you can count on. Still, the points he makes are dead on target. Where is Black Lives Matter? Not in Baton Rouge this week, that’s for sure. I guess black lives only really matter to those activists when they’ve been taken by cops, not when they’ve been saved by cops. Which is happening every single day down here. White people and black people, including Baton Rouge police officers (half of whom lost their homes), working together to save white people and black people and all kinds of people.

This doesn’t make all the problems of police brutality and black violence go away. But it does put them in perspective.

Hey all you liberal churches up North with your Black Lives Matter banners out front — where you at? Get down here and help. All Lives Matter. The flood waters are not prejudiced. They hate everybody.

This disaster has been clarifying in many ways. Good thing BLM has $100 million in pledges from rich liberal foundations, I guess, because after this experience, they’re not going to get much of a hearing down here.

But look, I have a challenge to white people who take satisfaction in this: What are you doing to help black lives, white lives, Asian lives, Latino lives, and all lives wrecked by this flood? I talked to a conservative I know yesterday, here in Louisiana, someone who is full of strong political opinions, and I came away discouraged. This person has resources and time to help, but won’t do a damn thing for anybody, except sit in front of Fox News and the local news coverage and offer nothing — not a drink of water, not a bed to sleep in, not a hot meal to the homeless refugees — but opinions.

UPDATE: Let me share something with you liberal readers who have your noses out of joint in the same way pro-Trump conservative readers did when I bashed Trump on Sunday with respect to the floods. I don’t really expect Black Lives Matter to show up to help black flood victims any more than I expect Donald Trump to turn his eyes away from his full-length mirror to look at the people here in Louisiana suffering. My point is that the magnitude of this tragedy, and its intensity, and the way people are responding (or failing to respond) to it, casts a harsh light on the things that have dominated our political discourse in the last year.

You know what it would take to get Black Lives Matter down to Baton Rouge now? If a BRPD officer shot one of the black looters they’ve arrested looting black homes. 

UPDATE.2: Commenter JonahR makes a great point:

Commenter John wrote: “Black Lives Matter has a singular focus for its efforts: the disproportionate regularity with which black people die in police custody, as compared to suspects of any other race.”

That’s not true! Just look at BLM’s own website and their own words:

They are “committed to…doing the work required to dismantle cis-gender privilege.”

They are “committed to dismantling the patriarchal practice that requires mothers to work ‘double shifts’ that require them to mother in private even as they participate in justice work.”

They are committed to “freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking” and “fostering a queer-affirming network.”

They are “committed to disrupting the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure.”

Most damningly, they say their commitment to destroying the nuclear family will happen “by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another.”

So where are they? Where’s that commitment to collective care in action? Rednecks with fanboats have now done more for black lives in and around Baton Rouge than BLM could ever accomplish with years of street theater.

What I don’t understand is why people lie on behalf of Black Lives Matter when the group is blunt and unambiguous about its larger revolutionary goals.

Flood Of Misery, Flood Of Grace

Here’s the good news: Julie was able to get to the storage facility where half our worldly goods, including all our heirlooms, are stored. It’s in what became a flood zone in Baton Rouge. We expected the worst. Turns out that the roof sustained serious rain damage, but the facility was not flooded. All our stuff is safe.

Here’s more good news: the team at Baton Rouge’s Apple store were able to save all the information from my dying hard drive, and transfer it to my brand new MacBook Air. I love MacBook Airs so much that there was never really any question that I was going to replace the dying one with a new one. I bought that last one on August 29, 2011, I learned. It has lasted almost five years. I have put that little machine through so much. Nearly four books were written on it, and heaven knows how many blog posts, notes, e-mails, and such. It served me well. So will this new MacBook Air, I’m certain.

I’m so grateful for this I can’t even tell you how much. They treated me so well, and have saved The Benedict Option book. In the picture above, the only one missing from the team that helped me is Cassie. She’s from Denham Springs. Her dad still lives there. He lost everything in the flood.

On the far left is Brent Mangum. He’s the Apple store manager I saw on Saturday, when he couldn’t open the store because his employees couldn’t get there through the rising water. I ran into him again on Sunday morning at the Celtic Media Center shelter. He was there helping direct traffic.

“You came in yesterday!” he said to me.

“You’re the Apple guy!” I said back.

When I left the shelter after 7 that night, there was Brent, still in place, still working. Amazing.

The Apple store was open today, and I was able to get in to the Genius Bar. They spent two hours with me, saving my hard drive, transferring it to the new computer, holding my hand, putting up with my nonsense. I gave Brent a copy of The Little Way of Ruthie Leming, which was the very least I could do. Watching him at the shelter in action reminded me somehow of the way St. Francisville responded to my sister Ruthie’s cancer.

Later, before he left for the day, Brent came over to the Genius Bar to talk. Turns out his family is now hosting their second displaced flood victim family. “We’re pretty much at capacity now,” he said.

I asked him what made him go out to the shelter on Sunday to work.

“Well, I’m part of the LDS Church, and that’s what we do,” he said. “Some of us guys from the church figured we needed to be there.”

Mormons. I should have known. That is what they do.

“You’re going to laugh at this,” I said, “but a couple of weeks ago, the editor of my book and I were talking about this thing I’m working on, which I call the Benedict Option, and we agreed that the LDS folks are in so many ways a great example of what I think all Christians should be doing. I ended up working with LDS headquarters, and they put me in touch with a Mormon theologian who gave me some great background on why y’all do what you do regarding community. And here you are, a Mormon, a perfect example of what I’m talking about. Unbelievable. I hope you don’t mind, but I’m going to put you in the book. People need to know this.”

He shook his head and smiled. “Yeah, that’s fine with me. It’s no coincidence that we met.”

“No, it’s not,” I said.

So, if you buy the Ben Op book, you will almost certainly run into Brent Mangum’s name again. But I want to say right now to Apple, Inc., that y’all have a very fine man working for you, and a great team in Baton Rouge. I’ve been to the Apple store twice today, and talked to a few different employees. Every time I brought Brent’s name up, people would say some version of, “He’s such a nice guy. Everybody loves him.” They didn’t know they were talking to a blogger. That’s how they really feel. He’s the guy who goes to the shelter and spends all day helping, and who takes refugee families into his family home, because they have nothing. Just think of it.

Louisiana, man.

NPR’s Debbie Elliott was in Baton Rouge today, giving us the kind of national coverage we wish everybody would give us, revealing the intense human drama of the catastrophe here. When I tell you that this is probably going to be Katrina.2, I mean it, at least in terms of material devastation. Edgardo Tenreiro, a friend and a reader of this blog, shows up in her story talking about the struggle area hospitals (he’s the acting CEO of Baton Rouge General) are enduring.

“The flood has been some of the worst we’ve ever seen in terms of the natural disaster,” he said, “but also some of the best, because it has shown who we are as a community.”

Whole story here:

Back at home tonight, I got a text from another friend and reader of this blog. He’s been over in the Sherwood Forest neighborhood helping someone clean out their house. He reports that the entire neighborhood is going to have to be gutted, because of raw sewage that got into everybody’s house.

“It’s a middle-class Lower Ninth Ward,” he said. And he’s not joking. When Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, there were about 15,000 people living in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward, which became synonymous with the total devastation left by the flood. Know how many people were living in Sherwood Forest this time last week? Just over 15,000.

They are not poor, they are not black, but they are now just as homeless as any Lower Ninth Ward resident was a decade ago. The overwhelming majority of Baton Rouge residents do not have flood insurance. Their neighborhoods have never flooded. But this rain event was off the charts. Watson, La., for example, received about 30 inches of rain in a few days — more than Los Angeles has received in the last three years. While it’s hard to do a one-to-one comparison — Louisiana is subtropical, while L.A. is a desert climate — it might help to understand that this area gets about 60 inches of rain per year. Half a year’s amount of rain fell on us in two days. Who expects that? This kind of rain event happens once in a thousand years, we are told.

Yet it happened to us, in 2016. Nobody was prepared for it, not because they’re foolish, but because to expect this would have been crazy.

Look, I’m going to stop writing and go to bed. Tomorrow Julie and I are cooking for some displaced folks. Tomorrow morning I wake up and get back to the Benedict Option manuscript. And I help my wife cook for some displaced people. I have to share this with you, though. The other day, before the rain, I noticed an empty bottle of Spotted Cow beer from New Glarus Brewery in Wisconsin on the sidewalk outside our place. Where on earth did that come from? I love that stuff! Is it available in Baton Rouge, or what? Turns out one of our neighbors, a young chemical engineer, recently moved here from Minnesota. His folks live near the Wisconsin border, and when he was home recently, he drove over to get Spotted Cow, which you can only buy in Wisconsin (I was introduced to its greatness when I was in Wisconsin a couple of years ago). I went on about the greatness of Spotted Cow when we ran into each other.

Tonight there was a knock at the door. It was Connor, the neighbor, bearing two bottles of Spotted Cow. Just to be neighborly. I swear, I could have kissed him. It’s like my brother-in-law Mike Leming said in the days after his wife Ruthie died: “We’re leaning, but we’re leaning on each other.”

I tell you what, you are going to read a different Benedict Option book because of what I’ve seen, heard, and lived this past week. I had been talking back and forth with my editor about how we bring more hope to balance out the sky-is-falling material. Now I get it.

More tomorrow. Be as generous as you can with your donations. God knows we need it. Let this e-mail I got from a regular reader and commenter inspire you:

Although I disagree with you vehemently on way too many issues, I know, by your words, that you are a decent, kind, and honorable man. As a hardcore progressive who is getting more liberal with every passing year, I still visit your site multiple times daily, and look forward to whatever it is you’re going to post. I’ve never donated to American Conservative, because I would feel dirty, if I may be so honest.

But….

…having said all that….

I am very fortunate in my life. I grew up poor, but have made a very good life for myself. I would love to offer you a new MacBook Air, no strings attached. You pick it out, tell me what it will cost, and I will paypal money to you immediately for you to purchase it. I know you probably won’t take me up on my offer, but I’m 100% serious. It’s the least I can do for the years of instructional information I’ve gotten from reading your blogs – going all the way back to your NRO days.

I wasn’t able to see this amazing letter until I got home with my new MacBook Air and was able to access my TAC e-mail from the past few days. I thanked him for his incredible generosity, and asked him to find his favorite charity doing relief work here in south Louisiana and give the same amount to them. I invite you all to do what you can along those lines. If you appreciate what you read here, even if it drives you crazy, please show your appreciation by giving to a charity you trust that will use it for the suffering people in south Louisiana. Goodness and plain human decency knows no political, racial, or religious boundaries. As we are seeing every single day down here in the flood.

If you are sick of Trump, of Hillary, of the Kardashians, of the whole sh*tshow that is American pop culture, come down to south Louisiana and help out. It’s horrible here, but it will sure as the world cure your despair. Trust me on this.

Benedict Option In The Flood

I’ve been out doing errands around Baton Rouge this morning. It’s great to see handmade signs in shopping center parking lots, saying things like SHELTER DONATION DROP-OFF POINT. People are really, really pitching in.

I’ve been complaining on Twitter and here about the relative lack of attention the national media have been giving this disaster given its immensity and severity. A friend of ours who has been doing Cajun Navy rescue runs in Livingston Parish told us that he’s seen bodies floating in the floodwaters there. It’s bad. It’s real bad. And for people farther south and west of Baton Rouge, it’s getting worse.

But here’s a story you should know about. It shatters the standard media narrative about America. And it involves a member of this blog’s community. Members, actually, because this also involves Brother Ignatius (see above), the guest master at the Benedictine monastery in Norcia.

You’re going to want to sit down for this one. I’m literally typing through tears.

Ryan Booth comments here from time to time. He’s a personal friend too, and an avid follower of the Benedict Option. We’ve been talking about it for as long as I’ve known him, which is just about as long as we’ve been back in Louisiana. He owns three Mathnasium tutoring centers in Baton Rouge. Ryan is a white, churchgoing, Southern Baptist, conservative, heterosexual male. Ryan has been a public school math teacher, and now tutors kids in math through his small business. In 2014, he resigned his post on the Central Committee of the Louisiana GOP in disgust over what he regarded as the party’s demagoguery over Common Core. Read his public statement here. It says, in part:

While part of my decision to quit my political involvement has to do with disillusionment, a much bigger part of it is the higher calling that God has put on my life. Over the last few years, I have increasingly felt God pulling me into full-time ministry. Over the last few years, I’ve taught an adult Sunday school class at my church and led our Guatemala mission trips, but the call goes beyond that. In response to that call, I have applied to New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary to begin a Masters of Divinity degree in January, attending part time at first and commuting twice a week.

But I really can’t wait until January to begin my studies. For one thing, I took 18 hours of ancient Greek as an undergrad, and I can save myself six credit hours and $1000 if I can relearn that language on my own by January. But, beyond that, I am ready now to more fully devote myself to my calling, but I have a very limited amount of free time, because I still need to work over 50 hours every week at Mathnasium, and especially because we plan to open a third location in the fall. Oh, and yeah, I need time to be a good father.

So, I really need to “cast off that which hinders me,” and politics hinders me. I don’t have the time, and no tax cut ever saved anyone’s soul. I need to stay off Facebook in general, but I especially need to give up my habit of reading and commenting on political issues for a couple of hours every day. So, this is a farewell of sorts, for now. I have other work to do.

Ryan has not yet been able to start his seminary studies, in part, or maybe mostly, I’m not sure, over money issues. But that’s where his heart is, not in politics. He does not consider himself a Republican any more, but is every bit the conservative — especially religious and social conservative — that he ever was. He and I talk often about religious liberty.

With that as background, let me tell you what he did yesterday. I interviewed him earlier today about it, because it was just so astonishing and inspiring.

Because Ryan is a close friend with a real interest in the Ben Op, I shared with him the most recent draft of The Benedict Option, which I’m close to finishing (publication date is March 14, 2017). He has been reading the manuscript at my request, to make suggestions for the final revision. Here’s what he told me this afternoon, verbatim:

I was reading, among other things, your post about what’s going on at Celtic [one of the shelters in Baton Rouge], and knew from that, and other people, about the work going on there,” he said. “It’s funny, Rod, because I had just read in your draft the part where you were talking about the monks’ hospitality. In the manuscript, you quote Brother Ignatius quoting Matthew 25:35, where Jesus says, ‘I was a stranger and I took you in.

It occurred to me, Why should we care for people at a giant shelter when we can take them into our homes? I have room to take a couple of people in.

Ryan is divorced, and shares custody of his daughter Grace with his ex-wife. Grace’s mother just bought a new house, and spent a lot of money and effort furnishing it. It’s now underwater. Ryan saw to it that his former in-laws made it to safety. If I understood correctly, his former wife is taking care of them in another Louisiana town, where they are not under flood threat. Grace is with her dad. Let’s pick the story back up with Ryan:

Grace and I went to Celtic, looking for people we could offer a bedroom to. We live on the third floor, so we couldn’t take anybody frail or infirm, which is what we would have preferred. There’s no elevator, so we had to get people who could climb the stairs. We don’t have room for a big family, but for one or two people.

We found an African-American woman about 50, who looked like she needed a place to stay. We asked her, but she thought for a second and said, “You know, there are a lot of people who need it more than me.” I thought maybe she might have some hesitation about going into a stranger’s home, but Grace could see that the lady was tearing up when she said it.

Think about that. Here is a woman who has lost her home, and who is living in a shelter. A man and his daughter come in and offer her a bed and a good, safe, comfortable place to stay. She thinks about it, but says no, there are people needier than I am. Ryan again:

It took us a while to find somebody who wasn’t part of a big family. Grace and I weren’t going to take a single man, which may not be the best fit for our home, with just me and Grace there. Since the Salvation Army men’s shelter had flooded out, you could tell there are a lot of people at Celtic who would normally be at the Salvation Army. We couldn’t risk taking one of them in.

Eventually we found Jacob and Josh [Note: I’ve changed their names to protect their privacy — RD]. They were very eager to come. They had not slept the night before because of all the crying babies around them. They had been rescued by boat. They live in a second floor apartment, so most of their personal belongings are probably okay. They’re still asleep right now. We’re going to go over and check in a little while. I think the water has gone down now.

When people leave the shelter, they have to check out with the Red Cross, so the Red Cross can keep track of who’s where. When they were checking out, Josh gave his real name: Annabella.

Ryan Booth — a straight, Southern Baptist conservative — had inadvertently invited a female-to-male transgender and his boyfriend into his home. Did that give Ryan pause?

“Not at all,” he told me. “In a sense, the opportunity to be a witness to somebody who may be more unlike me might make my witness more powerful.”

I told Ryan that a lot of people would think that someone who fits his demographic profile would want to have nothing to do with someone who fits Josh’s demographic profile. I added, “It sounds to me like you didn’t take Jacob and Josh in in spite of being a traditional Christian, but you did it because you are a traditional Christian. Am I right?

“That’s exactly why I did it,” Ryan said. He added that he wanted to make sure Jacob and Josh knew that he was a Christian, so they wouldn’t be freaked out by that. They weren’t, or if they were, they were too tired to show it.

“I told them that this is what Jesus told us to do,” Ryan said. “It’s that Benedictine hospitality. Brother Ignatius in the Benedict Option book says that when we take somebody in, we see Christ in them. They bear the image of God. Again, it’s just like Jesus said in Matthew: when you take in someone who has nowhere to go, you are taking Him in.”

Has Ryan changed his mind about moral values and cultural politics? Not at all, nor should he. Despite what many liberals think, Ryan’s the sort of traditional Christian who believes what he does about sex, sexuality, and gender identity not because he hates the Other — he plainly does not — but because he believes Scripture is true. Understand it clearly, though: Ryan is an Evangelical Christian who believes all Scripture is true, including this part, from Matthew 25:

31 “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. 32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

34 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’

44 “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

45 “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’

46 “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”

Adds Ryan:

“It’s not my place to judge them. In these circumstances, it’s my place to love them.”

That, my friends, is the Benedict Option. No tax cut gave shelter to these refugees, a transgendered man and his boyfriend. A conservative Southern Baptist and his young daughter did. Because those strangers needed it, because Ryan saw the image of God in them, and because Ryan is a servant of the Lord.

Folks, this kind of thing is happening all over south Louisiana, right now! Yes, the national media are not (yet) paying the kind of attention a disaster this vast deserves, but they’re not all like that. NPR’s Debbie Elliott had a great report on All Things Considered yesterday, reporting from the Celtic Media Center soundstage shelter. Look at this excerpt, in which she interviews Augustine and Ngozi Amechi:

ELLIOTT: The Amechis, originally from Nigeria, live in east Baton Rouge. Their Park Forest subdivision is under water.

A. AMECHI: Oh, we were trapped.

ELLIOTT: They were rescued by boat at 4 in the morning on Sunday. Amechi used a flashlight to signal out the window for help as the water rose thigh-high in their house.

A. AMECHI: We didn’t know the extent of the disaster until we were on the boat. And all the streets in the neighborhood were all flooded almost to the roof of the house, you know? It was terrible. It was just an experience.

ELLIOTT: They lost everything, but Ngozi Amechi is thankful they got out alive.

N. AMECHI: My thanks goes to those boats men, those boat – they worked day and night…

A. AMECHI: Right.

N. AMECHI: …Throughout all this period.

ELLIOTT: The Amechis say they thought the flooding would stop when the rain did, but then the water just kept rising. That’s a scenario playing out across south Louisiana now as rivers, streams, lakes and canals overflow their banks. Governor John Bel Edwards warns the worst might not be over.

JOHN BEL EDWARDS: So we are still in the response phase. We’re about saving lives. We’re going to get to making people comfortable and looking after their property.

ELLIOTT: The National Guard and the Coast Guard are helping first responders, but hordes of volunteers have also launched boats to conduct rescues. Officials have evacuated several nursing homes and hospitals. The facilities that have remained open are having trouble remaining fully staffed because so many people are affected by the flood.

Debbie Baham is a home health worker whose apartment complex in Amite was destroyed. She’s now in a shelter in that small town east of Baton Rouge.

DEBBIE BAHAM: I mean, we lost everything. I got up at 5 o’clock in the morning to go to work, went in, and the water was just coming in. I mean it just came out of nowhere.

ELLIOTT: She says the water was waist-deep when firefighters came to take them out on fire trucks.

BAHAM: I’m in a world of hurt right now, don’t know where I’m going or what’s going to happen.

BAHAM: Back at the Baton Rouge shelter, Augustine Amechi says all they can do is depend on one another.

A. AMECHI: In a disaster like this, people should thank God and know that we all are human – same race, human race, OK? And in a disaster like this, you know that people care for each other.

It’s so true! I have NEVER been more proud than to be from Louisiana as I am in these awful days. Look, the national media all found there way down here when Alton Sterling was shot and killed. But now, when thousands of black lives are shattered by catastrophic losses, where are they? If they came, and if they had eyes to see, they would know that what Augustine Amechi says is for real. We are seeing black folks and white folks rescuing each other, and caring for each other in the shelters, and even in each others’ homes. This kind of thing is happening everywhere, all around us. We are even seeing a conservative Southern Baptist man opening his apartment to a transgender man and his boyfriend, because they are strangers who needed a place to go, but also because they are not strangers at all, but neighbors, Louisianians, fellow human beings.

One of you readers, can’t remember who, chastised me recently for being too caught up in what’s going on in the media and online. Most people do not live in a world of perpetual culture war, the reader said. I know that’s true in theory, but that does not mean that the culture war is not happening, and that the decisions being made in courts, in Congress, in state legislatures, in church assemblies, in the media, and so forth, aren’t crucially important. The fact that most ordinary people are ignoring this stuff doesn’t make it unreal or unimportant, from either a conservative or a liberal point of view.

On the other hand, it is also true, as my critical reader said, that it’s much too easy for people like me to mistake what happens online and in TV Land for what’s happening in real life outside my front door. This disaster that has overtaken my community has been a mercy from God to me in this one way: it has shown me how true this is, and how much I, too, live in a bubble of my own, as much as the people in the national media that I’m now criticizing harshly. I am guilty as well. Mea maxima culpa, as they say in the Norcia monastery.

I can tell you this for sure: parts of The Benedict Option are going to be heavily revised this week, to include things that I’m seeing and learning in my own community. I’ve written there, as I’ve written on this blog, how the kind of politics that concern me now are the politics of building local community, and local community institutions. I am not saying that what happens in Washington doesn’t matter. It does matter, and we cannot be naive about that. But I’m saying that I cannot bring myself to feel much connection to those fights. I hadn’t thought of it this way till this afternoon, but what Ryan Booth did last night for those strangers is the essence of Benedict Option politics, or rather, anti-politics. Ryan is a devout churchgoing Baptist, so he knows his Bible. But it was the words of a Benedictine guest master, an Indonesian-born monk who lives in the mountains of Umbria at a monastery built over the birthplace of St. Benedict of Nursia, that moved his heart last night.

St. Benedict, born in 480, would never have known that his simple acts of fidelity to Christ as a monk in the ruins of the Western Roman Empire would one day be partly responsible for the fact that refugees Jacob and Josh found a warm, comfortable place to stay last night in flood-ravaged south Louisiana, in the home of a Christian man and his young daughter. But God knew.

Only God knows what He’s doing here in our time and place. But I know that despite my own pettiness, vanity, wrathfulness and weakness, I want to be a part of it, somehow. I want to be like Brother Ignatius, the Catholic monk, and like Ryan Booth, the Southern Baptist math teacher, because they want to be like Jesus, in all things.

Follow Ryan Booth on Twitter @brteacher — he’s going to have some great stories to tell. And by the way, for those who loved my book The Little Way of Ruthie Leming, and remember the stories in it about how all of St. Francisville and West Feliciana Parish came together to help Katrina refugees in 2005, you’ll be happy to know that I talked to my Starhill friend and neighbor Julie Ralph this morning. AT&T somehow got a call through. She said she was at First Baptist Church, which is a hive of activity. Lots of refugees sheltering in St. Francisville now, and all the church people in town are working hard to help. Julie says that Facebook has been immensely helpful in allowing people to get specific needs taken care of quickly. But all the technology in the world would be useless if not for spark of love that comes from the human heart.

What The Hell Is Wrong With The National Media?

Reader James C. writes from Europe:

Can’t believe the media silence on this story. Look at the screenshot of CNN’s home page. Not a single mention of the flood anywhere. We’re it not for your blog, I wouldn’t have known about it.

I checked the page just now on my smartphone, and the Louisiana flooding story is the 16th story on the page. You have to scroll way down to see it, and it’s below an underwear ad.

The sheriff of Livingston Parish is saying that over 100,000 people in his parish alone lost everything they own. But hey, on CNN, Adele’s not Beyoncé, a sportscaster is on TV in his drawers, and Donald Trump is hearing things. Haw haw!

It’s not just them. On the CBS News webpage as I type this, the lead story is the arrest of a suspect in the murder of Muslims in Queens. If you want to find out the latest in what is shaping up to be one of the nation’s worst-ever natural disasters, you have to scroll way down, past several Olympics stories (including an explainer of why the water in Rio pools turned green), a piece on Hillary’s promise to love Scranton, a piece about a California fire that destroyed 175 structures and left “dozens of families homeless,” and a piece about a New York woman who says her head felt like it was going to explode when she was struck by lightning.

Look, nothing against the lighting-strike lady or those dozens of California families who are without homes tonight. But guess what, CBS? In Ascension Parish, just south of Baton Rouge, 15,000 homes and business are underwater!  That’s about 1/3 of all homes in a parish whose population is roughly 120,000 people. In Livingston Parish, 50,000 homes are flooded out — that’s 70 percent of all the houses in the parish.

Those are just two parishes. So many here in south Louisiana are in the same shape. And it’s continuing.

But hey, CBS, don’t let what’s happening to hundreds of thousands of coonasses and rednecks and black folks here in flyover territory take your eye off of green swimming pools in Rio, two murders in Queens, and 175 buildings in California (question: why are 175 destroyed California homes more important to CBS News than what will easily be more than 100,000 homes in south Louisiana?). Same with you, CNN. Same with so many of you people in the national media.

Honest to God, what is wrong with you media people? I know, everybody thinks what’s happening in their part of the world is the most important thing ever. I get that. But come on, these floods are of national historical importance in the United States of America. And you national media people may find this hard to believe, but south Louisiana is as much a part of America as is Queens, northern California, and Pennsylvania. We’re not friggin’ Bangladesh.

Please insult us, Donald Trump. That’s the only way to get the national media to notice what’s happening to us here.

Louisiana 1927 2016

I’m not sure where that map came from, and if any of you know, please tell me so I can credit the source. It appeared on Facebook tonight. [UPDATE: A reader points out that it’s a standard flood-zone map issued by the state, to indicate areas prone to flooding. It is NOT a map of the current flooding. I’m going to look for one of those, but with this caveat, I’ll leave this here because chances are the actual map of current conditions is much worse, given that everywhere prone to flooding has already flooded, and some places that have never flooded are underwater.] It shows the flooded parts of the City of Baton Rouge. Please understand that this is only Baton Rouge. The flooding is much more widespread than you see here. For example, 90 percent of the city of Denham Springs, pop. 10,148, just to our east, is underwater. To give you a sense of how abnormal this is, in normal times, there’s no blue on this map.

Fortunately for me and my family, we are living on one of the “islands” on the map, nowhere near the water. We are not threatened. But none of it is very far away, and everybody knows somebody who has lost their house.

East Baton Rouge public schools are closed until further notice. Students had only been back in school for a week or so, but still, all the public schools in a city of 230,000 are closed indefinitely because of the flooding. I was talking today with a journalist friend from a national media source who is in the city to cover the flooding. She was speculating on the catastrophic economic impact this is going to have on Louisiana, a state that’s already poor, and whose state government is struggling with an enormous budget deficit.

My friend and former Dallas Morning News colleague Jacquielynn Floyd wants to know why the national media have been so slow to notice the magnitude of what’s been happening down here. Excerpt:

“I think it’s been a kind of ‘Hey, what about us?’ moment,” said David Wyld, a management professor at Southeastern Louisiana University. David and his wife, both Dallas-area natives, said their home in Hammond – about a half-hour east of Baton Rouge – is safe, but they’re shocked by the gravity of the crisis.

“It’s continuing to be a kind of rolling tragedy,” he said. “This has really been surreal.”

Wyld, who takes a thoughtful view of how public attention and popular media function and intersect, said he believes it was sheer bad luck that the disaster – an unprecedented rain deluge and fast-rising flood waters – struck late last week. A lot of us were distracted by the bizarre presidential campaign, and by the Olympic games, he said.

And then, he observed shrewdly, there’s the fact that this is a Storm With No Name.

“It’s not Katrina. It’s not a tropical storm; it doesn’t have a name,” he said. It’s just water – rising, spreading, devastating, stranding cars, homes, communities.

As some of you readers commented to me over the weekend, if not for this blog, you would have had no idea this was happening. A Facebook friend of mine here writes:

I’ve heard that the national media isn’t doing a very good job of getting across exactly how devastated Louisiana is right now.

Listen, we know floods. We are very familiar with water and storms. We’re not faint of heart, and we are not crying wolf here. At least twenty thousand people have been rescued, and over 500 pets. More people than not have water in their homes, and this spreads throughout almost the entirety of south Louisiana.

I can’t begin to put an image in anyone‘s mind, but it’s apocalyptic. There’s water everywhere. Makeshift shelters are filled. People were trapped on an interstate, some for a full day. 62 miles of that same interstate is closed and may end up being destroyed from the water. Two other major interstates here are flooded at places and may also cause severe damage.

People are still being rescued and still trapped. Houses being picked up off their foundation. Water is still flowing. Tens of thousands of people are affected by this, even before more floodwaters rose. Yesterday we witnessed water rise a foot in thirty minutes. We witnessed people break their backs to sandbag and save their homes who lost it in the end anyway.

The other thing is, this flood has gotten into so many homes of people who don’t have flood insurance. These people were told they didn’t need the insurance, and here they are. This is unprecedented. People are finding out by the movement of the water in an instant that they have to leave their home and just do it and walk away.

There are caskets floating in the water. There are helicopters overhead. Fire stations are flooded. There are gas leaks. Cell service has been down, and water boil advisories are in place all over. 911 has been down at times. Schools across the board are flooded, and no one knows when they will be able to go back. In addition to direct impact from the flood, friends are getting robbed, cards are being stolen.

I know I’ve left details out, but I just want my friends here who don’t know to have some information. We’re very heartbroken here, and we will be devastated for some time to come. All I can say now is that I’m completely in awe of the people here. Complete loyalty to family, friends, and strangers alike. Zero hesitation to risk yourself for another. As broken as this situation is, the people are just as resilient and loving and giving. How would we ever get through without a village?

And as I type this, it’s raining again.

Right now I’m thinking about the weary woman, maybe in her early 60s, Lucas and I saw yesterday walking toward the Costco parking lot next to the Celtic Media Center shelter on Sunday morning. She was all alone, and looked dazed.

“Lucas, that lady is wearing a bathrobe,” I said.

“Dad, she’s wearing pajamas under it.”

There you are in your house one night, and it’s raining. The next morning it’s full of water, and you’re being pulled to safety by men in boats or by soldiers in a rescue chopper, and you’re walking on the shoulder of the road by a Costco wearing nothing but your pajamas and your bathrobe. It has happened just that quickly to thousands and thousands of people here.

Remember my telling you about Thomas Achord, the young teacher of ancient Greek at Sequitur Classical Academy here in Baton Rouge? He’s the guy who wrote the beautiful Facebook comment I featured here on Sunday, about how much a disaster like this makes him realize how much he loves Louisiana. He’s part of the unofficial Cajun Navy, the ragtag but huge number of Louisiana men with boats who hit the water to save people. These men are the very best of Louisiana, and of America. Nobody told them to do it. They went, because that’s what men like them do. This is going around social media down here. It’s not bragging if it’s true:

 

Thomas wrote on Facebook today:

T. Achord

Came across three stranded people who were near their barn sitting on their horses with another five horses standing around, in about 6 feet of water. They wanted to ride em to safety but didn’t know the way, so I tied the boat to the train and we rode horses through the flood to dry ground. 

This is the Greek teacher at a Baton Rouge classical Christian high school doing this in his bass boat. He’s been at it for days, even though his own house, though not flooded, is on a de facto island. That is some serious south Louisiana greatness. And the thing is, there are hundreds and hundreds of men just like him doing the same thing right now, though I hear that the Army National Guard is now discouraging them, and trying to professionalize the rescue.

But you don’t have to man a bass boat to serve your neighbor, not here in the Great State, baby:

Some of you have been asking how you can help. Well, you could send your beautiful women to deliver tequila to us, but failing that, the Times-Picayune has a guide to a number of area charities doing relief work.  A friend and reader of this blog is in administration at the Baton Rouge General hospital. He says that about one-third of the hospital’s employees are flooded out — and still, if they can get to the hospital, they’re showing up. They’re struggling to keep the hospital staffed. I am sure other city hospitals are suffering the same thing. I saw a photo yesterday of the big Ochsner hospital on the far east side. It was an island, cut off from everything around it. I don’t know how it’s doing today.

My friend, a member of this blog’s reader community, said the General has set up a fund for cash assistance for its flooded employees and their families. If you want to donate, go to brgeneral.org/donate, click the “Other” button where it asks you where you want your contribution directed, and in the text box, write “Great Flood.” Your money will go directly to Baton Rouge General employees affected by the flooding.

Someone from Louisiana named Emily Davenport has taken Randy Newman’s iconic song about an earlier epic flood, “Louisiana 1927″, and used it as background to a slide show of images from what we’re dealing with now. You watch this if you can. I couldn’t get through the first two lines without breaking down.

Help us if you can. Believe me, we are helping ourselves, but the need is so great, and will be with us for so long.

UPDATE: Now this here is love and honor. I’m serious. It would be like if the Hatfields pledged to help out the McCoys. SEC solidarity! (H/T: Leslie Fain):

UPDATE.2: From a Baton Rouge TV reporter:

In Livingston Parish alone, the sheriff says estimates 100,500 people lost everything. The scope of the damage is almost incomprehensible .

— Brett Buffington (@BrettBuffington) August 16, 2016

RIP My Faithful MacBook Air

Photo by Rod Dreher

Well, the Apple store is closed until Thursday, at least, so no Genius Bar appointment to save the lost stuff on my hard drive, which is in a coma, and to replace my MacBook Air. I hate to think of spending the money for a new MacBook Air, but I’m not going to think about going with anything else. I love the machine, and it has given me faithful service.

I bought it in the spring of 2011. In the five years I’ve used it, nearly every word you have read on my TAC blog was written on this machine. I wrote The Little Way of Ruthie Leming on it, and How Dante Can Save Your Life. I wrote the manuscript of The Wind In The Reeds, Wendell Pierce’s memoir, on which I was the collaborator, on the MacBook Air, and pages and pages of audio transcriptions of lengthy interviews with Wendell for the book. And I wrote almost all of The Benedict Option on the book, and was at the very end of the new and final chapter when it gave up the ghost.

That’s a lot of writing. I suppose I don’t have any right to feel hard towards the little thing for dying on me at the worst possible moment. Look at that snapshot of its keyboard.

Goodbye, little MacBook Air. You were a good friend, and traveled far with me.

Did Trump Just Blow Up His Coalition?

Donald Trump gave a speech this afternoon in which he made some pretty strong proposals. I’m waiting on the transcript, and will post excerpts when it’s available, but here are some live tweets from the Cleveland Plain Dealer correspondent in the audience:

Trump proposes:

– End of nation building

– Extreme immigration screening

– Creating a commission on radical islam

– Promoting common culture

— Andrew J. Tobias (@AndrewJTobias) August 15, 2016

Trump closes: “We will reject bigotry hatred and oppression in any of its ugly forms, and seek a new future based on our common culture.”

— Andrew J. Tobias (@AndrewJTobias) August 15, 2016

I don’t think Trump knows what he has just done.

Here’s a link to the full transcript. There’s a lot to like in the speech (seriously), and the tweet encapsulation above is correct. Let me stipulate that a) I approve of ending nation building; b) if by “extreme immigration screening” he means keeping out Muslims who have a provable history of being prone to violent radicalism, including supporting honor killings, I’m for that; and c) I’m indifferent to the “radical Islam commission,” seeing it as nothing but political red meat (if the US were a European nation, I would feel very differently about it).

On d) promoting a common culture … well, that’s tricky. More than tricky. I’m all for downplaying multiculturalism and focusing on what we have in common, in a Haidtian sense, but the problem is this: what is our common culture today? 

If we had a common culture, the culture wars would be much more muted. For example, if gay-rights supporters, who have decisively won their cause in the public arena, were willing to recognize that being an American includes having the right to be wrong within limits, they would agree to leave traditional Christian schools and institutions alone to stew in our own bigotry, or whatever they want to call it. But they can’t, and won’t. They and their allies wish to demonize us and cast us out of the public square. They don’t want any commonality with us. And to be fair, depending on the particular issue, many of us don’t want commonality with them.

I’m not talking about the broadest, deepest issues, like saving your neighbors from a flood. The Red Cross shelter where I was yesterday was full of people from every walk of life here in south Louisiana. Even a stranger from far away could have seen that. And they were rescued by people from a narrower demographic group — most of the guys with boats and motors are white sportsmen who live in the suburbs and rural areas, which means they are likely Trump voters — they were out searching for and saving anyone and everyone. That is not common culture as much as it’s common humanity, which is not the same thing (and God help us if we cease to recognize our common humanity; that’s how civil wars start).

But common culture? We don’t really have one anymore, and that’s the source of many of our problems.

Second, while I hope and expect that every traditional Christians strongly rejects those who would harm or abuse gays and lesbians, whatever the abuser’s cultural and religious background, Trump is on very thin ice with conservative Christians when he says, “We will reject bigotry, hatred and oppression in any of its ugly forms… .” That word “ugly” is doing a lot of work there. Being a Manhattan business mogul and cultural liberal, he may not realize that the cultural Left considers basic orthodox Christianity itself to be an example of “bigotry, hatred, and oppression.” 

There are many people in the world today, outside of America’s borders, who are good and decent people, and who intend America no harm, but who do not hold all the values of a middle-class American. Many of them hold views on gender roles that are not compatible with the US mainstream, for example. Many of them are Muslim, but many of them are Christian, as well as Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, or non-religious but traditional in their culture. Are they all to be kept out of this country too? Can Trump give us an example of “bigotry, hatred, and oppression” that manifests not in an “ugly” form, but in a form he finds acceptable?

You see the problem. Here are Trump’s actual words, from the transcript:

Those who do not believe in our Constitution, or who support bigotry and hatred, will not be admitted for immigration into the country.

Only those who we expect to flourish in our country – and to embrace a tolerant American society – should be issued visas.

…

I will fight to ensure that every American is treated equally, protected equally, and honored equally. We will reject bigotry and oppression in all its forms, and seek a new future built on our common culture and values as one American people.

Oh? What does “treated equally, protected equally, and honored equally” mean for churches, mosques, shuls, schools, and religious institutions that want to live out their traditionalist beliefs on homosexuality and women’s roles, but who do not wish to be violent or abusive to gays, lesbians, and women? This is a big red flag for us trads.

Seems pretty clear to me that in his attempt to appeal to fear and hatred of Muslims, Trump is inadvertently throwing conservative Christians under the bus. Again, let me emphasize, I have no problem at all with the US keeping violent crackpots like the influential Sunni leader Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, who advocates killing homosexuals, out of this country. In fact, I encourage it. And I agree with Trump that we should halt immigration from countries that produce these violent extremists until we can better screen them.

But Trump’s words really ought to be chilling to Christian conservatives who have supported him. The fact that Trump did not qualify his language here indicates that he (and the people around him) have no real grasp of what traditional Christians are facing in this country. As far as the cultural Left is concerned, there’s not much difference between us and radical Muslims.

Conservative Christians who have come out in support of Trump had better think hard about whether they will stick by him after this. This is a major sign that he has no grasp of what we’re facing. Do you really think this man will be a reliable friend to us when the going gets tough?

Also, on a purely practical political point, why on earth would he have been so clumsy with this rhetoric? He’s in real trouble politically right now, and doesn’t need to threaten his own coalition, such as it is. This is not helping.

Or maybe Trump believes that his hardcore Christian supporters hate and fear Islam more than they understand what’s at stake in terms of their own religious liberty. It just might be that he is right.

Note to readers: I am not going to spend my time moderating the comments having to defend myself and traditional Christians against charges that we support beating up or killing gays and lesbians. Any Christian that does this is a disgrace to his faith, and I repudiate them. If you make your comment from the point of view that there is no substantive difference between traditional Christians and Muslims who advocate treating gays and lesbians this way, I won’t publish it.

Trump Frustration

Getting some pushback from Trump fans for my blowing up over him Sunday morning. Some of it is the usual can’t-hear-a-bad-word stuff, but there are some completely fair complaints. Let me address them.

1. My laptop melted down on Friday, so I haven’t been online much. I truly had no idea that the epic Louisiana flooding had not been all over the national news. True, Trump has said nothing about it, but to my knowledge, neither has Hillary, or the president, for that matter. So why did I lose it over Trump, but not over Hillary?

2. Because it wasn’t really about the flooding, though going over to the shelter and seeing the incredible suffering people here are enduring crystallized my anger at Trump. The deal is, I am in despair over this election. Hillary Clinton is so bad in so many ways, especially when I think about the Supreme Court she’s likely to appoint, that I have been trying to find any way I could justify a vote for Trump. On Sunday morning, drinking coffee, I checked my Twitter feed, and found six or seven tweets in a row from him bitching about how unfa-i-i-r the media are to him. Then I saw this NYT story about how people in Trump’s inner circle are desperately trying to save him from himself, but getting nowhere. Excerpt:

Advisers who once hoped a Pygmalion-like transformation would refashion a crudely effective political showman into a plausible American president now increasingly concede that Mr. Trump may be beyond coaching. He has ignored their pleas and counsel as his poll numbers have dropped, boasting to friends about the size of his crowds and maintaining that he can read surveys better than the professionals.

In private, Mr. Trump’s mood is often sullen and erratic, his associates say. He veers from barking at members of his staff to grumbling about how he was better off following his own instincts during the primaries and suggesting he should not have heeded their calls for change.

He broods about his souring relationship with the news media, calling Mr. Manafort several times a day to talk about specific stories. Occasionally, Mr. Trump blows off steam in bursts of boyish exuberance: At the end of a fund-raiser on Long Island last week, he playfully buzzed the crowd twice with his helicopter.

But in interviews with more than 20 Republicans who are close to Mr. Trump or in communication with his campaign, many of whom insisted on anonymity to avoid clashing with him, they described their nominee as exhausted, frustrated and still bewildered by fine points of the political process and why his incendiary approach seems to be sputtering.

He is routinely preoccupied with perceived slights, for example raging to aides after Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, in his re-election announcement, said he would stand up to the next president regardless of party. In a visit to Capitol Hill in early July, Mr. Trump bickered with two Republican senators who had not endorsed him; he needled Representative Peter T. King of New York for having taken donations from him over the years only to criticize him on television now.

3. Think about what is at stake here. This man has the GOP nomination for president. He is running against an extraordinarily unpopular Democrat, a woman who represents what people hate about American politics at the elite level. Any other Republican nominee, whatever his flaws, would be hammering away at Hillary’s sleazy ethics, at the Clinton Foundation and its entanglements with the Hillary-run State Department, and so forth. But not our Donald. No, he’s got to pick fights with a Gold Star family, and let The New York Times get inside his head. Every Republican presidential candidate knows that he faces a hostile news media. Do they go to pieces over it? No! Well, Richard Nixon did, but he held it together long enough to win two presidential elections. Trump is such an immature narcissist that he cannot hold it together for four months, even though the prize of the US presidency could be his.

Who does this? What kind of person behaves this way with so much at stake? For one thing, the Supreme Court could be gone to the liberals for an entire generation if Republicans lose this election. The chance to remake US foreign policy away from the interventionist Washington consensus — gone. The opportunity to pivot away from globalism towards a more robust nationalism — also gone. And on and on, all because Trump thinks it’s all about him, always. If Donald Trump can be unhorsed by Khizr Khan and the news media, how on earth would he be able to handle the challenges of foreign leaders?

Seriously, think about it. A man whose emotions control him can easily be controlled by someone who can manipulate those emotions. Can’t you see President Trump’s advisors sitting in the Oval Office, begging him to pay attention to what’s happening in the South China Sea, while he’s on his smartphone checking Twitter to respond to this or that slight by a pundit or an editorial page. Sure, Hillary is going to be Nixonian, but Trump on his best day won’t be as capable and as controlled as Tricky Dick, who was, as we know, brought down by his own hatred and paranoia.

4. And consider that this is what it has come down to for American conservatism. The self-serving smugness of the GOP Establishment rendered them incapable of discerning the conditions that made Trump’s rise possible. Trump didn’t come from nowhere. However crudely and often, well, insanely he spoke, Trump raised issues (e.g., immigration, trade, interventionism) that really do matter to a lot of Americans, and that the GOP elites didn’t understand or accept. They needed to have their heads knocked around, and Trump did that. Good for Trump! But now look at what conservatives are stuck with: this boob who can’t even be bothered to put together field offices in states he has to win.

He’s not even trying. Would a sane GOP presidential candidate spend a Saturday night three months before the election at a rally in … Connecticut?! Excerpt:

That a Republican presidential candidate was spending a Saturday night and campaign resources addressing a crowd in Connecticut was surprising, given that a Republican presidential candidate has not won the state since 1988, a fact that Trump himself acknowledged.

“You know, we are making a big move for the state of Connecticut, just so you understand,” Trump said. “Normally that wouldn’t happen because a Republican, in theory, doesn’t win Connecticut.”

How many electoral votes does Connecticut have? Seven. How many does Florida have? Twenty-nine. And Ohio? Eighteen.

So naturally the GOP presidential nominee spends a Saturday night in August in Fairfield, “making a play” for a state that no Republican has one since George H.W. Bush in 1988, and that even if a Republican won it this time, no big whoop. Seven electoral votes.

At some point, “But he’s not Hillary!” ceases to be a plausible excuse for this guy. There is so much wrong with the country right now, so many real and serious things that Donald Trump could focus on, if he actually cared. He doesn’t. At some point this fall, the Republican Party is going to have to cut him loose, and do what it can to save the House and the Senate, to have some way of checking Clinton II. There is not going to be a Trump reset. This is who he is. A spoiled brat who is taking what’s left of political conservatism in America down with him.

I look forward one day to voting for a Republican presidential candidate who is smart, decent, and who actually cares about the problems of ordinary people more than Conservatism, Inc., does. I eagerly anticipate the day I can cast my ballot for Ohio Gov. J.D. Vance for President. Campaign 2028 cannot come soon enough.