I think we can apply the familiar maxim to Facebook: don’t take Facebook too seriously – Facebook already takes itself too seriously. Over the past few months, I have given a lot of thought to my involvement with Facebook, and particularly to the question of whether I should stay or leave. In frustration, I have threatened to leave and urged others to consider doing the same. I have opened accounts with Parler and with MeWe. I haven’t opened anything with Gaab, but that’s only because… well, I just haven’t. I have raged against the censorship, against the glaring double-standard, against the obvious bias of the medium. I have chuckled wryly (that is a thing, you know) as I scrolled through old posts of mine to see shadow-ban screens covering select posts. My favorite warning screen, which appears on several of my more recent posts, warns of inappropriate or explicit content. I found myself trying to remember what it was I posted that Facebook might consider to be “partial nudity.” If you are curious, just scroll through my old posts. You’ll be shocked to discover what passes for sexually explicit content these days.
The big question is, do I stay or do I go. Ultimately, I have decided to stay for now. And since I like to get a little mileage out of these decisions, I thought I would share my thoughts on it with you, the reading audience. Notice that I said “reading” audience, not the “glancing” audience or the “skimming” audience. How ‘bout we slow down that scrolling, swiping, and/or surfing for a minute so you can see for yourself.
Here are five reasons why I’m not leaving Facebook YET, followed by a few rules for my fellow rebels who stay with me. I’m not leaving Facebook…
Because I don’t have to.
And you can’t make me. Neener, neener, neener. So there.
Spoiler alert: I don’t think Antifa was behind the assault on the U.S. Capital. I think it was Trump supporters. No doubt there were some bad actors there. On the same day, January 6th, a Trump rally was held at the Utah State Capital. At that rally, both QAnon and the Proud Boys showed up in full force. Agitators are on the rise in our country, fueled by a growing sense of frustration and discontent.
Caution: bad language throughout
I don’t excuse what happened, and I don’t deny it. I think President Trump bears some of the blame; I don’t think he carries all of the blame. I don’t think he gets a pass; I don’t give his opponents a pass. I think we are in a real mess right now, and I don’t see relief on the horizon.
Sorry if that feels too gloomy for you. Generally speaking, I am an optimistic person. But in this case, we need to face reality. We see a rising tension in our country that threatens to explode at any moment.
Immediately after the media projected Joe Biden the winner of the Presidential election, newspapers from Australia to Arizona ran the same headline, almost verbatim: “A Time to Heal” The message was clear: a Biden presidency can bring healing to our nation. I find it uncanny the way the news media can present the same story in almost the same words across the board. I have often wondered whether there is a central agency that provides all the mainstream media with the verbiage for their news reports. Perhaps if we could find that agency, we could make TV news watchable again.
The left believes that with the removal of Donald Trump, we can experience healing in our nation. The tension in Washington is all his fault, after all. He is a dictator, a tyrant, unhinged, a rogue, a Russian agent, Putin’s pawn. He colluded with Russia. He stole the 2016 election. He is bad for democracy. He sought a quid pro quo with Ukraine. He is the problem.
If thieves break into your house and steal your valuables while you are away, that’s one thing; if they back up a moving truck in the middle of the day and start loading up your furniture while you are home, that’s quite another. In the first case, you can be excused if they get away with it. In the second, we have to ask Clint Eastwood’s question, “You gonna do something, or just stand there and bleed?”
Some lies are so bald-faced, so audacious, that for a moment, we can’t believe it would be told. It catches us off guard. We think that it must be true because nobody would push such a blatant lie. The Presidential election of 2020 amounts to the Democrats saying, “yeah, we cheated: what are you going to do about it?”
But to make our case, we should consider the options in the aftermath of this election. Assuming Biden won the election, he either won legitimately, or he cheated. If he cheated, he either gets away with it, or he doesn’t. These are our only options.
Let’s dig in a little more. If Biden won legitimately, then his victory should stand up to scrutiny, and he should want it to. He has enough of a lead that a recount will put to bed any accusations of cheating. And since he wants to be the President of all Americans, he should want to set our minds at ease that this election hasn’t been the biggest hoax in history.
Consider something else here: if Biden’s win is legit, that makes him the most popular presidential candidate in history. Let that sink in. He trounced Obama’s popularity. Joe Biden. Gaffer-in-chief. The man who didn’t campaign. Who stayed home. Who couldn’t draw a crowd of flies if he was honey. That Joe Biden. We are being asked to believe that Joe Biden is the most popular presidential candidate in history.
Yeah, I didn’t think so.
If Biden cheated (and I think he did – and not just a little), he either gets away with it or he doesn’t. And this is what we are up against. Because, if Biden gets away with it, then that signals the end of our Republic. We become a third-world country, and no honest candidate ever wins another Presidential election. The Democrats become the ruling party, and the Republicans get the consolation prize in Congress – maybe.
But of course, if Biden doesn’t get away with it, Antifa will burn down our cities, and we will likely have the start of a Civil War. Don’t tell me that hasn’t played a role in the massive leap of the stock market. Wall Street generally prefers the non-rioting option.
Trump has been howling about this sort of cheating since Mitt Romney lost to Obama in 2012. Predictably, the media brands Trump a conspiracy nutjob for his trouble. Which is enough to convince the average American that Trump has been on to something for a while now. In Romney’s case, it was the fact that 59 voting districts in Philadelphia – representing over 19,000 votes in all – voted unanimously for Obama. Not a single vote for any other candidate. When I read PolitiFact’s explanation for this anomaly, I have to smile: “fact-checkers” found only a handful of registered Republicans in those districts, and none of them even knew they were registered as Republicans. Coincident.
Of course, that is possible. Those few didn’t know the difference between “R” and “D,” and they liked the shape of the R – especially that nifty little tale. But far more likely, they knew what would happen to them if they admitted to being a Republican. Saddam Hussein usually received 99% of the vote in Iraq’s “free and fair” elections. And who wouldn’t vote for him, when the other option is a dirt nap? Philadelphians might have had a premonition about the consequences of a vote for anyone else but Barak when they were ushered into the polling location by thugs armed with assault rifles. This isn’t rocket science.
I think the Romney collapse motivated Trump to enter the fray himself. Pennsylvania was a key state in that election, just as it is now. And Romney decided to be the bigger man and concede the election. That has become the Republican way: we get to be the bigger man for a moment while we concede; after that, the Democrats get to be the bigger man for the next four years.
Meanwhile, We have this growing suspicion that the “R” in Republican no longer stands for a core set of principles, but rather for a posture – “Rolled over.” The Republican party has been domesticated for about 30 years now – give or take a couple of months. The elephants are tamed, and now they do tricks. We all smile politely and applaud while they run through their routines.
Republicans do what Republicans do
And so long as this is what we do, the circus will continue. But our Democratic counterparts are deadly serious about this business. They know where the real power lies. Republicans can have the Congress if they want. That can be our consolation prize. Because the President has the power of the bureaucracy. And our country is now run by unelected government agencies.
President Trump made an unforgivable mistake – in my opinion, the biggest of his Presidency. When he became President, he did not adequately clear out the State Department and the Justice Department. Obama did. Democratic Presidents routinely do. Republicans don’t. “R” for “Rolled.”
And on that one, Trump rolled. Too bad. As they say, no good deed goes unpunished. So, here we are with a scandal of all scandals, and very little we can do about it.
If Biden gets away with this, one is left to wonder what can be done in the future. Democrats have been working on this particular election for many years. Don’t think they will quit cheating in the future. Why should they?
This is why I urge you if you care about liberty at all, to stand firm. We don’t have to capitulate. We aren’t required to concede, especially while there is so much suspicion surrounding this election. Our elected representatives draw strength from those who stand behind them. If we collapse now, they will surely collapse. Trump needs to know that you stand with him, that you are willing to absorb the media’s scorn to see this thing through. Please don’t forget that we waited 37 days for the Gore v. Bush election to be settled. Throughout that time, Democrats fought for their man. Now that the shoe is on the other foot, Republicans started begging Trump to capitulate almost from the start.
One meaningful way that we can stand with Trump is by supporting him financially. Whether he needs the money or not, I cannot say. A donation to his defense fund sends a message loud and clear: “keep fighting.”
We had a fun little haiku contest in our Rhetoric class, aiming to poke some fun at Woke professional sports, COVID-craziness, and the comedy that is 2020 in America. All while sharpening our poetic skills (in our best PC-defying voices). Here are some samples – my favorites from the class.
Feel free to jump in with your own in the comments section, if you are so inclined. Or nominate your favorite. Gratis.
NBA players
Virtue signals on their back:
Nobody watching.
Equal rights for all!
Down with the majority!
What equality!
Black lives matter, sport.
Hong Kong folks should conform;
So says Lebron James.
Bought seats to a game,
Not a BLM rally;
Should get a refund.
Chuckle dunderpates,
Your days will soon be over
And no one will care.
Good-by basketball,
Your pure young days are over;
Now you’re CNN.
Sports once interested me,
Until all the players started taking a knee.
Let’s play duck-duck-goose.
Peaceful protesters
Burning cars and murdering;
We should salute them.
Oh beautiful for
The spacious fields on which we
Can no longer play.
In the weeks leading up to the Presidential election of 2016, I found myself increasingly troubled with the choice of available candidates. In fact, I railed, fairly regularly, against both candidates. I saw it as a particular judgment of God that we had to choose between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Honestly, I thought of it as David’s choice between seven years of famine, three months of fleeing before their enemies, and three days of pestilence. Did I want to vote for arsenic or cyanide? I saw Donald Trump as ungodly, uncouth, unscrupulous, unproven, and unreliable.
I held onto a quote from Douglas Wilson in the months leading up to the election, in which he expressed my exact sentiment:
But if Trump is somehow elected, he will let down those who put him there. He has all the sturdiness of a chocolate eclair. He has the core values of a wet napkin on the counter. He has the reliability of a lost carnival balloon. He has the gravitas of Miss Piggy.
Douglas Wilson, Blog and Mablog “Recklessness on the Trumpoline”
One month before the 2016 election, I preached this to my church:
The Village Smithy 