Combatting the surge
Elon’s cartoon has caused a freak-out
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve heard the news that eccentric billionaire Elon Musk has purchased the social media platform Twitter. Conventional wisdom points to the fact that he did so not just because of the popularity of the site, but also because of the mounting frustrations over Twitter’s increasingly aggressive, one-sided discipline of users. The Babylon Bee had been suspended, but both the Chinese and Iranian governments had not…something was pretty obviously amiss there.
It remains to be seen how much involvement someone as busy as Musk will have with Twitter oversight, and how much he really changes things. But at this point it’s fair to say that progressives and liberals aren’t thrilled at the prospect of losing their homefield advantage on the site. Their objections and outrage over his purchase prompted him to post this now-viral graphic just days ago:
As someone with conservative politics myself, I have to admit I see a lot of truth in that. But plenty of folks on the left responded by suggesting Musk had it completely backwards – and they had the “empirical science” to prove it:
I’ll happily admit that I have neither the time nor the interest in diving into that data and remain amazed that there are people out there who care so much about being right about something that they’ll create, contort, or otherwise concoct data to make it so. For me, a simple sensory test is all that is required – open your eyes, open your ears, and observe where the majority of both ideologies stand today.
Doing so, I regretfully admit that the right has way too many radicals and fringe figures that it attempts to mollify and mainstream. QAnon is way too prevalent, and the willingness of conservatives to flirt with the conspiracists is more than just embarrassing. It’s disgusting. What even is this:
This is the fringe that perpetrated the riot at the Capitol on January 6th. And because mainstream Republicans associated with these extremists, the whole party, and the ideology of conservatism gets illegitimately lumped in with it all.
To know the right has a problem with this stuff doesn’t require left-wing generated “empirical data.” It requires me to open my eyes and be honest about what I see.
In the same way, anyone who tells you that progressives haven’t pushed their mainstream far to the left are simply denying the obvious. It’s now considered an unfair “gotcha” question to ask an officeholding or office-seeking Democrat to define what a woman is.
Don’t tell me that there hasn’t been a left-wing polarization within the progressive movement these last several years.
So then, are Elon and his liberal detractors both right? Have conservatives pushed right, and liberals pushed left, leaving a gaping hole in the middle? One reason I think that’s a difficult question to answer fully and accurately is because of the emerging political realignment that is unfolding around us.
Donald Trump was far from a traditional conservative. His MAGA movement has remained fairly steadfast when it comes to social conservative viewpoints, with a couple key exceptions like marijuana legalization. But in other areas, Trump pushed tariffs, rapidly expanded the size of government, challenged traditional alliances, and governed largely by executive order.
Meanwhile, the progressive embrace of radical gender ideology has left more than a few blue collar Democrat voters fed up. This isn’t their grandfather’s Democrat Party, the Rust Belt alliance has surged towards Trump, and the left seems content to consolidate cities and academic environments even if it means leaving the “working man” out in the cold.
So don’t ask me to map out what direction the ideological map is tipping, turning, or pointing towards, because I’m as confused as anyone else. But what I’m not confused about, what I’m devastatingly clear on, and what I find myself wanting to spend my time contemplating and confronting isn’t America’s political drift. It’s America’s spiritual drift.
I saw in a friend’s email just a few days ago, this alarming statistic: the number of Americans who say they read the Bible at least 3 or 4 times a year (don’t miss that…it says just 3 or 4 times in a year) has dropped to just 39% of the population. And according to the American Bible Society, just 19% of Americans are active in what they call “Scripture engagement.”
I’ll let the left in this country combat conservatives’ radical push to the right that they are convinced has happened. And I’ll let the right in this country combat the liberals’ radical push to the left they are convinced has happened.
I find myself more than ever wanting to spend the time I dedicate to the public square combatting both the conservative and liberal radical surge away from God and His truth.
Fix the heart, the politics will follow.
ICYMI…
Not sure if you’re like me and struggle with your prayer life, but the message I preached on it this week might help. You can see it here:
I also wrote these two stories you might appreciate reading:
I'm more or less with you, and I definitely agree that fixing America's spiritual problem is upstream of our political problem. But I also think you're bordering on Tim Keller's third-wayism which is a fallacy of thinking that the best politics for the Christian are equidistant between the two current extremes between the parties. I think that's fundamentally flawed, and that's how we get Christians that support or excuse abortion IMHO.
I’ve never been polled. I read from the Bible every day, often multiple times a day. I wonder how skewed towards an intentional result the poll was.