Rod Dreher, world citizen.
Dreher has succumbed to the abuse of Trump. He lives by lies. He thinks Zelenskyy was the bad guy in the Oval Office.
Sullivan has not succumbed to our "sociopathic president":
... What the world saw last Friday was the same, central Trump dynamic: the leader of a smaller democracy that has withstood three years of brutal attack by a far larger dictatorship ... was still publicly humiliated, because he dared air his concern of no security guarantees against Russia. “Just say thank you,” Vance harangued him. “Have you said thank you once?” I cannot recall any visiting head of state who has ever, ever been thrown out of the White House the way Zelensky was. Why? Because he did not submit.
... The challenge for liberals of all stripes is a familiar one in dystopian democracies and rigid dictatorships: Live not by lies. Keep your grip on reality. Avoid the propaganda now washing down on you like torrential rain. Find a refuge, as I did on Wednesday — a place where eternal truths remain, or where free thinking can endure (Spinoza is a role model, which is why the Dishcast discusses him this week).
Avoid hysteria, which Trump wants and exploits. But avoid also being co-opted by a single one of his lies, to see clearly, and to speak simply. Read those you disagree with; get off most social media; choose doubt over certainty; restraint over impulse; resist this authoritarian and irrational moment by refocusing above all on the simple truth, as best as you can, and fighting all those on both extremes trying to annihilate it. ...
Here.
It's a magnificent essay which everyone should read.
Rod Dreher was a Hillarycon in 2016 because of, wait for it, The Madness of King Donald. And so was J. D. Vance.
Harris’ challenge isn’t limited to abortion. The region continues to inch rightward. And Harris didn’t do herself any favors in 2018, when as a senator she grilled a Catholic judicial nominee about whether he could remain impartial due to his membership in the Knights of Columbus, a respected Catholic fraternal organization with a strong presence in northeastern Pennsylvania. The questioning is fuel for a multi-million-dollar campaign in swing states, including Pennsylvania, led by CatholicVote, a conservative advocacy group. ... in the northeastern part of the state, Trump was ahead by a comfortable margin, 50 percent to 43 percent.
... white Catholics nationally voted for Trump by a wide margin in 2020 and were on pace to vote for him again, with a spring Pew survey finding that white, non-Hispanic Catholic voters preferred the former president by a 61 percent to 38 percent margin over Biden. According to a recent EWTN/RealClear poll, that gap has narrowed, with Trump leading Harris among white Catholics, 52 percent to 42 percent. ... A Brookings analysis earlier this year by University of Pennsylvania professor John DiLulio noted that Hillary Clinton lost the overall white Catholic vote by 33 points in 2016, but four years later, Biden cut that deficit in half, losing by only 15 points. “As much as any single shift in voting patterns between those two elections, the shift in the white Catholic vote away from Trump cost him the 2020 election,” wrote DiLulio.
More.
The story never once mentions the possible appeal of J. D. Vance, a convert to Catholicism in 2019, to America's Catholic voters.
Brezhnev, 75, died in 1982, followed by Andropov, 69, in 1984, Chernenko, 73, in 1985, and the whole Evil Empire, 72, in 1989.
What a coincidence these stories break the same day.
The disturbance is being caused by Antifa, not by the people at this catered event.
Rod Dreher is there, tweeting away:
I'm not shocked by much anymore, but this take shocks me.
Imagine this is your first thought about the side perpetrating unspeakable horrors in Ukraine receiving a well-deserved comeuppance for a change, instead of "Yippee!".
Hard for me.
Last time I checked the Ukrainians haven't targeted any high rise apartment buildings in Moscow for missile attacks like the Russians have in Ukraine.
Rod Dreher retweets a whiny guy with kids who thinks boomers are dogshit, a Canadian who is intimidated by a Russian circus act training with a bear, and a Russian propaganda map of Ukraine showing "the advance of our troops".
All in the last 24 hours.
He's in Spain and Hungary enjoying the cafe life for Lent.
I don’t ever want to see Donald Trump again. He had these people’s number, in a way, but he did little or nothing effective to stop them. I want to vote for a presidential candidate who will move against these dirtbags and their institutions without mercy. Enough is enough. I’m not sure what can be done, but if we keep tolerating this, there is going to be violence, one way or another. I am not willing to sit here and listen to these aristocrats like Dr. Khilanani, and malignant institutions like Yale, turn people against me, my children, and my neighbors, because we are white.