I thought about this idealism thread when I saw this article about a Texas butterfly sanctuary having to shut down for a bit over threats by GQP’ers who were looking for illegals or whatever:
Wright is the executive director of the National Butterfly Center, a private nature preserve in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley. The center is a sanctuary for hundreds of butterfly species—and a frequent target for conspiracy theorists after Wright and her colleagues opposed the Trump administration’s plans to build a border wall through the middle of the property.
Although the National Butterfly Center is located in Texas, Donald Trump’s proposed wall would run two miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border, bisecting the protected land. In 2019, the center filed a restraining order against the construction project. That court filing made the center a fixation of the far right.
One Trumpist group, the Bannon-backed “We Build the Wall” campaign, targeted the center with conspiracy theories. Brian Kolfage, a leader of the group, repeatedly tweeted that the National Butterfly Center was harboring an illegal sex trade and dead bodies … The only butterflies we saw were swarming a decomposing body surrounded by tons of rotting trash left behind by illegals,” he tweeted in 2019. Kolfage was hardly a neutral party. His “We Build the Wall” fundraised more than $25 million by claiming it would construct Trump’s border wall. (Feds say the scheme was illegal. Kolfage and his business partners have since been charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
Long story short a couple of ladies, one running for Qongress, and the other claiming to be Secret Service ‘so she can do whatever she wants’ trespassed on the preserve looking for illegals, dead babies, and children being sex trafficked.
-_-
Idealism. It does funny things to us. I think I prefer realism.
Morley wrote:Ehh, I'm still not so sure. Reading about what the insurrectionists on trial have had to say, they seem pretty willing to wash their past behaviors away in a flood of gosh-I'm-so-sorry tears. In short, I'm not seeing many "Give me liberty or give me death" types. (Maybe Steve Bannon is one--I don't know.)
If it really came down to it, I kind of doubt your friend really would have been willing to stand before a firing squad and take a bullet for Donald and God.
The Q guy I mentioned certainly isn't my friend. Would he take a bullet for his beliefs? I'm not so sure he wouldn't. Not because his faith is so strong, but I think that guys like him feel displaced, and don't have much to live for. H mentioned elsewhere that he thinks decline in traditional religiosity has some negative effects, and I strongly agree with that. That guy never struck me as a strong Christian so much as a "Christ and country" believer; he's ex-special forces. "God and the flag". Hey, kind of like Trump himself. I think he's bored and tired of life and might be up for going down in a blaze.
I think Freedom is the over-arching ideal and it goes back a long time. In today's right-wing, it might be more of a talking point than a serious principle one commits to, and it might be loaded with hatred for the enemy, but I think it's too complex to worry about whether people are hypocrites or have a proper intellectual mastery of their terminology. There may be a whole lot else going on, but to me the banner is freedom. One of the good things about making that your trademark, is its something that everyone agrees with, including your enemy, but you get to deny the opposition any ownership and basically make yourself righteous by definition.
Returning to this after a couple of weeks.
I've thought about this, Gad, and I think you're right. And it's depressing as hell.
