The Bad Guys Won — Now What?
I think about this post a lot.
On a recent trip to the grocery store, for instance. You walk into a Kroger and are offered a 360-degree multi-sensory experience of severe spiritual devastation. Crowds of chronically unvigorous and sadly blank-eyed people.1 Shelves filled with nutrient-free and borderline-poisonous foodstuffs which will make people even more unvigorous. (Of course all these foodstuffs are made by the same six or eight megacorps cashing in on our woes.) Endless packaging, destined for landfills or the side of the road. Lots and lots of diversity. Credit card readers buzzing away. Glum employees in blue vests going through hopelessly monotonous tasks for $12/hour. A thoroughly corporate voice coming on the loudspeaker to remind you it’s time for another Covid booster, or shingles, or monkeypox, or whatever. I could go on and on. Your country has been transformed into a sheep-shearing operation, and if you don’t see it you’re not looking hard enough.2
The bad guys won and you live in the world they made. Those with eyes to see spot it in the most uneventful things, the total banality of evil. What you do about it is up to you, but that’s the situation.
Of course, Kirkpatrick’s statement might not be theologically sound, depending how one interprets it.3 Christians are called to believe that the Lord allows this devastation and will be using all of it for his own purposes, working good out of evil.4 There’s obvious solace there, but it doesn’t make the devastation any less devastating: a trip to the grocery store should chill your bones, and that chilliness cannot be dispelled with easy pieties.
Kirkpatrick’s words might also seem like an invitation to despair. But that’s not the right way to take them. Quite the contrary, there’s something liberating about accepting the fact of the bad guys’ victory and the fruits of that victory, which we live with today. (Of course you need to see their triumph as a victory, rather than the victory—though it was certainly a major victory.) Major victories bring major consequences. Among those: our enemies gained a chokehold over the institutions and thus over the narrative, and they eagerly used the power they had won. They educated the masses according to their vision.
Making peace with the past is the only way to do something about it. The work before us becomes clearer and maybe even lighter when we understand the nature of our current trouble.
This means realizing that a large-scale reversal of our disaster will be the work of generations.5 To vary the metaphor: you’re a pinch hitter coming to the plate in the middle of a game, not quite sure of the inning or the exact score. You only know your team is down big. What this means is that you’re not going to tie the game with one swing. Your side just needs you to do your best to put the ball in play. The baseball metaphor is limited, though—because it implies that we’re playing in a fair game in which both sides accept and follow certain rules. But that’s not the nature of our opponents.
A better understanding of the work before us probably requires that we see ourselves as high-spirited, cheerful troublemakers for the Regime.
Living in the world they made, you and I are primarily charged with disrupting their grand plans—something like what Robin Hood and his friends strove to do. Our situation is like England’s in 1192. Wicked people have assumed control in the king’s absence (after betraying him!). Overthrowing the scoundrels is beyond our power at the moment. But that doesn’t mean we can’t cause severe headaches for them—and delight in doing it. Build up the Merry Band and mess with the Sheriff of Nottingham.
What exactly this looks like will differ from case to case. The important thing to remember is that you and I really don’t have much to lose; our enemies are the ones with something to lose. They’re the ones who had established a virtual monopoly on prestige, status, power, authority, credibility, fashion, education. As that starts to slip—thanks to our efforts—they’re the ones who should panic.
https://thechivalryguild.substack.com/p/the-bad-guys-wonnow-what