Those who put their faith in the Golem, or the people who tried to harness the Golem’s power for good, need to understand that tragedy is the only outcome here.
This whole "the Left wants to prosecute the 74 million Americans who voted for Trump" is nothing but a fever dream for folks looking to feel prosecuted. If that's the tack you want to take, you have a ways to go before you catch up to Rod Dreher in the "society's going to eat me and mine alive" lane.
Two subsequent paragraphs in this very piece illustrate the cognitive dissonance:
"Over 500 people who participated in the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol have been charged with various crimes. But none of them have been charged with treason or sedition. The Senate could not even bring itself to convict Trump the Golem in two impeachments, one of which explicitly linked to January 6th."
So, no one who staged the insurrection in the Capitol has actually been charged with treason or sedition, despite clearly working to interrupt a duly Constitutional process that's been the keystone of American governance since the Founding?
"Donald Trump received more votes than any incumbent president in the history of the United States, and he lost by 7 million votes nationally—it came down to under 50,000 votes in five key states. The 74 million Americans who voted for Trump are not guilty of sedition, and the thousands who went to Washington D.C. on January 6th believed they could speak a victory out of dust, because they believed in the Golem’s power."
Given your use of the passive voice here, you seem to think that someone is calling 74 million Americans guilty of sedition. WHO is saying that 74 million Americans are seditious, WHERE did they say it, WHEN did they say it, and WHY should anyone care what this nebulous entity thinks? (Seriously, I haven't been so disappointed in a villainous cloud since the second Fantastic Four film did Galactus dirty.) For the record, despite your Trump vote(s?), I don't think you're seditious (but then again, I don't call myself a Progressive either).
Further up the piece: "For decades, American culture has been hijacked, in words and symbols, by a radical progressive minority bent on controlling our society. They’ve used the institutions of scientific research, learning, government, and media to shape and reshape society in the way they feel is 'progress.' This is why they call themselves progressives."
A political party winning power is hardly evidence of a "radical minority" (by definition, unless you're one of the two GOP presidents who won office with fewer votes than your opponent), so your issue with "government" isn't that someone tricked their way into office - it's the voters that put those people in office. That's how our system works.
Unless you're speaking of fights in the medical and psychological communities around how to approach transgenderism, your beef with progressives in the scientific research community is less about the scientists and science that they are doing and more with the philosophers orbiting their work (and philosophers saying crazy things is nothing new).
I can see the "learning" leg of your persecution stool making sense, but is that because teachers have been unfairly influenced by progressives, or rather conservatives becoming hostile to the educational endeavor? I'm not referring to home schooling, history food fights, or sexual education classes, but instead a hostility to higher learning and universities (see your swipe at science and research above). If conservatives are going to take their ball and go home when forced to justify their ideas against others, you shouldn't be surprised when someone wackier comes in to fill the vacuum and propagates schools of thought that both reinforce their own standing in the academy and cut off avenues to folks who would displace them as they displaced the conservatives? Contra "Wargames", the only way to win the game is to play it.
And "media" - the Forever Boogieman. Is the issue that the media has been unfairly stocked with progressives, or that conservatives are simply not competitive when it comes to producing a cultural output that the market/audience rewards with its dollars and attention? And when it comes to good old fashioned reporting on the news, why is it that the one outlet that's gotten the most traction is currently headlined by an anti-vax demogouge shouting about the NSA spying on him, instead of a straight-up news organization reporting what's going on in the world, minus any talking head pundits that are not doing any of the journalistic legwork themselves?
I hate to be the one to say this, but praying harder isn't going to be sufficient to getting the various aspects of society back on track in a way that agrees with you. There are no shadowy "elites" calling the shots, from whom you'll be able to reclaim cultural power by replacing them. Instead, you're going to have to do the hard work of being present and presenting a competitive vision your conservatism on each of the fronts where you are being attacked. Put in the work to win elections for non-Golem candidates. Promote the scientists doing the actual falsifiable research showing that the current transgender craze is more of a moral panic than some objectively justifiable new understanding of sex and gender. Encourage conservatives to follow the model of my old professor Robbie George and be present to represent their views on the college campus and in the academic record. Encourage someone looking to make a difference to start an actual news network that pays reporters to go out into the field to tell us what's happening, and avoid the empty calories of paying talking heads to tell us how to think about it. Nurture and support conservative television and film makers who can create cultural products that compete with the best that members of the Left are producing. (And for the sake of conservative storytelling, put a moratorium on "Left Behind" and "Atlas Shrugged" adaptations, until the new storytellers get their own legs.)
At the end of the day, the problem isn't Golems or elites, it's that conservatives have decided to take their balls and go home. If you want conservationism to remain relevant as a vision moving forward, conservatives have to get back onto the field and compete, instead of whining to the umpires that the game isn't fair. The game's not going to be fair (again) until conservatives start putting up some points and winning some hearts and minds to their cause based on the quality of their product, instead of relying someone taking pity on them and their grievances.
Overall, I think that you all at the Racket ARE competing (albeit at a very early stage) and are part of the solution for (genuine) conservatives regaining relevancy. Please don't fall down into the trap of playing the "both sides" game (it's lazy and uninteresting) or leaning too heavily on the conservative persecution narrative. (The American Conservative has that lane sewn up to the point that conservatives there are now starting to look to the Chinese(!) to save them and their way of life.) To use your own metaphor, the answer isn't to keep ruminating on the Golem and those who spoke it to life - those folks are likely lost causes - but instead to start looking forward and finding and exploiting opportunities to get conservatives back into the game and let the Progressives spin their wheels on Golems, grievances, and losing allies, audiences, and attention in the cultural war.
This whole "the Left wants to prosecute the 74 million Americans who voted for Trump" is nothing but a fever dream for folks looking to feel prosecuted. If that's the tack you want to take, you have a ways to go before you catch up to Rod Dreher in the "society's going to eat me and mine alive" lane.
Two subsequent paragraphs in this very piece illustrate the cognitive dissonance:
"Over 500 people who participated in the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol have been charged with various crimes. But none of them have been charged with treason or sedition. The Senate could not even bring itself to convict Trump the Golem in two impeachments, one of which explicitly linked to January 6th."
So, no one who staged the insurrection in the Capitol has actually been charged with treason or sedition, despite clearly working to interrupt a duly Constitutional process that's been the keystone of American governance since the Founding?
"Donald Trump received more votes than any incumbent president in the history of the United States, and he lost by 7 million votes nationally—it came down to under 50,000 votes in five key states. The 74 million Americans who voted for Trump are not guilty of sedition, and the thousands who went to Washington D.C. on January 6th believed they could speak a victory out of dust, because they believed in the Golem’s power."
Given your use of the passive voice here, you seem to think that someone is calling 74 million Americans guilty of sedition. WHO is saying that 74 million Americans are seditious, WHERE did they say it, WHEN did they say it, and WHY should anyone care what this nebulous entity thinks? (Seriously, I haven't been so disappointed in a villainous cloud since the second Fantastic Four film did Galactus dirty.) For the record, despite your Trump vote(s?), I don't think you're seditious (but then again, I don't call myself a Progressive either).
Further up the piece: "For decades, American culture has been hijacked, in words and symbols, by a radical progressive minority bent on controlling our society. They’ve used the institutions of scientific research, learning, government, and media to shape and reshape society in the way they feel is 'progress.' This is why they call themselves progressives."
A political party winning power is hardly evidence of a "radical minority" (by definition, unless you're one of the two GOP presidents who won office with fewer votes than your opponent), so your issue with "government" isn't that someone tricked their way into office - it's the voters that put those people in office. That's how our system works.
Unless you're speaking of fights in the medical and psychological communities around how to approach transgenderism, your beef with progressives in the scientific research community is less about the scientists and science that they are doing and more with the philosophers orbiting their work (and philosophers saying crazy things is nothing new).
I can see the "learning" leg of your persecution stool making sense, but is that because teachers have been unfairly influenced by progressives, or rather conservatives becoming hostile to the educational endeavor? I'm not referring to home schooling, history food fights, or sexual education classes, but instead a hostility to higher learning and universities (see your swipe at science and research above). If conservatives are going to take their ball and go home when forced to justify their ideas against others, you shouldn't be surprised when someone wackier comes in to fill the vacuum and propagates schools of thought that both reinforce their own standing in the academy and cut off avenues to folks who would displace them as they displaced the conservatives? Contra "Wargames", the only way to win the game is to play it.
And "media" - the Forever Boogieman. Is the issue that the media has been unfairly stocked with progressives, or that conservatives are simply not competitive when it comes to producing a cultural output that the market/audience rewards with its dollars and attention? And when it comes to good old fashioned reporting on the news, why is it that the one outlet that's gotten the most traction is currently headlined by an anti-vax demogouge shouting about the NSA spying on him, instead of a straight-up news organization reporting what's going on in the world, minus any talking head pundits that are not doing any of the journalistic legwork themselves?
I hate to be the one to say this, but praying harder isn't going to be sufficient to getting the various aspects of society back on track in a way that agrees with you. There are no shadowy "elites" calling the shots, from whom you'll be able to reclaim cultural power by replacing them. Instead, you're going to have to do the hard work of being present and presenting a competitive vision your conservatism on each of the fronts where you are being attacked. Put in the work to win elections for non-Golem candidates. Promote the scientists doing the actual falsifiable research showing that the current transgender craze is more of a moral panic than some objectively justifiable new understanding of sex and gender. Encourage conservatives to follow the model of my old professor Robbie George and be present to represent their views on the college campus and in the academic record. Encourage someone looking to make a difference to start an actual news network that pays reporters to go out into the field to tell us what's happening, and avoid the empty calories of paying talking heads to tell us how to think about it. Nurture and support conservative television and film makers who can create cultural products that compete with the best that members of the Left are producing. (And for the sake of conservative storytelling, put a moratorium on "Left Behind" and "Atlas Shrugged" adaptations, until the new storytellers get their own legs.)
At the end of the day, the problem isn't Golems or elites, it's that conservatives have decided to take their balls and go home. If you want conservationism to remain relevant as a vision moving forward, conservatives have to get back onto the field and compete, instead of whining to the umpires that the game isn't fair. The game's not going to be fair (again) until conservatives start putting up some points and winning some hearts and minds to their cause based on the quality of their product, instead of relying someone taking pity on them and their grievances.
Overall, I think that you all at the Racket ARE competing (albeit at a very early stage) and are part of the solution for (genuine) conservatives regaining relevancy. Please don't fall down into the trap of playing the "both sides" game (it's lazy and uninteresting) or leaning too heavily on the conservative persecution narrative. (The American Conservative has that lane sewn up to the point that conservatives there are now starting to look to the Chinese(!) to save them and their way of life.) To use your own metaphor, the answer isn't to keep ruminating on the Golem and those who spoke it to life - those folks are likely lost causes - but instead to start looking forward and finding and exploiting opportunities to get conservatives back into the game and let the Progressives spin their wheels on Golems, grievances, and losing allies, audiences, and attention in the cultural war.
This article makes me wonder something. Has anyone ever achieved anything by whining about it?