I’m not a huge fan of Erick Erickson’s. I used to be, but he lost me with the NeverTrump stuff.

That said, this, of his, was well said.

The world seems to have gone nuts. People are seeing unidentified flying objects. The government confirms it. Senator Marco Rubio claims UFO’s are flying over our military installations. Pilots have videos of mysterious objects flying rapidly and making ninety degree turns — something physically impossible for humans at the speed those objects are flying. They seem to defy the known laws of physics.

Over the past summer, Americans watched other Americans burn down cities while reporters stood in front of the burning rubble claiming the protests were peaceful, but your eyes might be racist. In January, supporters of President Trump stormed the United States Capitol with some of them having erected a gallows and noose to hang the Vice President. Most of the President’s supporters, to this day, blame progressives.

The actress Ellen Page has become Elliot Page and Time magazine tells us Elliot always was. Anyone who points out men cannot become women is considered a bigot. The left demands we believe the mass shootings at Asian themed spas in Atlanta were part of a pattern of anti-Asian hate though they were not. Concurrently, the left wants us to believe the shootings were because of Christian sexual ethics.

On universities and in Fortune 500 companies across America, woke is in and normal is deviant, bigoted, and shameful. Democrats in Congress are attempting to pass something they call the Equality Act, which would amount to state sponsored persecution against Christians in America, including punishing Christian organizations.

People who speak up about their faith are pilloried and shamed. The media heralds President Biden as a Christian role model despite his advocacy of abortion and support for policies that would harm Christians, harass nuns, and shut down Christian organizations.

Children are turning against parents in battles of woke. Ten year old tweets from high school can get a twenty-something fired. No apology is good enough. Environmentalists are openly lamenting economic recovery because it will harm the planet.

Things are nuts.

A lot of Christians in the country have forgotten the battles they fight are not really political, but spiritual. Paul writes in Ephesians 6:12, “[W]e are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places.”

Christians in America have been looking, in many cases, for political saviors to help them withstand the forces of the world. But those political saviors cannot protect us and, as we approach Holy Week, Christians would do well to remember that. But there is hope. The God of all creation is on their side.

“I have chosen you and not cast you off; fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand,” God says in Isaiah 41:9-10.

King David wrote in Psalm 27:3, “Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; though war arise against me, yet I will be confident.” We should be more like David and trust in the Lord.

Psalm 73 paints a picture of the world against the believer. Those of the world will get rich, fat, and happy. They will enjoy the comforts of the world and the believer will wonder how it can be so. The believer will be tempted to be more worldly to enjoy the comforts of the world. But Asaph, the writer of Psalm 73, realizes that the unbeliever prospers now as an act of God’s mercy. This is the best they will ever have it and for the believer this world is the worst they will ever have it.

The things of the world hate the things of God. Worldly politicians cannot save the believer from the world. But we do not need to be angry. We do not need to be afraid. God’s got this. He has us. He holds the universe in His hands and He conquered death and will return. Do not be afraid. Instead, love your neighbor as yourself and fear God, not the future.

My only addition I would make to that is that politics – and by politics I mean the practical art of politics, the game of it – is not godly. It isn’t even related to spirituality and religion. It can’t be. Politics literally encompasses “that which is Caesar’s.”

And therefore, to apply theology or even Christian morality to the game of politics is error.

Too many conservatives make the mistake of believing they have to live out their Christianity in literally everything they do, including the practical application of politics. This is a bad idea, particularly when the opponents in the game either understand that politics and religious morality don’t mix – or else they subscribe to a morality and a set of quasi-religious philosophies and beliefs (Critical Race Theory, global warming, Trump Derangement Syndrome) which expressly justify actions unknown to a Judeo-Christian ethic.

It’s a heathen game. Which is why most decent, normal people want nothing to do with it and it’s so hard to get decent, normal people to try their hand at politics.

Because to win, you have to compartmentalize the person you want to be and leave him or her at the door. Inside that smoke-filled room you have to be amoral. You have to understand that victory, which must be had by whatever means necessary, will often depend on ruthlessness.

Everybody thinks John F. Kennedy was the most inspiring political leader of the last half of the 20th century. But Kennedy was elected over Richard Nixon in 1960 on the basis of an election stolen in Texas and Illinois. Kennedy got in bed with the mobster Sam Giancana in Chicago, a decision which, depending on which version of the Kennedy assassination story you believe, ultimately turned fatal.

The other side of the political game, having seen that all of their ideas for policy produce nothing but misery and failure, have committed themselves to a full program of systematic lies designed to cow the majority of Americans into accepting their worldview.

Burning gasoline, coal or natural gas to air condition your home or drive your car will drown your kids and grandkids in sea water as the planet burns up. They’ve convinced half the world this is true, and it’s now dogma on their political side that the only antidote to this bleak future is hard-core socialist economics under their strict control and an electric grid powered by solar panels and windmills which in themselves are environmentally unsound, economically unfeasible and, as we saw in Texas during the deep freeze there, practically unreliable.

They are busily engaged in demanding you believe that a man can become a woman simply by changing his mind and putting on a dress, and that to refuse to accept such absurdity is evidence of bigotry and psychiatric deviance on your part. It’s gone so far as to include demands that transgenderism be treated as a civil rights cause and that straight people must include biologically homosexual relationships among their romantic options. Should you resist that encroachment on your basic right to love those you prefer and choose, as the people who adopted the “Super Straight” sexual orientation did as a means of such resistance, you will be branded a “transphobe” as though there is such a thing.

It is an item of their new religion’s dogma that everything is racist but only when white people do it. An emotionally-troubled young man in Atlanta suffering from a sex addiction he cannot fuel by finding a real human relationship lashes out at the massage parlors where he pays for light prostitution, killing eight people, six of whom are of East Asian ancestry and two are white. The other side of the political game seizes upon this to decry “Asian hate” and denounce America as incorrigibly racist. This despite overwhelming evidence that most manifestations of abuse directed at Asian Americans come from members of the Left’s coalitions – black Americans in lower-class urban settings who lash out at Asian shopkeepers and others in their midst through acts of random violence, and white college administrators who actively discriminate against Asians in admissions decisions so as to promote “diversity” on campus. The other side has for decades considered Asians as “white-adjacent” and not worthy of protection; now, sensing an opportunity to add a growing segment of the population to its Coalition Of The Aggrieved, it’s promoting the theory of America as an abuser of Asians.

This is happening while China is beating that same drum on the world diplomatic scene and has been since the Chinese government realized that it could use American Critical Race Theory, which was actually cooked up by a German immigrant named Herbert Marcuse, to dodge responsibility for the Wuhan coronavirus. They’ve been claiming that to blame them for the release and spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, a thoroughly factual exercise, is evidence of racism and they’re echoing every aspect of Critical Race Theory as an indictment of America and an excuse for their own hideous genocidal human rights record.

All of this is to perpetuate the lie that America, down to its founding, is an inherently racist and unjust country, when in fact America is the least racist nation in the history of the world. America is the only nation founded on a set of universal ideas accessible and applicable to all; every other country was founded on the basis of tribalism and ethnic strife. The absurdity of using the imperfections of human nature as they impede efforts to fully realize our ideals while at the same time insisting on dividing us by race and thus playing us off against each other, all the while demanding we surrender more and more of our livelihoods and liberties to their control as the only solution, never troubles them.

Lies, and governance by them, are not Christian. But lies have become central to American politics and media. They’re told literally every minute. Once exposed, they’re doubled down on. They aren’t apologized for – when called out, it’s common for a political or media figure to announce they’ve told “my truth” and are then celebrated for it.

Christine Blasey Ford. Sandra Flock. Joe Biden. Bill Clinton. Stacey Abrams. Andrew Cuomo. John Kerry. The lies and corruption mount. The consequences never do. Why? Because they contribute to the narrative it’s imperative Americans buy into.

The country’s bounty is shared by fewer and fewer people, more and more of whom are invested in the lies.

I wrote a piece for The American Spectator which is up today. It talks about the Louisiana 2nd Congressional District race, which is now a runoff between two fervent practitioners of dishonest left-wing politics. There isn’t an ounce of real difference between Troy Carter and Karen Carter Peterson other than in tone, and from a Republican or conservative perspective it’s far better that Peterson should win.

Why? Because Peterson would be the embarrassment the 2nd District deserves. She would energize the rest of the state to never vote Democrat again. She would be a far more influential and destructive influence within Democrat politics around the state and country as a member of Congress than she ever was as the chair of the Louisiana Democrat Party. And she would cause huge rifts within her own camp because she is categorically unhinged.

I suggested that if Claston Bernard, the Republican candidate endorsed by the state GOP who finished fourth in that race with 10 percent of the vote, endorsed Troy Carter, Carter would win. If Bernard doesn’t endorse, Peterson probably wins. The numbers shake out to indicate that.

Carter’s voting record in the state Senate is almost identical to Peterson’s. It would be identical to Peterson’s in Congress were they to serve together. The only difference is that Troy Carter is nondescript and boring. He’s a garden-variety Democrat political hack. That might be marginally more palatable, but it’s a lot less actionable. Republicans in Louisiana could do far more fundraising and energize far more voters if they had the obnoxious and embarrassing Karen Carter Peterson as a foil.

So I suggested Bernard ought to essentially auction off his endorsement. As politics is the art of wrestling with pigs, contrary to the advice of Mark Twain who noted that wrestling with a pig is a bad idea because you both get dirty and unlike you the pig will gain enjoyment from the experience, I suggested Bernard ought to be the pig. He ought to take these two rotters who made the runoff for whatever he can get from them.

Because it’s about time that Republicans ought to be in a position to shake down Democrats after a lifetime of the reverse.

There is nothing immoral about playing the political game, dirty though it most assuredly is, as it is currently played in America. We are now faced with the inevitability of that game, as the limits to the politicization of our lives have been broken down. What’s immoral is to lose that game by not playing it hard enough, and in the process to lose the greatest, most moral, most decent nation in the history of the world.

It’s going to require getting dirty to save America. So get dirty. Take a shower when you’re done.