There’s a new icon on the conservative right, and his name is Michael Cassidy.
Last week, the former military officer descended upon the Iowa State Capitol, marched up to the obnoxious statue of Baphomet (strategically placed by the Satanic Temple), pushed it to the ground, and aggressively decapitated it, discarding the head in a nearby trash can.
Cassidy made waves by actually doing what thousands and thousands of Americans have felt like doing for a very long time. His actions embody decades of pent-up rage with a culture that brazenly celebrates evil and punishes anyone with the audacity to resist it.
Do I think this man is a hero? No. I think he’s a shrewd, opportunistic political candidate who zeroed in on an exasperation shared by countless Americans, and I think he should expect to ride the wave of their newfound support all the way to the polls.
But even though I think the antics were short-sighted and may ultimately prove detrimental to true religious liberty (because the entire point of erecting the statue was to evoke conservative outrage that would lead to this kind of response, thereby forcing the powers-that-be to forbid all religious displays, including the nativity scene, so Cassidy essentially played right into their hands), I think the most important thing to zero in on here is this: Americans crave boldness, and they’re desperate for leaders to model it. How the heck do you think we ended up with Donald Trump in the White House?
Conservative frustration is at an all-time high — like Vesuvius about an hour before she flattened Pompeii. And a lot of the frustration is justified. There is seemingly no egregious evil the left won’t find a way to defend or deflect under the guise of human rights or the accusation of conservative pearl-clutching. But here’s the deal: We’ve had enough.
We are bone tired of being told we are overreacting when we scream about the elective double mastectomies that money-hungry butchers perform on quirky 13-year-old girls. We are done — and I mean DONE — playing the bad guy when we say it’s not OK to perform vaginoplasties on minors.
There’s one study — supported by the National Institutes of Health under Francis Collins, who always kisses up to the left while managing to convince academic elites that he actually represents Jesus — that lowered the cross-hormone cohort inclusion criteria to age 8. The abominations never cease. But if you ask any of that academic-elite crowd about this, they will tell you Trump is a greater threat to democracy than any of this demonic filth that exploits children. It’s madness.
We are weary of reviewing our preteens’ sex-ed curriculum only to find gratuitous pornographic images, introductions to kink including “blood play” and fisting, and how-to illustrations for friggin’ fellatio.
We’re tired of having to explain that so-called “sex work,” i.e. prostitution, is the world’s oldest, most demeaning, least empowering profession and that decriminalizing it will only create a market for it, thereby assuring its victims will increase exponentially. Nordic model, anyone?
We’re done being called prudes for the audacious belief that marriage actually means something important to the health of a society, and we are not really interested in apologizing for our opposition to polyamory or other legalized infidelity in marriage.
We’re done being called bigots for saying only women can give birth. We won’t apologize for insisting that the people with the penises should use the bathrooms with the urinals: You don’t pee with your identity.
Elite universities will penalize you for “misgendering” somebody, but apparently calling for the genocide of Jews needs more “context” to determine whether it’s a violation of the student code of conduct. It’s not right-wing Christian universities doing that crap. Safe spaces only exist for select people.
Read Abigail Shrier’s article in City Journal about Scott Weiner and what that guy has done to California to make it a safe place for trafficking. He was the one working overtime to make it legal for 24-year-old men to have sex with 14-year-old boys without being put on the sex-offender registry. But people get absolutely furious if we dare to suggest that this looks pedophilic — because obviously this means we’re really just homophobic. Meanwhile, it makes all the religious right predictor folks from the ’90s look correct.
While the left constantly talks about speaking up for the marginalized (a worthy goal for any decent human), they own all of the institutions that intentionally create more marginalized people. And no, it is not at all reasonable to expect conservatives to sit idly by while leftists pass barbaric legislation allowing abortion up to birth and advocate for denying medical care to babies born as the result of botched abortions.
It’s not hard to understand why so many are so very, very frustrated. Just how much can we be reasonably expected to stand idly by and allow? The Iowa idol-smasher is resonating because people are tired of weakness. It didn’t solve the problem, obviously, but it did reveal what people crave.
Many reasonable Americans hate the evil that has gone unabated and are sick that leaders are so hapless and ineffective and “nice.” Like Trump, Michael Cassidy showed up and said, “Enough. Not today, Satan. We aren’t doing this anymore.”
For once, “Republican” didn’t mean “pathetic.”
And that resonates with people, whether or not it’s a wise long-term strategy.
It’s simple: Conservatives don’t have to be doormats to be loving. Sometimes the right thing to do is to stop enabling wickedness. When you stand up and say, “Enough,” you embolden others to do the same. The work is a lot less frustrating and tedious when you’re not doing it alone.
Some days you just have to cut the head off the demon.
Kaeley Triller is a truth teller, envelope pusher, Jesus follower, and women’s advocate. She studied English at Northwest University. Of all the titles she’s ever held, Kaeley considers “mom” the most significant. She spends her free time adventuring in the woods and searching for elusive moose with her husband and three children.
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