Hello! Thanks for reading. Here’s a little roundup of the 3 pieces we published this week with some additional thoughts, insight, reading, and whatever else feels useful on each.
No news is new etc. but if you pay a little attention you can anticipate just what the people will be talking about – especially as it pertains to politics.
First: THE LINCOLN PROJECT.
Here’s the gist:
The first episode of Showtime’s new five-episode series, The Lincoln Project, airs tonight. It tells the story of a small cadre of Republican strategists who went rogue in order to defeat Trump. You've likely already heard that story (here, here, here, here, here, or here), and certainly you know how it ends.
There will be press, there will be op-eds, and there will be tweets.
Viewers will be inspired to donate, or they won't. And the Lincoln Project – the PAC not the film – will win. Our upcoming film does not spend much time analyzing the Lincoln Project. To us, the compelling part of this story has never been their success, nor Stuart’s, but rather the rules of the game that allow for their tactics. The commercial imperatives of our news and media system create their success, and participants on all sides of the equation share that understanding.
In their world, congratulations and criticism both translate to capital.
In the week since publishing: Steve Schmidt (Lincoln Project co-founder) had a public meltdown about the ethics at play in the movie he stars in.
Someone called Zack, who worked with the group during 2020, tweeted about the “cultural relevance” of…T.I and Demi Lovato? (Anecdotally, the footage we have of the Lincoln Project listening to this Demi Lovato ballad over Zoom is…something.)
Mark McKinnon (co-creator of Showtimes’ The Circus, who also paid a visit to LP in Park City during the 2020 election) promoted the series about real political consultants as SHAKESPEAREAN LEVEL DRAMA.
Here’s our brief take:
NEXT: THE GUARDIANS OF AMERICAN CULTURE
A brand new interview with John Fea on faith, nationalism, and Seven Mountain Dominionism.
What we wrote:
David Barton is a conservative Christian right activist who uses the past to promote his political agenda. Notice what I didn't call Barton in that description – a historian. He cherry-picks from the past to find something useful to advance his front in the culture war.
And he is very much connected to, if I’m not too deep in the weeds here, a theory called Seven Mountain Dominionism. This might strike some of your listeners as kind of crazy, but this is the theory that Doug Mastriano is running on right now for Governor of Pennsylvania. Ron DeSantis speaks at these conferences. Lauren Bobert and Marjorie Taylor Green are involved. The idea behind Seven Mountain Dominionism is that there are seven mountains of influence – education, religion, family, business, government, entertainment, media – that Christians need to reclaim or take over.
…
Evangelicals have no language by which to talk about politics and as a result they gravitate to one or two things: abortion, same-sex marriage, or "religious liberty." Their understanding of religious liberty focuses on the religious liberty not to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple. The Catholic Church, of course, is in no way unified, but at least it has a history of political reflection. The Church has developed a more robust understanding of how to engage the world politically than what the Christian Right has promoted.
I think this has a lot to do with the long history of anti-intellectualism within the evangelical movement. They don't have a kind of rich tradition of faith and reason to draw upon like the Catholic Church, which has ideas on these matters dating back to Augustine or Aquinas.
In the week since publishing: conservative opinion magazine National Review dug their heels into Christian nationalism.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis spoke intensely about the death penalty.
As John Fea pointed out above, there is a lack of moral reasoning and a history of anti-intellectualism here that creates some contradictory politics. Morality is at the center of much of the politics of the Christian right – but there’s very little public debate about morality as it applies to their faith.
Elizabeth Bruenig reports on the death penalty through her own Christian lens. It’s worth reading.
Lastly, THE MEDIUM’S POWER TO PERSUADE goes hand in hand with all of the above. Its an archival interview that talks about media, alternative media, and what we can expect from both.