Last night, I critiqued Bryan Fischer (https://hill-kleerup.org/blog/2012/11/06/and-so-the-manichean-culture-war-continues.html) for saying that last night was "Pearl Harbor" and that the Christian Right (or All Right-Thinking Jesus-Loving Patriotic True Americans) now needed to start planning for their "Normandy".
I realized this morning I got it wrong. As did Bryan. That wasn't Pearl Harbor. It was El Alamein. A major strategic setback against a foe that seemed, just a few years ago, unstoppable. The rejection of Tea Party zanies (doing substantial damage to the GOP's results). The passage of gay marriage in multiple states. The election of so many women to the Senate (including the first openly gay one). And, of course, the re-election of Obama, the virtual Anti-Christ for Fischer and his ilk.
(And, no, I'm trying to avoid violating Godwin's Law — I'm speaking here militarily, not politically — unlike, I suspect, Fischer.)
The political rise of the Religious Right has had, over the decades, a few hiccoughs. After early wins in the 1980s over Poland and France and Norway and the Balkans and into North Africa, they did get bogged down with setbacks that kept them out of Britain and ground them to a halt in Russia. But with their resurgence with their Tea Party allies in 2004, they seemed an unstoppable juggernaut, to the dismay of their opponents and the glee of their membership.
But, like the Afrika Korps, it was an unsustainable offensive. In the case of the Germans, the economics were simply against them, in manufacturing, manpower, and especially without the oil fields they needed. In the case of the Christian Right, it's demographics, as they lose numbers to age and disaffection and changing population makeup of the United States itself.
The First Battle of El Alamein shows the Afrika Korps could be stopped; the Second Battle showed that it could be pushed back. That's what happened last night. It's not a matter of final victory being declared by anyone (WW II went on another couple of years after El Alamein), but I suspect (or hope) that we've seen the high water mark of folks like Fischer and their ilk. Or, as Churchill put it after El Alamein, "This is not the end, it is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."
Embedded Link
Second Battle of El Alamein – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
With Operation Lightfoot, Montgomery hoped to cut two corridors through the Axis minefields in the north. One corridor was to run in a southwesterly direction through the New Zealand Division’s sector…
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I think it was Kiev, in ’41 the Soviets slowed the Germans enough at Kiev that the winter saves Moscow before the Germans could get past the suburbs.
Except it’s not going to be winter that stops the GOP, its the rising demographic shifts and the GOP’s loss of the Hispanic voter are going to force a shift in the GOP or it’ll go away.
Hmmm. Yeah, Kiev, works. I thought about Stalingrad, too, but I’ve always been an African campaign kind of WWII wonk.
(I suppose the advantage of using Kiev, though, is that it short-circuits Godwin objections.)
What stopped Rommel was intelligence. Thanks to Enigma we knew exactly where the supply convoys were. Lack of supplies stopped the DAK, and helped the ground campaign (though surprisingly perhaps, was not useful operationally).
SO. Was the GOP stopped because they had no intelligence? Y’know, about gays, women, ordinary workers…
@LH, another fine application of the metaphor.
OK, now equate it to the War of the Worlds, please.
“We know now that in the early years of the twenty-first century this nation was being watched closely by wealths greater than the normal man’s and yet as mortal as his own. We know now that as Americans busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacence people went to and fro over the country about their little affairs, serene in the assurance of their dominion over this young nation which by chance or design Americans inherited out of the dark mystery of Time and Space. Yet across an immense financial gulf, consciences that to our consciences as ours are to the beasts in the jungle, plutocrats vast, cool and unsympathetic, regarded this nation with envious eyes and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. In the twelfth year of the twenty-first century came the great disillusionment.”
(with apologies to H G Wells and Orson Welles)
Ha! Even better than I expected. Bravo!
🙂
It’s hard to beat Orson/HGWell(e)s …