And so, what now? Is The Benedict Option a relic? Should religious conservatives somehow consider Trump's victory a rescue from all the cultural ills that the book catalogues?
To those who find themselves asking this question, I would pose a question of my own. And that question is: Are you kidding me? Trump is an avatar of exactly the high-sleaze commercial culture that Dreher deplores; to see him as a rescue is to indulge in the blinkered (and extremely short-term) thinking at which Americans excel. He is not #actuallyhitler, but he is certainly capable of a new- doubtless very different- brutality and recklessness. I write this, for example, less than 48 hours after he has launched a missile strike against Syria, after having been elected as the less-interventionist candidate and the one most likely to put us on a normal footing with Russia rather than insisting on reliving his beloved 1980s to the point of rebooting the Cold War.
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