The merger of fundamentalist apocalypse eschatology and conservative totalitarianism fetish has been complete for a while, now they‘re just comfortable enough to talk about in mixed company. https://twitter.com/RepClayHiggins/status/1319715219216674817

I’m not being dismissive — there is genuine fear of totalitarian persecution, mixed with giddy fascination, at the heart of this rhetoric. A Thief In The Night meets McCarthyist rhetoric is a wild cocktail.

Tragically, the absolute certainty that they’ll be hunted and persecuted by [antichrist/antiamerica] dictators ... is the justification for the pursuit of dictatorial power and disenfranchisement of anyone they believe could be The Enemy.

Obviously not every fundamentalist, not every political conservative, desires the domination of The Other. Rather, they exist in a culture where whole industries are built around lurid fantasies of what terrible things unbelievers and liberals would do if allowed.

It gives the power-hungry a justification and the gullible or terrified a salve for their conscience. They might not LIKE the things done to The Other, but... war is war. Dominate or be dominated.

I was raised in that culture and steeped in its voices and stories. Even to this day it takes conscious work not to revert to form — work to remember and believe that there are solutions other than accepting the Total War.