Partisan Identity is More Important to Those with an Existing Identity

Minorities do not consider the Republican party more religious (22 min)

Most white people don’t identify strongly as Italian.  They identified as Methodist or Baptists, but now that religion is less important, political partisanship matters more.

Minorities aren’t looking to political identity for their identity.

 

Ep 333: Drew Dyck Disciplines Himself

If you become disciplined to pursue a self-interested, bad goal, what does that gain you.

If you think the right things, truth, it will transform their character.  But why is it some of the most theologically smart people are A-holes.

Things that Deplete your Willpower:

Decision making, Conflict, Sleep

Flee temptation. If you are always relying on willpower, you will fail.

This is where habits are important

  1. Pick one thing.  Don’t try to do 5 New Year’s Resolutions at once
  2. You can’t delete Bad Habits, only replace them
    • Cue, Routine, Payoff
    • Replace social media with Bible reading
  3. Jesus take the wheel
    • Someone says that they will not brush their teeth unless they felt called by the spirit
    • Grace is not opposed to effort.  Grace is opposed to earning.
    • Sanctification is often a slow transformation process.
    • I am what’s wrong with the world: G.K. Chesterton
  4. In the long run, self-discipline is about delayed-gratification.  It is easier in the long run.

 

Evangelicals and the 5 Stages of Grief:  (30 min)

We are between anger and bargaining and this Trump Faustian bargain was out of desperation over demographic change.

Sociologists refer to the Driver’s license -> Marriage License Gap

Fewer people are coming back to the church because the gap is longer and people figure out how to live without it.

Reinforce Republican identity and threat, not from Satan or poverty, or oppression, but an enemy of Democrats

  • Us vs them, mitigating our fears in the amygdala
  • If fear is a big part of your life, you are not living as a Christian
  • I am not a fearvangelica
  • A lot of people believe that being afraid makes them Godly
  • It is very hard to convince someone who is marinating in fear that they don’t need to fear.
  • Phil’s Idea: inside out with fearful evangelicals

2019: The Year of the Wolves

Can the Constitution withstand the partisans?

.. 2019, because this looks to be the year of the wolves — the year when savage and previously unimaginable things might happen.  It will be a year of
  • divided government and unprecedented partisan conflict. It will be a year in which
  • Donald Trump is isolated and unrestrained as never before.  And it will be in this atmosphere that
  • indictments will fall, provoking not just a political crisis but a constitutional one.

There are now over a dozen investigations into Trump’s various scandals. If we lived in a healthy society, the ensuing indictments would be handled in a serious way — somber congressional hearings, dispassionate court proceedings. Everybody would step back and be sobered by the fact that our very system of law is at stake.

We know the language he’ll use. It will be the anti-establishment, anti-institutional language that has been coursing through the left and right for the past few decades: The establishment is corrupt, the game is rigged, the elites are out to get you.

At that point congressional leaders will face the defining choice of their careers: Where does their ultimate loyalty lie, to the Constitution or to their party?

If their loyalty is to the Constitution, they will step back and figure out, in a bipartisan way, how to hold the sort of hearings that Congress held during the Watergate scandal — hearings that inspired trust in the system. They will step back and find men and women of integrity — the modern versions of Archibald Cox, Elliot Richardson and Judge John Sirica — who would work to restore decency amid the moral rot.

On the other hand, if they put party above nation, they will see this crisis as just another episode in our long-running political circus. They’ll fall back in partisan lines. They’ll hurl abuse. Their primary concern will be: How can this help me in 2020?

If that happens, then the roughly 40 percent of Americans who support Trump will see serious evidence that he committed felonies, but they won’t care! They’ll conclude that this is not about law or integrity. It’s just a political show trial. They’ll see there is no higher authority that all Americans are accountable to. It’s just power and popularity straight through.

If that happens, we’ll have to face the fact that our Constitution and system of law were not strong enough to withstand the partisan furies that now define our politics. We’ll have to face the fact that America has become another fragile state — a kakistocracy, where laws are passed and broken without consequence, where good people lay low and where wolves are left free to prey on the weak.

Secret CIA assessment says Russia was trying to help Trump win White House

According to several officials, McConnell raised doubts about the underlying intelligence and made clear to the administration that he would consider any effort by the White House to challenge the Russians publicly an act of partisan politics.

Some of the Republicans in the briefing also seemed opposed to the idea of going public with such explosive allegations in the final stages of an election, a move that they argued would only rattle public confidence and play into Moscow’s hands.

McConnell’s office did not respond to a request for comment. After the election, Trump chose McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, as his nominee for transportation secretary.

Some Clinton supporters saw the White House’s reluctance to act without bipartisan support as further evidence of an excessive caution in facing adversaries.