Another session of the Colorado General Assembly has concluded in the standard way: with both a bang and a whimper. Laws were made, tears were shed, and minds were frayed, all as life outside the building continued per usual. The legislative session, which consists of a mad dash through the General Assembly’s constitutional requirements in the constitutionally limited timespan of 120 business days, is over.
Taken from the title of the 1944 film Gaslight, the term “gaslighting” has firmly entered the American lexicon over the past several years. The film, an early entrant in the psychological thriller genre, features a husband who works to slowly convince his wife that she is experiencing delusions, convincing her not to trust what she is seeing with her own eyes. It’s from this origin that we arrived at the modern use of the term to describe a form of psychological manipulation in which someone is made to doubt their own senses and sanity. It is a technique most often employed by conmen and abusers. Now, it is being adopted en masse by the Christian nationalist movement in America to defend their political project from hard-earned criticism.
A parallel reality opened up on November 3, 2020, and tens of millions of Americans fell into it. For the past three and a half years, while the rest of us have been attending to the necessities of our daily lives, those in the parallel dimension have been living through an authoritarian nightmare in which American democracy has been supplanted by the rule of an illegitimate impostor president. In their reality, Donald J. Trump won a second term that day – securing victories in both the popular vote and the Electoral College tally – only to have it yanked away from him by a cabal of Democrats, global elites, and voting machine companies. In their reality, this is possibly the greatest crime ever committed; it has suspended their liberty, forced them to live under an unelected regime, and left them in doubt as to whether this nation, conceived in liberty, brought forth by our fathers upon this continent, will last.
There’s an uncomfortable reality about the 2024 Presidential election which has received little attention in the media: the best case scenario for Democrats – and for the republic – is a repeat of the chaotic aftermath of the 2020 election. Chaos. Conspiracism. Efforts to delegitimize the election. Possibly even a modified repeat of the January 6th attack on the Capitol. And I don’t mean that Democrats would benefit from this scenario; I mean it’s the best they can hope for.
Campaign fundraisers for down-ballot offices like state Representative are not usually newsworthy affairs. They do not attract big-ticket speakers or high-dollar contributions, and they almost never generate any significant discussion among either voters or activists. They are a necessary chore of running for office; they occur and are then forgotten.
One of the most audacious efforts in the history of American politics is currently being planned, not in smoke-filled rooms, but out in the open. It’s named Project 2025, and, if it succeeds, it promises to remake American government and civic life for decades.
Campaign signs are packed in tight clusters on the roadside as Highway 24 emerges from the mountain pass and levels-out into Woodland Park. It’s a familiar scene by now in the small town which has spent the past three years fighting for its own future. The conflict has well-defined lines by this point, and the campaign signs – which have sprung like Columbines from the snow over the past month as the town’s April 2nd municipal election draws near – are clustered to reflect them.
None of them realized they were in a cult until it was too late. It started in late 1993 as a Bible study group composed of students from Messiah College in Pennsylvania. By the time it shattered in February of 1997, most of the group’s members had lost their individual identities and many of their worldly possessions. Some had lost their marriages. The leader, the man who they say slowly wove a web of control around their minds and around their lives, had lost his wife and child: they fled in the night, afraid that he might kill them.
I have good news and bad news. The good news is that, after years of ignoring, marginalizing, or mocking the threat, the mainstream media finally seems to be taking Christian nationalism seriously. In recent weeks, major national outlets have released a flood of stories raising the alarm. Politico wrote about the plan to “infuse” Christian nationalism into a second Trump administration. The Hill referred to the growing trend of Christian nationalism as “a threat of Biblical proportions.” The New Republic covered Christian nationalist plans to “ban abortion and cut LGBT rights” if Trump is re-elected.
Bipartisanship is in bloom at the state capitol – and in the case of one bill introduced to the legislature last week, we would be better off if it wasn’t. Last week, state Representatives Matt Soper (R) and Cathy Kipp (D) announced that they were cosponsoring a bill to accomplish a goal many elected officials have long dreamed of: making sure you cannot see their emails.
