Christian Nationalism and The Streisand Effect

Is Liberal Fear Manifesting "The Handmaid's Tale"?

The death of Charlie Kirk is a unique cultural moment not observed in the United States since the 1960s, where blowback from an assassination leads to a sympathetic cultural consensus towards the victim. Even if there are many who still resist the idea that he was a relative political moderate who emphasized open dialogue, the mass of the political spectrum which still participates in politics but is not interested in details views his death as an obvious point of concern around the increasing political radicalism in the United States.

The memorial itself was quite a firebrand experience, highly politicized and with great emphasis from its more political speakers (Donald Trump, Stephen Miller) on the immediate challenges to the present administration. Kirk was a political activist, he would probably be no happier than to see his death politicized and leveraged for political gain by his allies.

However, there were multiple instances at which the widowed Erika Kirk used her platform to emphasize that America was a Christian nation, that Mr. Kirk was intent of spreading the word of Christ before all else, and also made some comments which handwave that the history of Christianity is marked in many eras by aggressive persecution, which only increased the resolve of the faithful and their belief in the rewards of the hereafter.

For American Liberals, this poses a significant challenge. Since the aforementioned 1960s, secularism has been a prominent emphasis of American liberal and leftist coalitions. While an increasing component of the population now professes non-belief, that is also a cohort which is reproducing at a lower rate, showing less gains in income and also is likely to have a higher rate of usage of antidepressants, lower markers of community engagement, health and happiness, which is by far the largest component of longevity and life satisfaction. This is not as extensively studied as the underlying fact that conservatives report higher life satisfaction overall, which also lends itself to the possibility of a more consolidated and organized political movement that is more easily able to express a clear agenda on any given issue.

Whether the life satisfaction reported by conservatives is cause or effect of their ideology, or simply correlated with better outcomes related to achieving traditional life milestones, the underlying trends show that younger voters - males in particular - are skewing more to the right and increasingly concerned with issues around wages, employment and family formation as they do.

Whether women will follow them across the political spectrum or some messy middle might emerge is not meant as speculation, because ultimately we are living in a world where feminism has won most of the victories it could have imagined: women are broadly more educated than men, and this will directionally lead to increasing wage and professional preference towards young women overall, while the occurrence of issues like teen pregnancy and unplanned pregnancy are at an all-time low. The years of women being barefoot in the kitchen - without a perceived choice - are long gone. And yet in that context, a resolutely political as well as sociological victory, women are still struggling for meaning, exhibiting increased rates of mental illness and depression, and they are also losing ground to “conservative” forces that want to return emphasis to faith, family and the home.

The point of this commentary is not to say that The Handmaid’s Tale will inevitably become a fait accompli, but that as a desire to return to more traditional family life increasingly draws more attention in traditional political discourse, feminism’s conception of “absolute female sovereignty at all costs” leaves no breathing room to participate. In many ways, we can imply that feminism weeps, for it has no world’s left to conquer (a line that only has valence in the context of Die Hard, it should be noted).

This is not an absolute truth in itself - there are still many places in the world where feminism has yet to fundamentally alter the broader social contracts of day-to-day life - but it is directionally true that as the rest of the world becomes more like the West in both values and demographics, there will be increasing limitations on the ability of women to promote women’s issues, as a matter of achieving one’s goals leading to obsolescence.

So what should we expect from a political environment that confronts financial and demographic decline along with a feminist movement that has exhausted the “low hanging fruit” of women’s liberty? Ultimately, the state takes an interest in the assets which it can claim, and the wombs of young women have always been a matter of national security - a truth as old as the Rape of the Sabine, if not older.

In each country, of course, the state needs a pretext to proceed along this path. In the United States, Christian Nationalism or Dominionism is the easy answer - where values preach that sex and love are for marriage and children - while in other nations, other forms of religious or “spiritual” nationalism may ultimately drive better fertility outcomes than heretofore unimpressive managerial efforts (think baby boxes and bonuses).

This sort of ideological shift, to the modern feminist imagination, makes it easy to reduce the idea of women as “breeders” or women as property in a status game meant to perpetuate a patriarchal and paternalistic social hierarchy. But we know that plenty of women still achieve in their careers and have children - Erika Kirk is an example - but for those of us who want to see society flourish and grow far into the future, it is clearly still fewer than we like.

And yet feminism, or no feminist of mainstream note, has succeeded in redefining the terms of these social expectations in a manner that empowers women, particularly as mothers and matriarchs. In lieu of that accommodation, the perversion of fantasies like The Handmaid’s Tale fill the gap, amplifying the power of its imagery and implying that the only way that women can be strong in reproduction is if they are subjugated in other manners. In the story itself, broader sociological and environmental issues bring about in part the crisis which leads to the return of a patriarchal theocracy, and the suffering which precedes it is in part blamed on women and their implication in a pre-existing fertility crisis.

And yet, today, the majority of young women still want to have children. The idea that having children is in conflict with women’s sovereignty is in part what seems to discourage women from following through. In a parallel trend, we can understand that many who might adhere to a more “Christian Nationalist” pride would be comfortable if their life was entirely centered on their children, giving up some aspect of their strength and independence, and hence amplifying the crisis which is in progress today.

In this milieu of confusion, the Liberal narrative is incumbent on fear - fear of economic circumstances, fear of environmental apocalypse, fear of losing this that and the other right (even as more abortions than ever take place in the United States despite the repeal of Roe v. Wade). As the fear continues, something like a Diet Pepsi version of The Handmaid’s Tale is ultimately the only realistic outcome - even if it is simply by the bias of who simply makes the choice to reproduce.