The Alternative Universe

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Roger Kimball [born 1953] is one of America’s leading conservative cultural critics and defenders of Western civilization. Educated at Bennington College, where he studied philosophy and classical Greek, Kimball later earned graduate degrees in philosophy from Yale University. His recent piece, "We All Know How Cole Tomas Allen Was Radicalized," appeared in The Spectator, Britain’s conservative weekly founded in 1828.

Kimball noted that on June 28, 2024, Joe Biden posted on social media: “Donald Trump is a genuine threat to this nation. He’s a threat to our freedom. He’s a threat to our democracy. He’s literally a threat to everything America stands for.”

Two weeks later, at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, Thomas Crooks fired 8 rounds from an AR-15-style rifle with the intent to kill Donald J. Trump.

At the very instant Crooks fired, Trump, by Providence, turned his head to look at an immigration chart displayed beside the stage. The bullet that likely would have entered his skull instead grazed his ear. Many Americans saw in that split-second turn not luck, but the hand of God. Others attending the event were not so fortunate; two were critically injured, and a third was killed.

When political leaders and media notables spend years calling a president a fascist, traitor, dictator, rapist, and existential threat, should anyone be surprised when deranged people take them literally?

Kimball points to the pattern: Ted Lieu’s Epstein-related allegations against Trump; Joe Biden’s claim that Trump was “literally a threat to everything America stands for”; Kamala Harris, Tim Walz, and others calling Trump a fascist; Rick Wilson’s “put a bullet in Donald Trump” remark; David Plouffe’s declaration that Trump “must be destroyed thoroughly”; Hakeem Jeffries calling for “maximum warfare everywhere all the time,” then later insisting that “violence is never the answer”; and Jimmy Kimmel saying Melania Trump had “a glow like an expectant widow.”

When political opponents are no longer merely wrong but evil, when disagreement is recast as fascism, treason, and existential danger, language becomes apocalyptic. The unstable may begin to see violence not as murder, but as duty.

Rhetoric does not remain rhetoric forever.

Which brings us to the nation’s culture, where the secular political class and its institutional ringleaders - media, academia, lawfare networks, and cultural gatekeepers - are creating an alternative universe. Americans live in the same country, under the same Constitution, watching the same events, yet cultural elites rearrange facts, transpose biblical morality, and predetermine conclusions before the evidence is heard.

William L. Shirer [1904-1993] witnessed this machinery in Nazi Germany. In the December 21, 1939, entry in his firsthand account, Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent, 1934-1941, Shirer recorded a “curious communique” from the German navy concerning Captain Hans Langsdorff of the heavy cruiser Admiral Graf Spee. The official story suggested that Langsdorff had brought his crew to safety, considered his duty fulfilled, and “followed the ship,” thereby fulfilling the expectations of the Führer, the German people, and the navy.

But the reality and facts were otherwise: Captain Langsdorff did not follow his ship to the bottom, but committed suicide by putting a revolver shot through his head in a lonely hotel room in Buenos Aires. The Führer, in a burst of fury over the defeat, had ordered the Captain to end his life.

Shirer learned under the Nazi jackboot what civilized men must never forget: propaganda does not begin by denying that something happened; it begins by changing what the event means. That is what alternative universes do. They do not merely hide facts. They rearrange facts until falsehood feels noble, violence feels virtuous, killing feels compassionate, and political opponents are branded subhuman.

In that universe, Donald Trump is not a political opponent; he is Hitler - a fascist, dictator, traitor, and existential threat. In that same universe, a pastor who believes Genesis 1:27 - “male and female He created them” - is not defending biblical orthodoxy; he is spreading ‘hate’. Parents who resist the sexualization of children are not exercising stewardship; they are ‘extremists’. A Christian ministry defending traditional marriage is not participating in public debate; it is labeled a ‘hate group’ by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

This brings us to Congressman Brandon Gill, who last Tuesday, April 28, appeared before the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government. Gill questioned Jessica L. Waters, a law professor and abortion-rights advocate, during a hearing examining the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, or FACE Act.

Representative Gill asked Ms. Waters what her “favorite type” of abortion was, pressing her to confront the actual procedures rather than retreat into the sterile language of “reproductive health care.”

Gill’s question was jarring because it violated the etiquette of euphemism - the unwritten social rule that ugly things must be discussed in pleasant language so no one has to confront the reality underneath: ‘reproductive care’ instead of the taking of unborn life; ‘choice’, not killing; ‘procedure’, not dismemberment; ‘termination’, not death.

A culture that has spent 50+ years killing preborn little girls and boys cannot then complain that Gill’s question is too blunt. The coarseness is not in the question; the coarseness is in the act itself, and in the long national habit of hiding that act behind hackneyed phrases.

‘Reproductive freedom’ sounds clean. ‘Choice’ sounds harmless. ‘Health care’ sounds compassionate. But the reality is a child who will never draw his or her first breath.

Gill’s question forced the room to choose between rhetoric and reality.

And that is precisely where the church must now take its stand in the public square if it is to be salt and light in an increasingly hostile secular countercultural revolution.

Nathan was not rude because he said to David, “Thou art the man,” after David’s adultery with Bathsheba and the murder of Uriah the Hittite. Elijah was not uncivil for mocking the prophets of Baal. John the Baptist was not extreme because he told Herod Antipas, who had taken Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, “It is not lawful for thee to have her” (Matthew 14:4).

The servants of God do not create moral disorder by naming it. They expose moral disorder, so repentance may become possible.

For too long, America has demanded that pastors speak softly where Scripture speaks plainly. They have been told to lower their voices, avoid controversy, stay in their lane, and leave the public square to those who have spent the last 50 years sanitizing bloodshed, sexual debasement, lawlessness, and cultural decay with focus-grouped phrases and institutional respectability.

A nation cannot kill its children and call it health care. It cannot sexualize its youth and call it compassion. It cannot brand biblical conviction as hate and call it tolerance. It cannot demonize political opponents and call it democracy. It cannot live in an alternative universe of altered facts, altered morals, and altered conclusions, then wonder why violence, upheaval, and licentiousness are multiplying in the real one.

If pastors will not disciple the nation, secularists will. If the church remains silent, the secular State will catechize the children. If shepherds refuse to speak, wolves will not lack for a microphone.

This is not the hour for timid men, muted pulpits, or institutional cowardice. This is the hour for men and women of Issachar, who understand the times and know what America ought to do [1 Chronicles 12:32]. This is the hour for pastors to recover and embody the courage of the prophets, the clarity of the apostles, and the conviction that Christ’s lordship is not confined behind the four walls of the church building.

Thankfully, after a long absence, Gideons and Rahabs have entered America’s public square. They have begun to stand.

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