The Dividing Line on Memes - AD Explains It

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All right guys, happy Friday. God bless you. It's another week. Another week is just about in the books and I hope it was a prosperous one for you and your family.
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I wanted to respond to an episode of The Dividing Line, although it's actually The Driving Line, which
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I think it's because he's driving while he records this episode. And I gotta say, I'm very impressed with this because he's able to speak very fluidly.
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His thought process is just as sharp as it is on the show. All while he's driving.
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I think that's impressive. I get distracted very easily while I'm driving or my train of thought goes away.
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Sometimes I'll practice a video while I'm driving and it doesn't really come out the way
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I want it to. So in any case, maybe one day I'll do a driving line episode who knows. This is a conversation that he has.
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It's in the context of the Christian nationalism G3 debate. It's not really about the issues though.
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It's more about sort of the rules of engagement and how we discuss the issues. And so this is not really about the
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Christian nationalism thing per se. It's just about kind of internet etiquette, right? Conversation etiquette.
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And I thought it was interesting. So I wanted to respond to it because I don't think he's right. This is not like a big deal, a big issue, but I did want to offer my two cents because I see it very differently than James White.
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Obviously my audience knows that because I criticize someone and their beliefs doesn't mean I don't like them.
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Doesn't mean I think that they have nothing to offer. It doesn't mean I think they're stupid. None of that is true with Dr. White. All of that is the opposite of what's true.
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I love the guy. I've learned so much from him. He's obviously a giant intellect, in my opinion, in my opinion.
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And I think he's got a lot to offer the church. So anyway, I just wanted to offer this humble disagreement.
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I am the reasonable Latino. And so these are gonna be some very, very reasonable comments.
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Let's get it. That's sensual. You can't skip that for crying out loud.
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You can't just put that off to the side. So it just seems to me, what we've watched over the past couple of weeks is just some, if you can't help but cancel someone like myself, who's a theonomic post -millennialist for crying out loud.
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If you can't keep me in the camp, give it up. Give it up.
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Because you're gonna end up with a Christian nationalist movement that can meet for your national convention in the back room at the
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Holiday Inn. That was a good one. That was a good one.
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I think that's supposed to be an insult or a joke or something like that. Pretty good one. I like it. Holiday Inn. I always thought the
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Holiday Inn was all right. In any case, he mentioned about canceling.
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If you can't not cancel him. Canceling, I feel like we've gotta have a discussion here about what canceling is.
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Canceling is like when you can't get a job. Canceling is like when banks will refuse your business.
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Canceling's like when they kick you off the platform, like that you're not even allowed to have a Patreon. That's what canceling is.
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Canceling's not like I unfollowed you. You know what I mean? Or I blocked you or I memed you.
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That's not canceling. So we gotta hold on. We gotta hold on. It's very important to hold on to what canceling actually is.
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But yeah, I have seen a lot of people talk about how the Christian nationalists, they're not like a big tent.
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They don't want to keep in all these guys. I mean, I just haven't seen that. I haven't seen that.
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I don't agree, but that's okay. You're not building consensus.
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You're not making your case in such a fashion as to change hearts and minds and to build foundations.
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Look, the post -millennial hope results in a person being willing to lay foundations that they know will not end up with a building on them for quite some time.
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I disagree. I completely disagree with that. Okay, so here's what he's saying.
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He's saying you're not operating, you're not engaging in a fashion that's going to change hearts and minds.
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Number one, I disagree with that. It's just about which hearts and minds we're changing is my opinion.
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I think there are some people in my comment section on YouTube that when I tell a joke, like that video
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I did yesterday with the fake company, I got quite a few how dare yous, like this is un -Christian and stuff like that.
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I'm not changing their minds, but there are people whose minds are being changed.
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You know what I mean? So the memes and stuff like that, I don't think that the meme's gonna change Josh Bice, you know what
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I mean, or Scott O 'Neill. That's not my target audience, though. You see, that's the point. My target audience is not the interlocutor
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I have. It's the people watching. It's the people in the middle, and those are the people that I'm very interested in winning.
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I'm not interested in winning Josh Bice. If he wants to come join the Christian nationalist team, then that's great, but that's not what the arguments are for.
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That's not what the memes are for, and so that's number one. Number two, this whole idea of post -millennial hope is about laying foundations that you know aren't going to yield results or have a building on them for a long time.
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I disagree. I think that that can be an option, so you have to be willing to do that.
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In other words, you have to be willing to plant seeds that won't yield fruit for a long time, but that doesn't mean that those seeds won't yield fruit for a long time.
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I think we need to get that into our heads, like God can act in a moment. We understand that, and so we should be operating so that we have longevity, so that we have a long -term plan, but we should be praying and believing that God can do it tomorrow.
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He could do it tomorrow if he wants to. That's the thing, guys.
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There's nothing about post -millennialism that requires you to assume that God's not going to act for a long time, so you got to be faithful.
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That's not what I'm seeing. I'm not seeing. Sorry about that. Dropped my baseball. That requires you to think, well,
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God's not going to act right now, but I got to set myself up for the future. No, no, you should set yourself up for the future.
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You need to plan for longevity and for a long time working, but there's nothing, nothing about post -millennialism that bans or bars
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God from acting quickly, so yes, we should be prepared for a long grind, but we should be ready for quick action.
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I think that's a huge difference that I see in the Christian nationalism debate, where Christian nationals are saying, look, we don't have to convert everybody to make progress.
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We can make progress right now, today, in your town, in your locality. You can make progress today, and so the other side's like, whoa, no, no, no, no.
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We just don't have enough people. There's no way it's going to happen, and it's like, man, and then you wonder why some people make the accusation of loser theology.
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I don't think James White has a loser theology, not at all, but you can see where sometimes it comes from, and even
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Rich Pierce had a tweet yesterday, I believe, where he's like, you really think you and your small little band of merry men are going to make change?
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And it's like, yes, that is what I think. I'm not seeing that level of maturity.
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I'm not seeing that level of patience. I'm sorry,
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Dr. Wright, that I think you're not looking. It's just as simple as that. I think if you're not seeing that level of patience and maturity, then
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I just don't think you're looking hard enough, because one of the things that I think is so beautiful about Christian nationalism is the emphasis on establishing families, establishing businesses, establishing a legacy.
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You know what I mean? It's not just about action in the here and now. It's about having a bunch of kids and teaching them and training them and the fear and admonition of the
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Lord, training warriors, training arrows to go out and do likewise. That is a huge emphasis for pretty much all the
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Christian nationalists that I interact with is about that kind of thing, building platforms. Even Torba, this guy has spent tons of time and money and effort and blood, sweat, and tears building a platform that can survive long -term.
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He's not just thinking about competing with Twitter now. He's thinking about the future when laws are changed and things are different, and he's trying to have some kind of longevity, and it's taken a lot of time to build that up, and there's still glitches and stuff like that, but he knows it's worth it for the future.
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It's not about a quick hit. Sure, it's about a quick hit too. People need a place to go when Twitter decides to cancel us all, the real cancel, not the fake one.
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But yeah, I just don't think you're looking hard enough if you're not seeing the patience and the planning for a long grind.
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I just don't think you're looking. I'm seeing a bunch of young guys who are building a brand and building an audience, and if they want to get offensive, they don't care if they're talking about their elders.
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They don't care if they're talking about people from whom they have learned theology in the past.
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They're willing to cancel anybody who will not agree with them on every jot and tittle right now, and that is foolishness.
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That is foolishness. Again, I'm not seeing it. I am in some chat boxes and some comm boxes and things like that in Christian nationalism, and somehow we're able to operate and love each other and work together and have major disagreements, major disagreements.
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We're not casting people out into outer darkness because they disagree with what ethnos is or ethne is or something like that.
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We're not casting, and they're fighting. People are fighting over this kind of stuff in a respectful way that there's an assumed love there.
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There's an assumed believing the best about each other and stuff like that, and they're working together.
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Again, I'm just not seeing it. I'm not seeing what you're seeing, man. And I've heard multiple people, multiple people say what
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I've said. It's like, I don't really care if you call yourself a Christian nationalist or not. I don't care if you agree with me about blasphemy laws or not.
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I wanna work with you right now. I wanna work with you right now, and there's some basic stuff that we can agree to right now, and one of those basic things is it would be good for us to have a
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Christian nation, a self -aware, self -conscious Christian government.
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That would be a good thing. That's basic stuff, though, and so I don't need agreement on 100 years from now what kind of blasphemy law should we have to get agreement there.
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That would be a good thing for someone to have, for us to have a Christian nation as opposed to a secular pagan nation. I just don't see it.
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I just don't see it, Dr. White. I'm just, I'm trying to be as respectful as I can. I don't see what you're seeing.
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I'm telling you right now, that is the way to make this entire conversation a complete joke in 10 years.
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10 years from now, people will just sit around and go, yeah, remember that one? Wow, boy, those guys went off the rails, didn't they?
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Oh, yeah, wow, you know. That's how to do it. That's how to do it. I listened to the statement, and I agree with the vast majority of that statement, and I think it would be really worthwhile for everybody, even the people who are burned out, to think through what it says, to have discussions about it.
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I was thinking about doing that on the program and going through sections and going, okay, you know, here's why some people would object to this and some other people would object to that, but what do you have positive in its place, et cetera, et cetera.
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We can't just simply have a, well, I don't know, shrug your shoulders, because that's what we've had for a long, long time.
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We all need to have some position on these things. That's true. That's great.
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That's fine. Love to do it, but it can't be done in this context where people are memeing at each other.
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And I had a guy, I saw a tweet today.
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It can be done, though. It can be done. I think, and the way it can be done is you've gotta be able to take a big swallow, swallow your pride and your opinion of yourself and just meet at the table, because the memes aren't going to stop.
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And the reality is that despite someone memeing on you, you can still have a conversation with them if you're able to do it.
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You can just decide. You know, I know you're memeing on me. Let's have a conversation. You know, you don't have to get offended by a meme.
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You don't have to. Offense can only be taken. And if you choose to take it, that's your choice.
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You absolutely can have a conversation with people memeing on each other. I'm willing to do it right now.
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People have memed me and I could do it. You can too.
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You can choose not to. And again, I'm not saying you have to. You do what you gotta do. I'm not saying you have to talk to these guys that are memeing on you and stuff like that, but there are plenty of guys that aren't memeing.
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And the reality is that those guys haven't been taken seriously either.
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So I just, this whole thing on memeing, in my opinion, it's a distraction, it's a subterfuge because the reality is that there were people memeing and then there were people that worked long and hard on a statement and they put it out there.
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And you know, they don't speak for Christian nationalism because there is no central Christian nationalist authority.
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So they're gonna have some things in that that I can't agree with or someone else can't agree, whatever, like, and they put out this serious statement and they got stonewalled.
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This is the thing, there's just no, there's no willingness to sit at the table. It's not about the memes.
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There was no willingness from Jump Street. And I think Dr. White, if you're honest, you haven't been, you know, getting involved too much.
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I agree, you haven't been. You said that earlier in this episode. You really haven't been. But I think if you're honestly assessing the situation and how this whole thing got started,
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I think you'd agree that from the beginning, there really certainly seemed to be an unwillingness to listen, an unwillingness to come to the table.
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And so it's really not about the memes. The memes started after all that, after all that.
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I've muted all the G3 guys and I've blocked and muted James White. He's just not good for my faith right now.
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And I'm like, regarding what? I've hardly addressed this.
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I mean, I knew we were gonna do this sort of best dialogue. So I knew. Dr. White, if you listen to this, and I hope you do, because I think this will help you out.
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I knew exactly what that guy was talking about. And I knew exactly what he meant.
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I knew exactly what he was regarding. And I confirmed it with him after the fact. I already knew.
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But I asked him, I said, hey man, I just wanna know. I'm not gonna do anything with this. I just wanna know.
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Why did you do that? Why did you block James White? Why did you mute G3? And look,
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I understand. Maybe if you do that, there's no real reason to announce it to the world.
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Just do it, right? I get that, I get that. But here's why he did that.
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It's not about the disagreement. It's not about you not wanting to call yourself a
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Christian nationalist. It's not about people that disagree with Christian nationalism. It's not about that. It's about the behavior.
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It's about the behavior. It's about the reaction people had to that Stephen Wolf tweet.
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Nobody says you have to like that tweet, but the instant reaction to jump to, you know, you're a racist.
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You know, this is the worst thing. Like that kind of stuff. He didn't want to be tempted to act in disrespect to you.
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He didn't want to be tempted to sin in his response to that kind of behavior, or even like the
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Protestant Pope stuff, or, oh, what do you think, you're saved by the government? Like all that kind of stuff, which is how this conversation started.
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He respects you, he respects G3, and he didn't want to be tempted to lose that, to say something he'd regret.
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I've done this kind of thing before. I don't announce it to the world, but there are some people that I'm friends with that I agree with on things, and they start acting foolishly.
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They start acting crazy. And so I'll mute them for a temporary period.
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You know how the Twitter has that function? You can mute for like 24 hours, or seven days, whatever it is. So I'll do that, because I don't want to be tempted,
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I don't want to be tempted to respond to them in a bad way, or I don't want to lose respect for them.
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So I mute them. You got to do what you got to do, man. If something's going to tempt you to send, you got to cut it out.
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You got to. It's not about, you know, you disagreeing.
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It's not about that, guys. It's about the behavior that they've seen. And it has been, it has been, it's been something.
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I'll say that. It's been something. Going to be dealt with seriously, and in a mature fashion, and without silly childish memes.
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And so I've sort of been watching this stuff from the sidelines pretty much, certainly thinking about it, certainly being concerned about it.
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But look, memes are a valid form of communication, right? They're a valid form of communication, and they're extremely effective.
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Are some memes childish? Sure, some memes are childish. It's just like some tweets are childish. Let's not forget that.
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Like, again, there's more than one way to meme. And the tweets that have come out from the
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G3 camp, and I'm just calling it a G3 camp. Not everybody's involved in G3. They've been childish.
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This food fight was not started by the people that are being right now browbeat by Dr. White for memes.
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That's not who started the food fight. That is who's finishing it, though. I'll tell you that. I can't even imagine if you're willing to block and stop listening to people from whom you've learned so much of your theology over something like this, then what you didn't learn was maturity.
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Because if you're memeing about this stuff, if you're saying, well, you know what? If people aren't gonna agree with us, we're just gonna meme harder.
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Childishness, absolute childishness. It's not, but you've got it all wrong, though. It's not about if you're not going to agree with us.
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All of us are okay with you not agreeing with us, right? But that's not what's happening.
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What's happening is a complete disregard. Disregard. We put out the statement, and Scott O 'Neill goes,
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I'm not gonna respond to every Tom, Dick, and Harry. That's a type of meme.
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It's not a very good one. It's not a very effective one. And you can respond to that in a meme, and it will be hilarious, and it'll be very effective.
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Like, that's the reality. It's not about you. It's not about Scott not agreeing with us. I could care less if Scott agrees with me on Christian government.
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The memes will stop when G3 actually starts taking this seriously at all, at all.
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That's when the memes will stop. And maybe they won't stop, because memes are a valid form of communication. It's just that simple.
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It's just that simple. And you know, you guys don't like it. I understand it's okay, but they're valid.
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They just are. That's just the way it is. This is the world we live in. I don't have to like it, but I do live in this world.
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Childishness, it's impatience. It is not spirit born, and it will result, like I said, in your having national conference in the back room of the holiday, because it will.
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That's a joke, James White. That's a joke. It's okay. It's not that great.
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I mean, it might get a couple of chuckles. That's a joke. Is that spirit born? I don't know.
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I don't know. I mean, I'm not complaining about it. It's totally fine to tell a joke. I don't understand how you could possibly make the case that a meme could not be born of the spirit, or a joke could not be born of the spirit.
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I don't understand how you could even begin to make that case. I'd be interested to hear it.
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If you're willing, Dr. White, if you're willing to kind of make that case that memes aren't spirit born,
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I'd be willing to hear it, and I'd take it seriously, because I take this very seriously, and I know a lot of the meme smiths out there take it very seriously, and a lot of these guys are some of the smartest people that I know, and they're extremely sharp, and they think about these things a lot.
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I think there's this impression from people that are on the receiving end of a joke, or the receiving end of a meme, that, oh, you guys just go, and anyone can do that.
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You just get angry, you put a meme out. That's not how it goes at all, at all.
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In any case, so yeah, I'd be interested to hear that. I mean, it's easy to go and say it's not spirit born.
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I'd be interested to see how you make that case, and I would take it seriously. It will not, it will not be blessed by God.
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So can we have these conversations without the immaturity? Can we have these conversations without silly memes, and stuff like that?
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Can we pull that off? I think it's possible, but I do think that we have to stop the food fight in every form, though.
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If you wanna do that, you're gonna have to stop it in every form, because the tweets that have come out are embarrassing.
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And the thing is, they're not funny either. So it's like, when Scott says that thing about Tom, Dick, and Harry, it's not funny.
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He's, there's a serious meaning behind that. And it's like, okay,
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I mean, if this is what you wanna do, I just, I just, I just, it is possible, but it's gonna have, it takes two to tango.
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It takes two to tango. You know, I mean, Scott doesn't have to stop what he's doing, but somebody on that camp has to.
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Somebody. Because the thing is, people on our side have already stopped. But we don't seem to be finding any willing participants on the other side.
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That's the problem. It's like, it's like, the guys, you know, stepped out of memeing for a few moments to put together a statement, and that was meant with the same response as the memes were met with.
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Just dismissal. And look, it's not about like, I'm all offended, you don't respect me. Who cares?
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You don't respect me? I'm okay with that. I'm used to that. I'm used to that. Same thing happened with Big Eva. I'm used to that.
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But again, Dr. White, like, you're browbeating one side here, and it's the only side that's shown a willingness at all to get to the table.
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The other side has shown no willingness. And I think it would go a long way if maybe you policed your own side a little bit and said, hey, guys, like, they put this statement out.
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Interact with it. Now, you kind of have done that. I'll give you that. You kind of said that it was a good statement.
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It's worth reading. It's good. It's worth looking into and responding to seriously. And that's great. And that's great.
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I think there needs to be something more pointed here. G3, enough with the nonsense, and interact!
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I would even argue too, and I'm being dead serious here, dead serious. I would argue that they're not even interacting with the stuff they say they're interacting with.
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Because what they've said is, oh, you know, every Tom, Dick, and Harry out there is gonna have their own opinion. We're gonna respond to the big boys,
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Stephen Wolfe and Doug Wilson. I guess the Doug Wilson stuff is forthcoming. But the stuff
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I've seen interacting with Stephen Wolfe really doesn't interact with Stephen Wolfe. It's like surface level at best, and really, it just does not let
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Stephen speak for himself. It puts all kinds of innuendo in there, all kinds of assumptions, and it puts out this, put it this way, the case that you put out against Stephen Wolfe's book, that ain't gonna stop the memes,
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I'll tell you that right now. Right now. I think that might be all
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I wanted to respond to. Let's just see. It needs to happen. It really does. There has to be, we need to have a consistent and large scale response to the moral chaos and the evil of Washington State and the city of Chicago and everything where we are perverting everything good that God has given us.
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There needs to be a consistent and clear and firm response to all that.
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No question about it. And it's not gonna come from memes. It's not gonna come from memes.
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So I'm pretty disappointed. I gotta say, Dr. White, I don't think
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I've ever disagreed with you more. This is probably my sharpest disagreement with Dr. White, which should say something, because I agree with Dr.
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White on most things. You're flat out wrong here. It is gonna come from memes.
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Now, it would have been right if you were to say it's not only gonna come from memes, because that's definitely true.
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But memes are teaching the world about the insanity that's going on in Portland. That's a fact.
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That's a fact. Memes are teaching the world about the insanity of transgenderism, homosexuality,
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DEI, all of the, what's the stuff with the stock market?
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The rankings, ESG ratings, stuff like that. Memes are teaching the world about that stuff, and they're doing it so effectively.
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Now, it's not the only thing that we need. Of course, we need a serious policy push, policy discussions, we need books, we need conferences, we need debates, we need people like James White, and all of that stuff.
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We need it all. But memes are there too, because for every person that listens and learns from Dr.
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White taking apart, dismantling the arguments of a liberal scholar about LGBT stuff, for every one person that gets their information from Dr.
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White about that, there's like 20 people that learned the same lesson from the meme with the two buttons and the guy like, which one do
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I push? That meme teaches so much, Dr. White. You cannot reject that.
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You don't have to do it, but you cannot deny how much those kinds of things teach.
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For every 100 people that goes to watch a debate between Dr. White and a Muslim, 10 ,000 are taught by the change my mind meme, or any of the many memes that are out there.
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I mean, I love listening to Dr. White talk about how the mainstream media is corrupt and they put out this misinformation.
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I love doing that personally. I, of course, I love doing that. But for every one of me, there's 100 guys that use the
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NPC meme to laugh about learning the same lesson and they get the same message and they get it through 10 words and an
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NPC meme. These, you can deny all day long how it's immature and all that kind of stuff, but the reality is in 2023, if you're gonna have a full orbed response to the insanity that's going on, yes, we need
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Dr. James White, but we also need Rhett Coppels. I don't make the rules, guys.
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It just is what it is. So anyway, we're gonna stop there. Again, I want to say that I love
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Dr. White and there's really nothing here that comes from a place of animosity, but I am trying to help people understand why this has gone on the way it's gone and why memes are important and why they're gonna continue and all of this kind of stuff.
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God bless you guys. Dr. White, God bless you. Yeah, I guess that's really it.