{"id":1947,"date":"2018-10-25T09:09:15","date_gmt":"2018-10-25T13:09:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?p=1947"},"modified":"2018-10-25T09:09:15","modified_gmt":"2018-10-25T13:09:15","slug":"uselessness-big-con-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2018\/10\/uselessness-big-con-right.html","title":{"rendered":"The Uselessness of the Big Con&#8230;to the Right"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Official Conservatadom, i.e. Big Conservatism, or the Big Con, is doing what it does best and playing directly into the hands of their (nominal) opponents.<\/p>\n<p>As high-profile Democrats, one after the other, receive \u201csuspicious packages\u201d and makeshift bombs, Republican politicians and their apologists in the media do what they do best by going on the <em>defensive, <\/em>loudly denouncing the political violence while accepting lock, stock, and barrel the idea that the Democrats truly are in the crosshairs of some deranged right-leaning zealot.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s at moments like these that we\u2019re reminded of the virtual use<em>lessness<\/em> to <em>the right<\/em>, and use<em>fulness<\/em> to <em>the left<\/em>, of the Big Con. The latter, as if on cue, takes its eye off of those issues that place the Democrats at a decisive electoral disadvantage in order to eagerly purvey a narrative, a narrative birthed <em>by the Democrats<\/em> that depicts them as victims of right-wing crazies.<\/p>\n<p>And those in the Big Con do this with less than two weeks to go before an election over which they\u2019ve been obsessing for the last several months.<\/p>\n<p>Many of the peddlers of Big Conservative media have, correctly, followed the President\u2019s lead and taken to calling their (ostensible) counterparts in the leftist press \u201cFake News.\u201d Yet they too are guilty of promoting the same, for if they were genuinely concerned about journalism, then they would express at least some measure of skepticism toward the reports of these bomb threats.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, they are, as per usual, more concerned about convincing leftists and Democrats that they will all too happily endorse whatever line the Dems decide will dominate the (fake) news.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Official Conservatadom, i.e. Big Conservatism, or the Big Con, is doing what it does best and playing directly into the hands of their (nominal) opponents. As high-profile Democrats, one after the other, receive \u201csuspicious packages\u201d and makeshift bombs, Republican politicians and their apologists in the media do what they do best by going on the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Uselessness of the Big Con...to the Right<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2018\/10\/uselessness-big-con-right.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Uselessness of the Big Con...to the Right\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Official Conservatadom, i.e. Big Conservatism, or the Big Con, is doing what it does best and playing directly into the hands of their (nominal) opponents. As high-profile Democrats, one after the other, receive \u201csuspicious packages\u201d and makeshift bombs, Republican politicians and their apologists in the media do what they do best by going on the&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2018\/10\/uselessness-big-con-right.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"At the Intersection of Faith and Culture\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2018-10-25T13:09:15+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jack Kerwick\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Uselessness of the Big Con...to the Right","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2018\/10\/uselessness-big-con-right.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Uselessness of the Big Con...to the Right","og_description":"Official Conservatadom, i.e. Big Conservatism, or the Big Con, is doing what it does best and playing directly into the hands of their (nominal) opponents. As high-profile Democrats, one after the other, receive \u201csuspicious packages\u201d and makeshift bombs, Republican politicians and their apologists in the media do what they do best by going on the&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2018\/10\/uselessness-big-con-right.html","og_site_name":"At the Intersection of Faith and Culture","article_published_time":"2018-10-25T13:09:15+00:00","author":"Jack Kerwick","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2018\/10\/uselessness-big-con-right.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2018\/10\/uselessness-big-con-right.html","name":"The Uselessness of the Big Con...to the Right","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/#website"},"datePublished":"2018-10-25T13:09:15+00:00","dateModified":"2018-10-25T13:09:15+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/#\/schema\/person\/6832222998cc14717ded1849531201c5"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2018\/10\/uselessness-big-con-right.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2018\/10\/uselessness-big-con-right.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2018\/10\/uselessness-big-con-right.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Uselessness of the Big Con&#8230;to the Right"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/","name":"At the Intersection of Faith and Culture","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Jack Kerwick","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/#\/schema\/person\/6832222998cc14717ded1849531201c5","name":"Jack Kerwick","description":"I have a Ph.D. in philosophy from Temple University, a master's degree in philosophy from Baylor University, and a bachelor's degree in philosophy and religious studies from Wingate University. I teach philosophy at several colleges in the New Jersey and Pennsylvania areas.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.jackkerwick.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/author\/jkerwick"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/399"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1947"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1947\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1948,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1947\/revisions\/1948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}