Defeat is ugly and hateful. We are wise to study it. Saul lost an army: half died on the Mount of Gilboa and the others ran away. His sons died: he was facing capture and he took his life. He was defeated utterly. He had a divided country, he did not have any strength but that of his arm, and the Philistines were hegemonic and better armed.

It was the LORD who won the battles for Israel. In conventional war, they lost. Logistics generally trumps courage.

The reason that Saul did not have the numbers is that the People were with David, and David was not with him. David had the blessing of the LORD and he was the best general Saul had.

Without your best troops, and your best prepared units, you will be defeated.

When your mind is taken from your prime mission (and Saul’s was: he had been told he was damned by the witch of Endor the night before), Today we can see this with the Wiltshire Police, who police what is said on Twitter instead of keeping the streets safe from assault, theft, murder and rape.

Arresting Cyril the Swan for Hate Speech

1 Samuel 31:1-13

¹Now the Philistines fought against Israel; and the men of Israel fled before the Philistines, and many fell on Mount Gilboa. ²The Philistines overtook Saul and his sons; and the Philistines killed Jonathan and Abinadab and Malchishua, the sons of Saul. ³The battle pressed hard upon Saul; the archers found him, and he was badly wounded by them. ⁴Then Saul said to his armor-bearer, “Draw your sword and thrust me through with it, so that these uncircumcised may not come and thrust me through, and make sport of me.” But his armor-bearer was unwilling; for he was terrified. So Saul took his own sword and fell upon it. ⁵When his armor-bearer saw that Saul was dead, he also fell upon his sword and died with him. ⁶So Saul and his three sons and his armor-bearer and all his men died together on the same day. ⁷When the men of Israel who were on the other side of the valley and those beyond the Jordan saw that the men of Israel had fled and that Saul and his sons were dead, they forsook their towns and fled; and the Philistines came and occupied them.

⁸The next day, when the Philistines came to strip the dead, they found Saul and his three sons fallen on Mount Gilboa. ⁹They cut off his head, stripped off his armor, and sent messengers throughout the land of the Philistines to carry the good news to the houses of their idols and to the people. ¹⁰They put his armor in the temple of Astarte; and they fastened his body to the wall of Beth-shan. ¹¹But when the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead heard what the Philistines had done to Saul, ¹²all the valiant men set out, traveled all night long, and took the body of Saul and the bodies of his sons from the wall of Beth-shan. They came to Jabesh and burned them there. ¹³Then they took their bones and buried them under the tamarisk tree in Jabesh, and fasted for seven days.

What we need is a unity. We stand at our brother’s back. We acknowledge the tribal nature of our species, but with the other tribes of Christ we ally. We do not let the turncoats and Wormtounges use wedge issues to divide us.

The alternative is that the unity between us that allows us to tolerate our differences will go. We will shatter as surely as the army of Saul broke. This is why the narrative pushes identity politics, and why we must fight this.

Welcome to identity politics in America. When your way of life and your culture comes under constant assault with no sign of relenting, you have to do something about it. You only have three choices: capitulate, fight back, or run and hide somewhere else and wait for it to catch up to you there. The rise of the Alt-Right is how we’re fighting back. We are now forced to get tribal and play identity politics. We let things get too out of hand. We disregarded the signs and we thought it would blow over but it’s only gotten worse. When you’re being told that you, as a white male, or a Christian or a Trump supporter are EVIL because of the things you hold dear, something has to give.

When crimes rates go up around a neighborhood, the neighbors band together, institute neighborhood watches and pledge to have each other’s backs in order to mitigate the problems. It’s time to get tribal! It can be hard. You have a right to your tribal identity, your customs and your culture. We’re already tribal about many things: our schools, our religion, our military service, our sports teams, our states, our employers and even our departments within the same employer. It’s very natural for us to be tribal. But as white, Christian, heterosexual males, we’re not allowed to be tribal about that (so we’re told). As soon as we claim a white identity, we’re labeled as bigots and racists even by our allies. But there are a lot of different tribal circles and we don’t really fit neatly in to any of them.

We need to ally. This means that I do not argue with the Papists or Orthodox of faith. Or the Pentecostals. That we support the Chinese and Indians and Arabs and Africans of faith. That we support all nations to be united around their volk, and keep the stranger out.

That we all encourage our preachers to preach Christ, and not the narrative of this time.

That we treat censors with scorn, for they censor because they know their pet immigrants are at risk if the Saxon is allowed to talk of his hate.

And we pray for revival. Or the West will again cry “Deus Vult”