Hail

I have a confession to make. Though I’ve lived nearly all my life in “blue zones,” I’m a conservative. I’m also a papist. These are topics I don’t write about very often on my other blog or on Facebook.

I didn’t used to be very political. I played video games, I read my scifi and fantasy novels. I tithed a percentage of my income to the gods of Magic the Gathering and Ultima Online, among various other minor nerdist deities. I studied Japanese and lived in Japan for a while.

Somewhere along the way, things started to change. Culture is always shifting. The culture wars rage. But these interests of mine, which I always thought to be neutral ground, began to gradually polarize. Perhaps it’s always been this way; maybe the wax of social media and the explosion of the internet opened my eyes. Who knows.

The major game companies now shoehorn gay romances and transgender characters into their premier titles to satisfy a small but vocal (and powerful) minority. Those who find such decisions distasteful are labeled “uninclusive” at best, and more frequently “bigot” or “homophobe.” Gaming news sites trumpet these developments as major victories.

Major tech firms (and in other industries, too) like Google, Yahoo, and Yelp have cut ties with conservative coalition ALEC because of its stance on climate change. Don’t you know that it’s settled science?

Mozilla CEO and co-founder Brian Eich was forced out of his job after it came to light that he had donated a small amount of his personal money to California’s Proposition 8, which defended traditional marriage between a man and a woman. Wrongthink.

Apple’s Tim Cook recently joined the chorus of ignorants condemning Indiana’s passage of a religious freedom bill. He’ll gladly sell an iphone in a country that beheads gay people, but finds the thought of exempting someone from the legal compulsion to cater a gay wedding just appalling.

It goes on and on. The culture wars rage.

This Western decay isn’t isolated, either. During my time in Japan I discovered that most of my expat compatriots were liberals and leftists. That’s not to dismiss them as people – my best friend over there was politically and theologically almost my polar opposite, and I believe that he was a good person. It’s not always easy or fair to break people down into categories, but there are definitely certain prevailing views among the expats over there. I’ve spent some time in the Japan blogosphere and that perception has only been reinforced. One fellow on Twitter put it quite nicely some time ago:

Basically, the gaijinosphere is full of godless left-leaning pseudointellectual twats with penchants for alcoholism and technophilia.

— Yasuikankei.inc (@YasuiKankei) August 28, 2014

Well, this has been a nice rant, but hasn’t really told you anything about PC Bushi. Only in the past year or two have I become aware of a conservative pushback. Conservative news sources like the Drudge Report and HotAir work report political news from a more “right” point of view. Matt Walsh writes about current events through a Christian lens, and Steve Crowder aims to show that conservatives can be both funny and intellectual when it comes to politics.

Blogs like Reaxxion, God and the Machine, and Scifi Wright work to show that there are Christian and conservative nerds, and their voices are important, too.

And that’s why this blog has sprung up. Because the silent majority’s silence can be just as damaging as the raging of the “Morlocks,” as JC Wright likes to call them. It may be too late for our culture; maybe all we can do is slow the decline. But that’s not a good excuse to sit on the sidelines and wait for the BBQ.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends.

-Bushi