Eldritch horror, American style.
The story of Nathan Larson, independent candidate for Virginia’s 10th Congressional District, feels like one is watching the Dark Web itself assume Lovecraftian form and shamble from the surf to rake its madness upon our minds with vicious, ichor-stained talons.
If you don’t yet know this story, STRONGEST POSSIBLE CONTENT WARNING as everything about this nightmare individual is repugnance on multiple levels. There is a HuffPo article where he speaks frankly about who he is and what he believes, and a Ballotpedia survey he answered in 2017, when he laid out his libertarian views on private property ownership, patriarchy, and how he believed the two should intertwine. I cannot, cannot, CANNOT overstate how hideous it is to have read them.
I will highlight the following two things about Nathan Larson, which is why I’m compelled to mention him at all:
1) In 2017, while he was soundly defeated in the early stages of his race for the Virginia House of Delegates, he still managed to get 481 people to cast a vote for him, without hiding who he was or what he believed.
2) When asked about how his philosophies affected his chances for winning office, he had this to say:
“A lot of people are tired of political correctness and being constrained by it. People prefer when there’s an outsider who doesn’t have anything to lose and is willing to say what’s on a lot of people’s minds.”
This is the blueprint we’ve been given. It succeeded once at the highest possible level and now it provides lofty ambition to the worst members of society. I’m not saying that support for Trump de facto makes you a supporter of Nathan Larson — although if you also supported Roy Moore you have to answer for that as well — but I am saying that support for Trump was a key ingredient in the spell that opened this door, and now the rest of us are desperately trying to drive back the mass of tentacles and teeth, reciting whatever incantations might seal it for good.
Creative Control 