Christian Nationalists

Below the Earth – Above the Sun: The Bright Line

Ok… a couple matters causing major concern: 1.) A Christian Nationalism (CN) movement, starting with The Gipper, Paul Weyrich, and Ralph Reed, has been slowly advancing most of my adult life. and 2.) it appears some loony-toon MFer tried to punch a hole in Mr. Trumps puss yesterday (07-13-2024) at his Pennsylvania rally…. gaaahh!

Regarding concern #1, national politics have progressed in predictable ways with the pendulum swinging between slightly right and ultra-right over the last 30+ years. A gradual rightward shift of the Overton Window has been a back-burner concern for me. Nothing so alarming as to get me digging into the inner workings of religious right’s takeover of local media (Fox/Sinclair)… DOH! I mean, yea, i’ve been a wild-eyed dime-store soothsayer warning of a dangerous erosion of the bright line that is supposed to separate church from state. But… distracted… i’ve been focused on my knitting and avoiding the hornet’s nest of evangelical zealots (no time for bashing my head into bricks). So, when Mitch McConnell pulled his Machiavellian maneuvers, denying Obama a final SCOTUS pick (one-year lead time), then followed up by ramrodding two ideological picks for Trump (one of them within weeks of the next presidential election). In fact, subverting the very rules of decorum cited by Mr. McConnell in the first place. For my part, regarding the deep and troubling irony of his (McConnell’s) flip flopping positions, i realized these people were not at all that interested in integrity, or good faith dealing. They’re only interested in gaining and holding onto power at any cost.

The overturning of Roe-v-Wade, despite confirmation pledges to leave settled law alone, apparently gave CN rank-and-file the victory they so desperately craved… so, now what? Is this the end of the story? Hell to the no! They’ve been working on a slow motion coup against US democratic checks and balances for decades. They want a favored candidate (chosen by God) installed as emperor for life, because they know CNs can no longer prevail in democratic contests. They are dead serious about dismantling democracy altogether. And it looks as though they might actually pull that off. The minute they settled on a willing lackey able to energize a multi-million-voter base, they found a way to tie this carnival barker to their biblical mumbo jumbo despite the fact he (Mr. Trump) is the furthest thing from embodying their conception of morality. Brilliant! Take a popular “reality” TV star, and tie him to the same cause as popular TV preachers, and… well… they beat Hillary Clinton’s potentially historic presidential bid… so there’s that.

Some say elevating an African American to the White House might have been the great backlash energizer, the final straw. Democracy has to go. And, i have to say that i agree. I agree that’s what’s at stake here, loopers. I said it in 2020, i’m saying it again. The choices are clear, a.) pluralistic secular democracy or b.) authoritarian Christian theocracy… time to choose.

As for concern #2, it’s tempting to ridicule anti-right wackos as the 07-13-2024 shooter apparently let several rounds loose with only one getting close to Mr. Trumps vitals. Contrast this with the anti-leftist wackos when they want leaders dead. They (anti-leftist wackos) operate with the cool efficiency of military snipers… JFK & MLK didn’t have a chance. RFK and Malcom X, toast. Reagan…? Merely wounded. Yes, tempting, but we won’t go there today. And though this talk about “false-flag” staged “July Surprise” nonsense is also tempting. After all, the subject is a malignant narcissist who would unhesitatingly stoop to any limbo setting needed to win. Seriously, i wouldn’t be shocked if the final dispatch came out that way. But, since news reports have the shooter dead as well as at least one bystander and another injured, it (false-flag conspiracy) is likely not the story here. Nevertheless, the event is now part of the 2024 Election year story… oy.

Adding fuel to the fire, some unsettling words accompanying the Heritage Foundation’s POTUS marching orders, “Project 2025.” Yea… everyone needs to know about this. These people still have Reagan Derangement Syndrome, they worship his legacy like a religious icon. Anyway, Heritage was fairly new in 1980. They handed Reagan a “wish list” and got a lot of what they wanted from his administration. So now, they’re ready for PuppetPOTUS (part II), but this time, it’s for KEEPS, Baybay!

And… so… what to do… keep quiet and go along, or stand up and defy this movement with all the tools at our disposal? And before you ask, YES…YES! We consider violence an illegitimate method of political discourse, and yes, we welcome CNs into our messy kaleidoscope of personal philosophy, religious beliefs, ethical codes, and moral fiber that make up the USofA… our country tis of thee.

The chaos has to stop. We have to get back to the rule of law. What keeps the peace and civility in our nation? Laws. Laws are drafted, proposed, and codified by elected leaders. It is the democratic process that brings lawmakers to City Council, County Commission, State House, Capitals, Governor’s Mansions, and the White House. Please understand… we (people of the USofA) will NOT submit to a particular religion’s anointed emperor. This nation is the gold standard city on the hill. Everyone wants to be here… to be the lucky ones able to dream that American Dream. It may be more like a bait-and-switch now days, but we still have that sliver of possibility… it still happens.

So… to answer Heritage’s Kevin Roberts’ cautionary quip about bloody revolution, yes, this national transformation will be relatively bloodless as whomever thinks they can persuade with terrorism, will be promptly rounded up and sequestered from the rest of the peaceful population (regardless political affiliation). Yes… the current phase of our nation’s history will be bloodless… and if everyone will just step off their outdated notions of inherent superiority, that’d be great.

Onward through the fog… R.H.

Hot Springs or Busk: Chapter V (genderpocalypse)

In the chaos of twisted chromosomes and warring hormones, we stumble upon the battleground known as “gender identity.” Picture it, loopers: a cosmic joke played on the fleshy stage of human existence. On one side, we have the cold, hard warriors of science, armed with their microscopes, brain scans, and impenetrable jargon, dissecting the very essence of what it means to be a dude or a chick. Like a swarm of blue ants, they peck away at the X and Y chromosomes… they focus their compound lenses on squishy gray folds of the brain hoping to uncover the secret lair of gender.

On the other side, we’ve got a dubious combination of politics and religion. And like red ants quoting holy scripture confined in a glass jar with the lab-coat wearing blues, all are content to share the space peacefully until someone comes along and shakes the jar. Ideologies and agendas are imposed upon the mix, where gender is leveraged as a weapon, a war cry, a bargaining chip designed to divide in order to conquer. Here, the forces of division speak in tongues, twisting words like “identity” and “expression” into righteous mandibles and impenetrable exoskeleton. They invent fake threats, hurl buzzwords like sugar crystals, and paint the very notion of gender itself as some kind of existential threat against all ant-kind. It’s an artfully designed battle, loopers, where common sense goes to die and the casualties are sanity and nuance… but enough of this ant-jar metaphor.

Caught in the political shitstorm, behold, the ordinary human! A curious creature, armed with little more than a body that feels and a mind that questions. “Who am i?” they wonder, peering into the distorted screen of warring society. “Am i what the textbooks say i am, what my birth certificate proclaims? Or am i something more, something deeper, an echo of feeling that defies the rigid rules of biology?” The scientists, bless their methodical hearts, try to offer answers, mapping out hormonal landscapes and brain circuitry. But what do they really know about being trapped in a body that feels like a prison, or feeling a defiant joy under a label that the world wants to erase?

Meanwhile, politicians bellow and posture. Christian Nationalists, with their faces twisted in apocalyptic fury, see transgender folks as harbingers of societal collapse, demonic agents sent to shatter the sacred order of man, woman, and holy matrimony. They clutch their dog-eared Bibles like shields, shouting verses about abominations as if the wrath of God himself will smite down those who dare to blur the lines. Oh, the irony, loopers, for aren’t those holy books dripping with gender-bending stories? Androgynist angels, prophets who blur the lines of man and woman… all stuff of genderqueer fever dreams!

And let’s not forget the paragons of liberal tolerance, sometimes just as ridged and uncompromising. Armed with academic tomes and social justice battle cries, they paint gender as a fluid, ever-shifting spectrum, where the very act of categorization is an act of violence. For them, biology is a mere suggestion, pronouns a tool of liberation, and self-declaration of the highest law. To question their orthodoxy is to be cast as bigoted troglodytes, clinging to a world that no longer exists, a relic of a less enlightened age… nuance be damned.

So, here we are, loopers, trapped in this absurdist play. The lab-coat wearing blue ants fiddle with their instruments, hoping to find a grand unifying theory of gender, while the red culture-warriors trade barbs and twist reality like cheap balloon animals. Yet, in the end, what does any of this say about the boy who looks in the mirror and sees a girl staring back, or the woman who feels like a stranger in her own skin? It’s the eternal human struggle played out on a new stage… a struggle to simply be, to exist without judgment, to find a sliver of peace in this glorious, messy, and often nonsensical thing Bill Hicks reminds us is “just a ride.”

And where does our fictional alter-ego fit in this absurdist play? Well, Ronnie Hays says he’s a woman trapped in a man’s body, but that woman happens to be a lesbian. So… the deviance is nearly imperceptible because if he’s dating… he’s dating a woman, and since his skin, flesh, and blood is male from the get go… NO ONE notices something amiss.

Cheers… Loopcircus