Two Roads, Merging As One for the Winners

The preacher was a guest at the church I attend: a liberal, progressive place. It baptized the adopted daughter of two lesbians, for instance, in the middle of the last decade. Its approach stresses peace, tranquility and harmony among others. It believes in a God that is kind, forgiving, and enveloping.

He began his sermon by noting how divided people were. That's nothing new. We are.

He used rhetoric that suggested he was referring to the political realm. But he wasn't there at all. He was referring to the Christian religion. He called out people who called themselves Christians for using words of hate and division.

If he had been referring to politics, would there have been any difference?

The comments about Christians were news to me. I hadn't known that internally, the major religion in the U.S. was rife with the same clashing.

But then, I should have known. Nobody's examining this very well or often, but the conflict over religion--New Testament approach versus the Old Testament version, a God who has returned to wreak vengeance upon us for being bad people--is at the heart of our political division, too.

Old Testament folks think that humankind must be controlled or it will wreck itself, that God's power and force will straighten things out. New Testament folks think that if left alone, people tend to take care of each other, and God's mercy and love will lead people to treat each other kindly.

Thus, government is either an actor, in which it will provide at least the minimum for all of us--a degree of socialism, under which we now live though in a very underserved way--or a reactor, which should allow people to work things out on their own, competing for resources in a land of winners and losers. Government should get out of the way of such an arena, so those who deserve to win do so completely--at the expense of the losers, of course. The winners get what they deserve. So do the losers.

Somehow, an interpretation of history has emerged in which Americans have come to think of themselves as a chosen people: the "city on a hill" as first posited by the Puritans, then by Ronald Reagan. Geography, resources and timing have pretty much determined that viewpoint. That ignores the price Native Americans and African slaves paid to be used and pushed out of the way of progress for white Europeans, but then--they didn't win.

The common denominator of this approach, though, is the connection with the Almighty that is implicit. We're so successful because we're obviously God's chosen people, so whatever we do, it's meant to happen. The twisted part--perhaps part of it--comes from the loss of history, in which it's pretty easy to see that that domination by whites over non-whites came with disempowering non-whites from the start, not because the whites were better. But with time and tide and the rush of succeeding moments, we become obsessed with the result of things, not their causes, which become too messy to consider. After all, that was then, this is now, right?

So we do what we want and invoke heaven in the aftermath, regardless of who gets hurt and why, as long as we come out on top. This road, the one that blesses uncontrolled capitalism and marketing, well, everything in the name of profit for someone who's continuing that kind of thinking because it's sure working for them, provides the profiteers with sufficient psychological cover, controlling the masses with pseudo-religious fervor in order to keep them from rebelling against it, lest they begin to get jealous of what isn't theirs but could easily be.

I have spoken to those who have spoken with supporters of 45, with his hyper-capitalist, racially condescending approach, and it's been reported to me that those supporters completely buy into the idea that their lives will become better, but they just have to wait for 45 to kind of 'get to them' and they, and America, will be just fine. They have been taught to believe in things not seen, after all. It's a simple adjustment for them to make that sideways transfer to someone they think was meant to be here at this time, because their preachers said so--making him an extension of the Almighty who, as we know, works in mysterious ways. So, too, they think that should 45 be shunted aside with whatever unjust legal methodology that's out there, Mike Pence, a true man of God, will take over and then things will really get better.

It hasn't occurred to them that they wait for Godot if they believe that the powers that be care one whit about them and their futures. The only thing worse than government suppression is self-suppression, and that's what 45 wants. It'll make things so much easier on him.

So this is not two separate roads leading to one mentality someone down the line. It is one mentality into which many people are locked immutably. They are now freed up to express themselves in condemning feminists, gays, minorities, and liberals as ungodly, demonstrating during 45's speeches in nearly unglued ways. The expected downfall of the groups they believe to be "un-American" will be interpreted as God's vengeance for being bad--and back we may easily go into a dark age, in which only one version of truth, that of the supernaturally-anointed Leader, need be followed by anyone.

The only thing in the way is the Constitution. But with the appointment of Brett Kavanaugh, that, too, might now be shaped in a way that falls into this ditch.

Those who bluff by using religion in this way preach the gospel of freedom. But it's a repressive, non-thinking, mentality of domination that's really what they want. So long as they win.

Be well. See you down the road.

Mister Mark