Eight more days

With eight more days to go until the Inauguration of Joseph Biden as the President of the United States, the actions of an angry mob, goaded to service by the current president.. so sad.. (to coin a phrase).. we wait to see if the leaders of the United States will step up to impeach him..  again.  

Repeated images of the mob attacking the US Capitol building are disturbing in their brutal honesty. If 45 had led the march as he said he would (but did not), it might have been like good old Marty Luther nailing up his complaints. That would have been a classy act. We know 45 did not want that.  He wanted what Rudy Giuliani proclaimed, "Trial by combat!" 

My eloquent pal, Bill Svelmoe, carries on a bit. I respect his views and share them here from time to time because his background as the son of evangelical missionaries lends credibility to his views.  I share them here, especially for my old high school pals who got so upset when I simply asked them, before the election, for whom they'd vote.  Evidently, my innocent question "hurt" some of them. Those who called 'FOUL' may blame me for their being hurt, sadly, it's the person in the mirror where the blame lies.    

I just ask questions... and.. I declare myself proud to have voted for Biden/ Harris. Period.

Here's Bill Svelmoe's latest rant.  I so respect this guy. I  have not vetted his story of the Proud Boys, but Bill is a credible guy, to me.  Direct responses to directortv41 at yahoo  dot com...

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From the NYTimes today: “Before self-proclaimed members of the far-right group the Proud Boys marched toward the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, they stopped to kneel in the street and prayed in the name of Jesus.”

From a Josh Hawley speech: “We are called to take the message [that Jesus Christ is Lord over every inch of creation] into every sphere of life that we touch, including the political realm. That is our charge. To take the Lordship of Christ, that message, into the public realm, and to seek the obedience of the nations. Of our nation!”

There are a number of reasons why this “unity” to which Republicans now seem so devoted is a pipe dream.

For one, Donald “I’ll be with you at the Capitol, no wait, I think I’ll just watch TV” Trump still yammers on about “witch hunts” and “hoaxes.” Why face reality when your Messiah spins such rich fantasy?

Second, when I punch in 1210 on my remote, I still land on FOX News. FOX’s prime time grievance merchants began mocking Biden’s calls for unity the second the words left his mouth. There’s no money for FOX in unity.

But perhaps the primary reason why unity will escape us can be found in Proud Boys kneeling to Jesus and senators who see human freedom as a threat to Christian dominance. The crosses and Jesus Saves signs carried next to American flags and Trump banners were not a call for unity. Unless that unity comes with bended knee to their two Messiahs, Trump and Christ.

White evangelical Christianity has undergirded Trump and Trumpism from the moment it became clear that he would be the Republican nominee. No sooner had the rest of God’s anointed, the Cruzes, Huckabees, Bachmanns of the world, exited stage left than our American Magdalenes fixed their coquettish gaze on their new strong man. Surely a ride on that arm would lead to a crown and a throne.

In fact this is exactly what Trump promised them. “Christianity will have power,” he told them on a frosty morning in Iowa. “If I’m there, you’re going to have plenty of power, you don’t need anybody else.”

And they believed him. And they bent the knee.

And it is not in the nature of evangelical Christianity, indeed in the nature of any conservative religious expression, to compromise, to embrace unity.

As the apostle wrote to the first Christians, “Do not become unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has light with darkness? What harmony is there between Jesus and the Devil?”

Trust me on this my liberal friends. In that little equation, we are the unbelievers. We are darkness. We are the devil.

This is the cancer at the heart of conservative religion, and by extension, conservative politics. The cancer of tribalism. I serve the true god. Your god is false. I know the truth. You live a lie. You therefore by definition serve evil, Satan if you will. It is right and just therefore that your rights are limited. That you are destroyed.

This tribalism is at the core of evangelical Christianity, the foundation of its conservative politics, the driver of its commitment to power at all costs.

Orthodox believers demonize liberals. What is the great liberal sin? Liberals make peace across boundaries. In my youth it was called the ecumenical movement. And no, the ecumenical movement is not what a cannibal has after dining on a Christian, a Mormon, and a Jew. The ecumenical movement was the cherished dream of liberals, that religious believers could find truth in other traditions, points of commonality that would tear down walls.

Liberals sought peace. Peace in unity. And for that crime, evangelicals consigned them to hell.

Note the Man of Sin who haunts the dreams of so many Christians. He is dubbed Antichrist. What is this Antichrist's great sin? He brings world peace. He tears down the walls and unites the world's religions. For this sin the Christian god reigns terrible plagues upon the earth and eventually sallies forth from heaven with Jesus leading a pack of raptured saints to massacre the remains of the human race.

And so a New Testament that begins with such hope, "good news for all people," becomes the most horrific of news for most of those same people.

Note Babel, where a united humanity, building what probably amounted to the first four-story shopping mall, elicits the horror of God, who must come down and drive them apart.

Why? Our gods prefer us, indeed need us, to be tribal. Our gods prefer us loyal only to them, and so we are taught to fear unity with the other. And what power does a priest have whose parishioners indulge other voices?

So we are right to see these current calls for unity from such as these as false flag operations. Now that Republicans have lost, they will call for unity. And if we demand change before unity, dare we call it repentance, they will accuse us of encouraging division.

But we should remember well the lessons from Reconstruction. Our enemies then, defeated on the field of battle, forced into lip service accommodation to the “rights” of others, never gave up their determined opposition to genuine equality. And 150 years later, their bitterness over that defeat continues to fuel insurrection. Insurrection against that illusory notion that “all are created equal.”

This time we must insist that unity does not come simply because the battlefield is empty. Combatants have gone home. No, this time unity only comes after the lie is denounced. Truth embraced. By political and religious leaders.

If Republican leaders want unity, they must address the nation. Tell their supporters that Trump is a fraud. That the notion of a stolen election is a lie. That they embraced that lie, knowing full well it was a lie, for purely political reasons.

And they must renounce the larger lie, the racism and resentments that lie at the heart of so much of conservative politics.

And they must denounce the support of religious leaders who seek to frame our political differences as a battle between light and darkness, truth and error, God and the devil. The toxic combination of evangelical religion and politics that saturates conservatism from the Senate to the Proud Boys must be broken.

When conservatives accept that black football players kneeling during the national anthem, not Proud boys kneeling in the streets, represent the true spirit of Christianity, then perhaps we can have a conversation about unity …