A few years ago there was a movie called Joker. It was controversial; critics tended to love it or hate it (“bold, devastating” vs “as social commentary, Joker is pernicious garbage”), and the people who watched it tended to be at either extreme as well.
Inevitably, this year there was a sequel, Joker: Folie à Deux. Just as inevitably, it bombed. Even the people that loved the first one hated this one, it tanked at the box office, and it scored three points lower on IMDB than the original. To top it all off, the ending showed that the main character wasn’t the Joker, just a joker, so they essentially lied the whole time about what the movies were about.
Any relation to the other joker is purely intentional.
It’s an interesting1 election cycle. A racist, xenophobic, white nationalist who’s also a seditionist, convicted felon, and self-proclaimed sexual abuser is running against … a woman. America being America in 2024, the race is too close to call. (He’s also an inveterate, unapologetic, perpetual liar, but the number of adjectives were already getting a bit unwieldy. If the old woman from The Princess Bride followed him around she’d be hoarse in five minutes. In fact, that’s a good idea; let’s see if Carol Kane has some free time.)
Even more depressing, the evangelical church in America is putting all of its firepower behind the racist, xenophobic, white nationalist who’s also a seditionist, convicted felon and self-proclaimed sexual abuser, while trying to convince everyone (including themselves, I suspect) that he’s the “lesser evil.” Which would be laughable if it wasn’t so sad.
I’ve seen a church spend a cursory ninety seconds talking about immigrants, and then spend ten minutes on the unborn, including discussing how many times the word “abortion” appeared in the respective party platforms. That’s particularly ironic, since the racist, xenophobic, white nationalist who’s also a seditionist, convicted felon and self-proclaimed sexual abuser not only hasn’t read the platform, he could not possibly care less what’s in it. It also included what the candidates themselves had to say about it, or what one candidate said about it; there was a lot of hand-waving about the RXWNwaaSCFaSPSA, since he’s changed his tune a half-dozen times; more on that later. What the ninety seconds on immigrants did not include is what either party, or candidate, said about immigrants. Or, you know, any non-white people.
In other words, no time was spent on the lies the RXWNwaaSCFaSPSA and his VP candidate have propagated about the legal Haitian immigrants in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Lies that led to scores of death threats, not only for the immigrants, but for local government officials. Not a word was said about the recent rally where Puerto Rico was referred to as a “floating island of garbage.” Not a word was said about the RXWNwaaSCFaSPSA’s cutting, in his previous term, the number of incoming refugees by over two-thirds. (For review, a refugee is someone seeking asylum in this country because their life is in danger in their native country.)
No time was spent on how many kids’ lives have been taken by guns because of the RXWNwaaSCFaSPSA and his party’s policies. It’s always been a mystery to me why shooting a child doesn’t generate even one-tenth the outrage in the church that aborting one does.
No time was spent on the lives the RXWNwaaSCFaSPSA took by his stance on COVID and masking and vaccines and the science of how viruses work. (Of course, while he was making fun of the science and the people who followed it, he took every injection and swallowed every pill he could find when he actually got COVID. A liar and a hypocrite.) Several hundred thousand people died in the first year of COVID that shouldn’t have, and he is directly responsible.
No time was spent on his (and his party’s) repeated attempts to get rid of ACA, thereby depriving hundreds of thousands of children health care. Depriving children (and adults) of health care has a tendency to increase their mortality. In other words, it kills them.
It’s absurd to call the RXWNwaaSCFaSPSA, or his present-day party, “pro-life.” They are pro-power, period, and they have figured out the right button to push to get the church to toe their line, even when you’re a racist, xenophobic, white nationalist who’s also a seditionist, convicted felon, and self-proclaimed sexual abuser. Convince them you’re anti-abortion, whether true or not, and you’re in.
Before the 2016 election, someone said these two things to me in a conversation:
- He doesn’t really mean the things he says.
- It’s all about the judges. (Meaning Supreme Court judges to overturn Roe v. Wade.)
I haven’t forgotten that conversation, because both of those things were utterly, totally, and in every other way, wrong.
First, he meant exactly what he said, and he proceeded to spend four years doing as much of it as he could get away with. He banned Muslims from six countries (and fired the attorney general who refused to implement it, as she should have, it being against the law and all). As mentioned above, he cut the number of refugees allowed by two thirds. He played footsie with the world’s dictators, in hopes of soon becoming one of them.
Second, while he did appoint judges that overturned Roe v. Wade, that had nothing to do with why he appointed them. He did not (and does not) care one whit about Roe v. Wade. That was obvious from the beginning, and it’s been made more obvious by the total waffle job he’s done in the last year on the issue. He’s pro-power and pro-himself and anti-everything else; the minute he thought the abortion issue might keep him from getting elected, he suddenly changed his position. Several times.
What the judges were about were judges who would go along with his (and his party’s) plan to overthrow the government. He fomented an insurrection in hopes of scaring his vice president and/or Congress into overthrowing the vote. His plan might have worked, if only Pence and Georgia’s officials (all of whom are in his party) and others hadn’t had backbones and followed the law, as opposed to being like the “German generals” he wants surrounding him, who will do whatever he says without asking a bunch of inconvenient questions or following a bunch of inconvenient laws.
(That’s in quotes because it’s a direct quote, according to his former chief of staff. Speaking of which, here’s a fun project: research the people who surrounded the racist, xenophobic, white nationalist who’s also a seditionist, convicted felon, and self-proclaimed sexual abuser in his first term and see what they have to say about him. Spoiler alert: most of it is far worse than anything I’m saying here.)
He and his party have spent the last four years making sure that doesn’t happen again. They’ve completely run off or sidelined anyone in their party who doesn’t completely agree with them and their methods, to the point that the daughter of one of the architects of their party’s positions over the last forty years is actively campaigning for that woman. His Supreme Court judges have also paved the way, declaring that the president can do pretty much anything he wants while in office, without having to worry about pesky things like laws. His lawyers argued in that case that the president could commit murder and not be convicted unless he/she were first impeached. Which of course wouldn’t happen, because today’s bootlickers don’t care whether you did something illegal, only that you’re in their party. (See the vote for impeachment after the January 6th insurrection, which should have been the biggest slam dunk in history.) For reference, Nixon was forced to resign by his own party (the same party, for the record) or face an impeachment conviction.
He and his party have tried to restrict the legal vote in numerous states, have harassed election workers, and have continued repeating a bald-faced lie about the 2020 election. (This includes his VP candidate, who is in my opinion more dangerous than the racist, xenophobic, white nationalist who’s also a seditionist, convicted felon, and self-proclaimed sexual abuser.)
He’s also said a lot of things in the interim. He means them, too. As he has already shown us, he will do them, given the opportunity.
- He says he’ll deport twelve million illegal immigrants. (Ignoring for a moment what it means to them, imagine what it will mean to you to have all of the law enforcement and other officials working on that instead of their real jobs.)
- He says he’ll put his opponents in jail, he’ll put members of the press who have the temerity to disagree with him in jail, he’ll put … you get the idea. If you’re wondering why you should care, I refer you to this. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, etc.
- He says he’ll pardon the January 6th insurrectionists. You know, the people who tried to overthrow the government. Why? Because overthrowing the government is OK with him!
In short, and again this should be intuitively obvious to the most casual observer, he does not respect the rule of law and he and his party are actively working to change things so he doesn’t have to follow the rule of law. He has no interest in making America “great”; he wants to make us Russia, or Cambodia, or Venezuela, or any of several other countries where people vote and it makes absolutely no difference whatsoever, because they are not democracies, they are dictatorships with good marketing departments.
I wonder what the Bible has to say about someone who is so in love with himself that he puts himself above everything, including God. Let’s check in with Nebuchadnezzar (Dan 3) and Herod (Acts 12) and see what they have to say.
I’m fascinated that the church believes they will survive what he and his party have in store. If you assembled a list of all the dictators in history who left the church to practice whatever it felt God called it to do, you would have … a blank piece of paper. Of course they don’t leave the church alone; the church promotes free thinking (or at least it’s supposed to), and they believe in a power higher than the racist, xenophobic, white nationalist who’s also a seditionist, convicted felon, and self-proclaimed sexual abuser, and that is not allowed.
But wait! That woman! And … And …
Yes, yes, there are all kinds of issues with them, too. But here’s the crazy thing—they work within the law. They haven’t tried to overthrow the government. They haven’t told their supporters, “Vote for me this time and you won’t have to vote again,” like the RXWNwaaSCFaSPSA. They believe in, respect, and follow the Constitution, the rule of law.
If the church doesn’t like what “that woman” and her party stand for, there’s an easy solution. First, it should go back in time eight years and not only remove all support from the RXWNwaaCFaSPSA, but tell his party that they will never again vote for anyone who supports him or his lies or his thinking. If it can’t do that (and a good time machine is never around when you need one), it should do that today. Throw out the people who want to implement “marshall law” to overthrow a democratically elected government, who lie about it afterward, and who, as seen in that quote, don’t even know how to spell what they’re asking for. Stop voting for people who have no values, no morals, and no compassion, who are nothing but attack dogs on two feet. Stop voting for people who want to strip you of your right to vote. Stop voting for people who don’t care about you or your unborn, but only care about themselves. Get rid of the lunatic no-longer-fringe, see if there’s anyone left, and then vote for them.
In the meantime, it’s time to set the racist, xenophobic, white nationalist who’s also a seditionist, convicted felon, and self-proclaimed sexual abuser, and everyone in his party who is like him, out on their ear.