The Super Pigs Have Arrived

On Saturday, November 25, at 1:57 AM, I turned sixty-five (65, I say!) years old. Then on Monday, November 27, I visited my urologist and received a PSA score high enough to earn me my Crotchety Old Man license. This post is my first licensed rant. Although I hope that the voice in your head sounds reasonable as you read, feel free to hear it in a “You-kids-get-off-my-lawn!” tone if you’re into that kind of thing.

The Republican Party no longer exists. . . .

My parents were Republicans and good people. My in-laws were Republicans and good people. I had—have—many friends who were—are—Republicans. These folks—from my parents to current friends—hold conservative values on government and economics. All well and good.

Or rather, all was well and good until actual Republicans and conservatives disappeared from this world by 1) leaving it like my parents and in-laws have done or 2) hiding—voiceless—in a daze of shock and disbelief at how their party and its ideology have been hijacked or 3) drinking the Kool-Aid and crossing over to the side of the hijackers.

Yes, the Republican Party—the GOP—still exists by name and in the news and on election ballots, but its traditional values have been trampled in the mud of their own sweat and blood by the mean and the ignorant and the arrogant, by idiots and the power hungry and the power hungry idiots. I know Jesus warned against calling anyone a fool (Matthew 5:22), but these days I find that admonition more difficult to abide by than most of the Ten Commandments.

Today’s so-called Republican Party is characterized by fear and its brood—anger, jealousy, anxiety. Shame and guilt often accompany fear, but today’s “Republicans” seem dead to these, probably, I think, because they no longer have a moral compass and thus lack the capacity for guilt and shame.

The things so-called Republicans fear are many: fear of the Other (typically identified by the shallow marker of skin color), fear of sharing (power, prestige, money, etc.), fear of losing (power, prestige, money, etc.), fear of the future, fear of the past (history as it actually happened, for example, or wrongs committed for power, prestige, money, etc.). Many Republicans of today do not recognize and will not admit these fears, but this is where the above mentioned ignorance and arrogance come in.

Conservative values are characterized not by what is right or wrong but by what is likely to keep those who hold those values safe from their fears (see above) and comfortable in their assumption of right and smug in their self-righteousness.

Here’s an idea. Fear this:

American Decay

I’ve lived in the United States of America for sixty-three years.

I’ve been teaching American literature for the last twenty-five of those.

My American lit surveys–particularly the sophomore-level general education version–begin with indigenous creation stories and trickster tales before moving to the letters of Cristoforo Colombo, i.e., Christopher Columbus. From there, it’s on to the writings of Bartolomé de Las Casas and the American Puritans (including those we typically style as “Pilgrims”). My students and I then read from the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries, usually winding up with poets Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson.

Having gone through some portion of these writings–in both undergraduate and graduate courses–every semester, I have come to believe that the one consistent American experience is that of decay.

Decay in all its not-so-varied noun and verb meanings:

• to decline in health, strength, or vigor
• to fall into ruin
• to decline from a sound or prosperous condition
• rot
• gradual decline in strength, soundness, or prosperity or in degree of excellence or perfection
• destruction, death; Merriam-Webster identifies this meaning as “obsolete,” but I think we have a good shot at bringing it back

The United States of America has decayed to the extent that it’s no longer even half of what it thinks itself to be. And if the USA is supposed to be–as it thinks it is–God’s gift to the world, it is now a cheap knock-off of the nation initially imagined, of the nation it might have been if it’d been able to fend off the inevitable decay.

As Emily Dickinson wrote,

I reason, we could die–
The best Vitality
Cannot excel Decay,
But, what of that?

second stanza of her poem 403

Over the next few posts, I’m going to write specifically about some of these indications of decay as they appear in the literature I read and in the world where I’ve lived for sixty-three years.

The Fears of a Fear-Mongerer

Diana Harshbargar won her Tennessee District 1 Republican Primary with only 19% of the vote. Although it was a big field, that’s not a rousing vote of approval by any stretch of the imagination. Her winning has put her up for election to the U.S. House of Representatives on November 3, 2020, when she will be in a contest with Democrat Blair Walsingham.

Harshbargar has announced that she won’t be debating Walsingham ahead of Election Day; she has spun Walshingham’s platform regarding justice reform and decided she doesn’t like it, claiming Walsingham “‘has put things on her website and said she opposes the men and women who protect us, and I won’t be debating. . . . I’m not going to dignify that with a response in a debate.'”

If Harshbargar feels so strongly that Walsingham is wrong, shouldn’t she be all the more anxious to debate? To prove her stance on the issue is the right one? Apparently, she’s counting on Republican voters being straight-ticket devotees without even thinking about it and thus giving her the win by the sheer weight of votes from thoughtless party people. She’s probably right, but that’s so wrong.

Walsingham’s response:

My opponent is fueling the black and white, divisive rhetoric that would have voters believe that supporting justice reform is in direct opposition to supporting law enforcement. . . . If Diana wants to be a productive member of Congress, then she should share her plans. If she can’t talk about the issues now, how can voters count on her to stand up for them in Congress? . . . Most importantly, this is a blatant disregard for the democratic process and shows that she takes voters for granted. She enthusiastically posed for photos with me during the primary, but when it comes time to talk policy, she is running scared because she knows that I have heavy support among conservatives due to policies that reduce bureaucracy and focus on lasting solutions that will provide greater health, freedom and financial security to the voters of the 1st District.

“Harshbargar says she won’t debate Walsingham in congressional race”

Fear & Fear-Mongering

The TV ads airing on approach to the Tennessee Primary elections in 2020 suggest that conservatives live in constant fear and with a constant sense of indignation and paranoia. These lead to expressions of anger and hate: “They’re coming for my guns!” “They’re taking my religious liberties!” “They hate America!” How soul-damaging and difficult it must be to live in such a state. Most of the ads respond to these fears, not with policies to improve the lives of all Tennesseans and Americans but with words and images intended to stoke the fires of fear and send their desired constituents to the polls in fear and trembling–not in fear and trembling before the God to whom they lay claim but of their fellow Tennesseans and Americans who think and look differently.

“They,” of course, are liberals. “They” are those who would like see America live up to its founding ideals, including that pesky notion that “all . . . are created equal.”

***

Lamar Alexander isn’t running for reelection to the U. S. Senate. Fifteen hopefuls are on the Republican primary ballot to be the one to run to replace Alexander.

Bill Hagerty has the endorsement of our 45th president, which disqualifies him for serious consideration. He’s gonna work with 45 to drain the swamp, which apparently isn’t something that 45 was able to do in his first three and a half years. The swamp is actually worse, it seems, and I’m guessing that Hagerty is courting a position as swamp minion, given that 45 is just expanding and deepening the swamp. Hagerty supports that other failed promise about “the wall.” He also wants to confirm constitutionalist judges, which is something I don’t know if 45 is really big on right now, given that the Supreme Court has smacked him down several times recently on constitutional grounds. I remember seeing Hagerty with the now obligatory rifle in his hands. Before he stopped doing much advertising in my area, figuring, perhaps, that he has it locked up, he also suggested that he’d protect our Christian liberties. I have no idea what he means by that, as white American Christians are among the most privileged people on Earth and are under no threat (unless it’s from Jesus, who, if he were a rifle-toting Messiah, might come after them for their perversion of his gospel).

Manny Sethi tries to stake out much of the same territory as Hagerty, so I don’t see much difference between the two. He doesn’t have 45’s endorsement, but he claims that he’ll support him in all his injustices. While Hagerty has almost no effect on me, I’m sorry to say that I have an active dislike of Sethi. Maybe I’ve just seem too much of him. His commercials have run and run and run in my area, because he’s trying to overcome Hagerty’s lead here. His commercials pick the violence that has taken place on the fringes of large peaceful protests in support of Black Lives Matter, and he follows these images with the close-up of him saying, “They hate America. I love America.” He punctuates these statements with self-conscious blinks of his eyes that are supposed to express his utter sincerity. They don’t.

Sethi’s faith-based campaign is a hodgepodge supposed Christian values. He points to the opioid crisis but makes no real suggestions beyond let the locals handle it and punish the pushers. He pushes “LEGAL” immigration. As far as Christian values go, I don’t think that Jesus put such a qualifier on his mandate of love; he didn’t say that we are to love God and love “LEGAL” others. I could go on.

I take particular issue with Sethi’s bringing up abortion right out of the gate. Abortion has been one of the most damaging and pointless arguments in American politics for years and years now. The reason that it’s pointless is that it’s a moral issue and not a political one. We learned a long time ago in this country that we can’t legislate morality. If we think we can make people moral through legislation, then, instead of abortion legislation that is reactionary and on the back end of the unwanted pregnancy issue, we should try to legislate the various kinds of copulation that lead to such pregnancies in the first place. We know at a glance that such legislation wouldn’t work. We know that abortion legislation won’t work either. And yet men like Manny Sethi continue to raise the issue because they think it’ll serve them politically.

Phil Roe isn’t running for reelection to the U. S. House of Representatives. Sixteen folks are on the Republican primary ballot to replace Roe. I haven’t seen campaigning from most of them, but the few who have caught my attention are on the whole ridiculous.

Rusty Crowe is probably the leader with his slogan that Washington needs a “dose of Tennessee.” Sure, that sounds like something, but it’s, in fact, nothing. Like the rest of them, he says that he’ll support 45 and the 2nd Amendment and the wall and blah blah blah.

Josh Gapp seems to be running solely on a platform of hating political correctness. Whatever.

Diana Harshbarger has a recent commercial that begins in black and white and, like a Sethi ad, shows black people masked and committing violence. Then everything goes to color and a pretty little white family (daddy, mommy, and two kids) go skipping down a country lane. Racist? Yes. Christ-like? No. And yet as images of crosses and churches alternate in the visual, Harshbarger’s voiceover says, “Jesus is Lord, and his light fills our lives, even through the chaos, even as we’re attacked by our neighbor. His hand and our faith will guide us to salvation.” While she approves this message, I’m thinking that Jesus would not. This level of manipulation and drive to divide rather than unite leads me to hope that she suffers a resounding primary defeat.

Timothy Hill is running on a gun and a prayer. A recent commercial begins with him pointing a rifle at something (one suspects a liberal) and then walking down the aisle of a prefab church to kneel at the altar in fervent (filmed) prayer. The voiceover says something about church being the only place he kneels. All of this looks like American Christianity, but none of it seems to follow Christ.

Is it possible that they can all lose? No, one will be the primary winner. Probably Rusty Crowe, who has the first recognizable name on the ballot. As for Hagerty and Sethi, they seem equally manipulative and divisive–Sethi even desperately so.

FOLLOW-UP, 29 AUGUST 2020: I’m not surprised that Hagerty won the Republican Senate primary. I’m somewhat surprised that Harshbarger won the Republican primary to replace Phil Roe; I wonder if there’s good news in the fact that, with so large a field of contestants, she won only 19% of the vote. In other news beyond my voting, the useless Matthew Hill lost to Rebecca Alexander, denying him his ninth term in the Tennessee House, and Micah Van Huss lost to Tim Hicks, denying Van Huss his sixth pointless term.