Civil Commotion

As everyone knows by now, the Very Stable Genius-in-Chief has summarily fired Rex Tillerosn — the Secretary of State, and 4th in line for the Presidency; Tillerson learned via a tweet.

That was it. That’s how Rex Tillerson learned he had been fired. There is no nice way to say it, nothing that can excuse the global humiliation of that kind of treatment or the uncertainty it introduces into our global relations: There is something misshapen inside Donald Trump, something deformed, something putrid.

Though 81% of white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump, and rejoiced when he won and rhapsodized that Our Invisible Friend was moving to eradicate the national stain of Barack the Wicked (A nigra!!, and a Moozlim!!), there is a lot of discomfort one year on — and the antics of cartoon characters like Robert Jeffress aren’t helping.

Dr. Jeffress is welcome to speak for himself and if they allow, for his church. But I hope the press will understand that “evangelicalism” is far from monolithic and he is not “the voice of evangelicalism.” He is not the voice of Southern Baptists and does not speak for us (nor do I or any other individual). Please understand, Dr. Jeffress has the right to lift his voice but as a conservative evangelical Christian I beg you to hear me — it is NOT my voice.

Anybody who pays attention to the big evangelical blogs, especially the Southern Baptist blogs, is well aware that Trump’s candidacy was widely seen as an opportunity to project the so-called Conservative Resurgence into our national life, that so-called Movement Conservatism is a reprise of the same impulses that wracked the SBC for 20-years.

In other words, what Trump aims to do to our national life is exactly what Paige Patterson et. al. did to the SBC. The difference is that Trump isn’t acting on a small stage occupied exclusively by sheep reared to blind obedience as an ideal. When Trump tries the bully act that was so effective in the SBC, that is, he gets pushback — and now the bully’s fans are running for cover.

As I said almost immediately after Trump’s election win, this is the end of the Evangelical Right. They voted for a man who explicitly, and repeatedly, promised to impose a religious test as a condition of admittance to the United Stataes; point that out next time you hear mewling about ‘religious freedom.’ They voted for a serial adulterer, liar, and author of countless frauds (Trump University?) — and knew they were doing so; point that out next time the moral preening starts.

There’s no running from the hypocrisy, and I’m enjoying their discomfort.

Bruce Gerencser thinks Jesus owes him a refund.

For most of my life, I lived in poverty, rarely making enough money to provide for the needs of my family. You told me, Jesus, that I would never have to beg for food, so it was good that Food Stamps didn’t count, right? The Gerencser family never missed a meal, but I do wonder: which of our meals did you provide? I worked and my wages helped buy groceries. For a few years, we received Food Stamps and made ample use of government food stuffs. And on more than a few occasions, kindly church members gave us groceries. It seems, to me anyway, Jesus, that you didn’t have a hand in feeding us. I know that you take credit for the sunshine and rain that causes crops to grow, but everyone now knows, Jesus — thanks to science — that you have nothing to do with where food comes from.

It’s a good piece, and I encourage all of you to go read it.

Bruce was associated with Independent Fundamentalist Baptist and Southern Baptist churches, and I can imagine somebody thinking to himself, “Well, Yeah!, those denominations are crazy. But my church …”

No. The metaphysical claims are identical: You were born no damn good, you can never be any damn good, and the only way to escape the eternal punishment you were born deserving is to join our club. Further, our club gets first dibs, and your family and friends get the leftovers. Your goal should be the complete eradication of your self-interest and self-direction — self annihilation — because your self is irremediably evil.

The only difference between IFB/SBC churches and any other western Christian church is that the Baptists are louder and balder about the degradation that inheres in Christian teaching.

Under Trump the obsequious, the craven, the ignorant … will inevitably, necessarily, rise to the top, and professionals will find themselves working against longer and longer odds to keep the machine going, and doing it surreptitiously with the hope that nobody notices.

Me, 2016-Nov-14

Only B– and C-team talent is going to work for Trump, because …

• He is an idiot, who …

• Publicly humiliates anybody more competent than himself, which is almost everybody.

On those grounds, I strongly doubt that there are “many people wanting the job” of being his Chief Economic Advisor. And anybody who does is, by definition, second-rate and unfit to hold the position.