Civil Commotion

OK, for starters, a factoid you can (but probably shouldn’t) dredge-up at the next family gathering: It was the great, one-of-a-kind H.L. Mencken who coined the expression ‘Bible Belt.’ His first attempt at disparaging the south was ‘hookworm belt,’ but it didn’t stick. You will understand what made me think of that in just a moment.

I give you, courtesy of Mother Jones, a state-by-state breakdown of the things for which your fellow citizens will be giving thanks next Thursday:

In my home state of Michigan, people are grateful to have … electricity. If that seems a bit prosaic, a bit 3rd-worldish, well … Detroit. I guess we just have to hope the power stays on till the turkey is done.

And here across the Bible Belt? Salvation. God’s Word. God’s Forgiveness. Mercy. The Faith. That’s no surprise, really; these folk take seriously the Holy Men’s howls and bellows that they are no damn good, and they have all the character and social problems that go with it.

Honestly, the one that got my attention, the one that really lifted my eyebrows, is Virginia. Up in the Olde Dominion, the Mother of Presidents is thankful — get ready — for YouTube.

It may be time to pull the trigger and tell Dawn we’re going to the U.P.

Seriously: You couldn’t make this up. Less than 2-weeks after the election of Donald Trump, Republicans are demanding that they not be identified with the racism, xenophobia, misogyny, corruption and nepotism of their candidate.

THERE is a group of 10 friends in Charlotte, N.C., all women, all in their 50s, all white. They’re college educated with successful careers, and they have a message for The New York Times: Come visit us.

They voted for Donald Trump and don’t consider themselves homophobic, racist or anti-Muslim. But now, they say, thanks to The Times and its fixation on Trump’s most extreme supporters, most people think they are.

Right. They just prefer a candidate who happens to be all of those things to a candidate who is none of those things.

Pardon me if I’m detecting some eau de 60’s here, as in “We love our darkies!”

Sorry, ladies, but, bless your hearts, you knew exactly what you were voting for. Trump’s racist and ethnic hostilities, his lies, his shabby business conduct, his ignorance, his bullying, his degrading treatment of women, his overt hostility to America’s foundational ideals … those were front and center for 18-months. You can’t plead ignorance. Nor, after 7 separate Congressional investigations found no evidence of wrongdoing, can you plead Benghazi. And with Trump holding telephone conference with world leaders on an unsecured phone line, you’re going to look foolish if you plead e-mail.

Why do y’all think there has been such a terrible eruption of overtly racist bullying in schools? Because in spite of polite instruction to the contrary, you sat at the family dinner table and announced and defended your support for a man who does exactly what you tell your children not to do.

So your children, reasonably enough, concluded that your instruction about that crass and shameful behavior comes with distinctions, that it’s impermissible among people like us, but fine when directed against those others.

Wink-Wink.

Y’all aren’t kidding anybody but yourselves. You own it.

… clickbait-y on y’all, but I can’t think of a good way to introduce Bruce Gerencser’s latest installment of Christians Say the Darndest Things without wrecking it. But do go take a look.

Oh — and be afraid. Very afraid.

A piece in the Washington Post affirms what I’ve been saying all week: It was evangelical voters who made Trump the Republican nominee, and delivered him to the front door of the White House.

White evangelicals were so key for Trump that, had no white evangelicals voted, Clinton would have won in a landslide, 59 percent to 35 percent.

And consider these remarks by a Virginia schoolteacher:

The morning after the election, Aller said, a black second-grader came into her school and declared, “Trump was elected, so we’re moving.”

Aller said she responded, “We’re going to miss you. Let me know when your last day is. We’ll throw you a goodbye party.”

She says she’s sure the boy knew she was joking.

Huh? This nitwit unembarrassedly told a reporter that she told a second grader she was glad to be rid of him? Let’s all hope that a nuance got lost in the telling.

But let’s all be clearheaded, too: Evangelicals — you know, the Values Voters — own the eruptions of malice that have swept the country over the past week. Let there be no confusion about this, either: For every one of the hundreds of stories we’re seen on the Web or in the local newspaper, there are another dozen instances whose victim quietly went home enraged and weeping.

As I said last week, the protestors ought to be assembling in front of churches: That is where the sickness was and continues to be nourished.

One more thing: Trump has explicitly promised to implement a religious test as a condition of admittance to this country — and that, all on its own, should have been a deal breaker for people who can’t stop mewling about ‘religious liberty.’ Could we please be done with pretending these characters are anything but childish, self-absorbed hypocrites?

There is not a single Holy Man in all of Christendom who will deny that statement. We have all heard it tens of dozens of times — offhandedly, casually, as though it is something that everybody knows.

I don’t know it, and it raises a fair question I think of the moral fitness of clergy to even conduct weddings.

Consider that teaching’s implications for marriage and parenting. Somebody who doesn’t put Our Invisible Friend ahead of his or her spouse and children loves inadequately and can’t be a good wife or husband? Really? How very odd, then, that evangelicals have the highest divorce rate in the country.

Remember this, too: The local expert on the wishes of the Invisible Wizard is … the Holy Man. Practically, this teaching aims to reduce marriage to animal husbandry and put the clergy in the position of superintending everybody’s family life. No sane, self-respecting adult is going to submit to something so degrading, and it tells you quite a bit about who is sitting in church.