Three or four related things and thoughts from this week.
First, Nick Catoggio, on the continued lack of anything even pretending to be respect or reverence from Trump — and the continued futility in pretending that it even matters:
Law simply shouldn’t matter here. The way you deter Trump and other sociopathic politicians from treating gravesites as stage sets is by shaming them and punishing them politically for their callousness. But … how you do that when the people in the best position to inflict that punishment, right-wing voters, refuse to do so? […]
The same goes for Trump’s photo op. Who would have thought a regulation might need to be extra specific in order to stop politicians from campaigning in military graveyards? Shouldn’t shame suffice to deter them?
Trump has no shame, and Republicans have completely abdicated their civic responsibility to make him behave as if he did. In a thoroughly amoral, persuasion-proof political culture, the only solutions to moral problems are legal ones.
I think fairly often of a moment described in Frontline PBS’s 2021 interview with Frank Luntz. Seven minutes into the interview, Luntz describes a major political turning point. He refers to an interview he did with Trump in 2015, the not-as-infamous-as-it-should’ve-been one where Trump belittled John McCain’s status as a war hero. “I never liked him as much after he lost [the election] because I don’t like losers,” Trump said. “He’s not a war hero — he’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”
In the PBS interview, Luntz recalls observing the shocked look on the faces of journalists, but not on the faces of Republican voters. “Not only did those voters allow it [the belittling of McCain as a POW],” Luntz recalled, “they were nodding their heads in approval.” In the 2015 interview, you can hear Luntz asking the giggling audience, “You agree with that??” And it is this that Luntz believes to be “the single most significant moment of the [2015 presidential] campaign,” and of the shift in right-wing voting.
Something was deeply, deeply wrong.
This is the classic “Now, we’re f***ed” moment in the movie timeline. You can imagine Luntz — and, frankly, much of the yet-to-sell-their-souls Republican Party as of 2015 — saying along with Jason Statham (in British-accented unison), “All he’s gotta do is stay down”— this has to be the moment that we move past Trump. But it wasn’t. The man — and, more importantly, his voters; and, even more importantly, his just-asking-questions excusers and shruggers — didn’t stay down, won’t stay down. And we (the sane not entirely insane ones) are all left with a stupid look on our faces.
The “different kind of voter” that Luntz goes on to describe does not, I think, do justice to the actual changes — nor to the years of self-priming for those changes — that have taken place in the GOP/right wing. Nevertheless, while not everyone laughed right away, the shrugging did start and before long the momentum of bullshit excuses was well on its way.
And here we still are.
I was reading a sermon from Gilbert Meilaender the other day on the Jesus who said, ya know, love your enemies and turn the other cheek. Meilaender points out that one of the sad realities in this country is that you are not unlikely to meet an isolationist-type Christian who denounces military/government intervention in many if not all cases and who yet believes quite passionately in his right to defend himself in any and all circumstances. Yet this gets things precisely backwards, Meilaender says. We are called (commanded) to defend others and not ourselves.
Jesus does not here legislate for society. He speaks to his people, to us, and tells us not to defend ourselves, not to pour energy into making certain everyone respects our rights. Not to do this — so that the very same energy can be used to defend the rights of our neighbors.
Given Meilaender’s history, it’s fair to say that we are not talking here about the kind of consistent anti-militarism you’d find in conversation with someone like Stanley Hauerwas — a prophetic conversation which should never stop taking place.
What comes immediately to my mind is a growing group of people, one which seems not only filled with but championed by self-professed Christians (not the generic, fill-out-a-form kind that some claim are blurring the definitional lines of “evangelicals,” but the “I’m a Christ-follower” kind), who exactly five meaningful seconds ago — and of course, right on cue — started using the phrase “military industrial complex” to describe their ironically (shall I use this word for the first time ever?) “woke” new understanding of American power and exceptionalism, but whose very souls don’t seem to even blink at the anticipating and boastful thought of blowing an intruder’s head off in their living room — and likely with a gun sold to them by that very same industrial complex.
(Not all are this extreme, and most are full of shit, but this openly expressed sentiment is not, in my experience, even a little bit rare.)
I have in mind the kind of Christian who thinks the second amendment is as sacrosanct as the ten commandments and that it enshrines his right to defend himself anywhere, at any time, to any extent, and yet who also seems to think — again, suddenly — that a fraction of a percent of an exceedingly wealthy country’s GDP is too much to spare on behalf of a people who would like to defend their country, themselves and their neighbors, against a violent invasion.
It is painfully plain to say, and to feel the need to say, that none of this makes any sense. Of course, these are not new inconsistencies. Two of my longest-standing intra-faith debates are on the default, gun-loving belief in the self-evidence of violent self-defense, and, more broadly, the deeply hostile way that partisan reaction passes for, and under the guise of, principled stance. But these debates have long since stopped being cordial or meaningful, and certainly aren’t fun anymore. Most of the time, if I’m being honest, they don’t even feel intra-faith.
All of this chaos, as mentioned above, seems to take place in some persuasion-proof realm. But I can’t help wondering if — more accurately, and more tragically — it takes place in some repentance-proof realm.
It was in that same 2015 interview with Luntz that Trump first stumbled around an answer to the question, “Have you ever asked for forgiveness?” “Why do I have to repent or ask forgiveness if I don’t make mistakes?” Trump later clarified.
Jesus said that those who mourn will be comforted. “Implicit in his statement is that those who do not mourn will not be comforted,” wrote Walter Brueggemann. Numb people, he added, will never understand that “only grievers can experience their experiences and move on.” Is it any wonder that the Rupublican Party, and the church that supports it, seems stuck where it is?
Genuine prophetic criticism, Brueggemann also said, which Jesus understood and embodied, “knows that only those who mourn can be comforted, and so it first asks about how to mourn seriously and faithfully for the world passing away.”
I think this is another good way of describing the heart of my troubles: the lack of serious and faithful mourning. Trump and the GOP and the church that excuses him — all numb peas in a persuasion- and repentance-proof pod that has no desire to turn, to move on.
(Too harsh? It feels too harsh, though no less accurate for it. Harsher words have been uttered against this demographic.)
I write stuff like this down from time to time simply because I spend a decent amount of that time thinking about it and an equal amount of time being exhausted by it. (It’s the water we swim in and I don’t seem able to close my eyes and wish it away with happier blogging.) Writing it down here is a fairly benign way of sharing it while also continuing to think about it.
Catoggio’s piece above, titled “Mourning in America,” is worth reading, but not in this case for the enjoyable and honest punditry he reliably offers. It’s worth reading because it really is about a certain mourning that… I want to say isn’t taking place, but it’s one that is taking place across the country only at nowhere near the level it ought to be taking place, and certainly not in the places that it ought to be.
It made me very, very sad.
Because if you can read that piece and be reminded afresh of just how poor the character is that we’re talking about, and if you can overlook the lightyears-beyond-hypocrisy pivoting that has taken place in so many politicians and voters and friends and family members, and if you can still cast a vote for that man, or if you are still so governed by your scripted hatred of Democrats that you stutter to offer a word of condemnation against him…
Well, I guess part of the dilemma in my own conscience over the last ten years is that I’ve never quite been sure how to finish that sentence.