“God and guns,” the bread-and-butter issues that have dominated conservative politics since presidential candidate George W. Bush burnished his evangelical bona fides by citing Jesus as his favorite philosopher; and since Barack Obama was elected president in 2008 (frightening the Jesus out of gun nuts across the country who projected an Orwellian-sized firearms confiscator image onto him).
“What ‘gatt’ would Jesus pack?” exerts blood-chilling relevance to all the God-loving, rosy-cheeked families of elected officials across the country whose holiday cards feature mom, dad and kids tooled up to kingdom come in front of the Yule tree.
Their understanding of the Beatitudes risks such readings like, “Blessed are the piece makers, for they shall enjoy a profitable bottom line.” “Blessed are they who persecute for electoral advantage…” “Blessed are the poor since they get what’s coming to them.”
“What ‘gatt’ would Jesus pack?” is a moderately proposed question, aimed at awakening the faithful’s consciousness about their political values running askew of supposed biblical values. What is there not to grasp about the clash of the open carry lifestyle against benedictions for the powerless and humble? What kind of numb consciousness is required of one who claims to be a ‘believer’ while clutching an AR-15 rifle? (The gnat some evangelicals choke on is if you say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”.)
The cleft between American conservatism and the Gospel ethics is so obvious and so very damning, who could account for why the American evangelical community hasn’t suffered social collapse? What keeps the morally dilapidated monolith standing?
Any answer to such questions, at this point, is unfathomable except as a means of waving the white flag of surrender on behalf of reason and logic.
In another essay, I have attempted to explore the moral dimension of hypocrisy among conservative Republicans–how its practitioners, like the shameless Sen. Mitch McConnell, throttle pedestrian moral conventions restrained by hypocrisy. McConnell’s navigation of the Supreme Court justice nomination process during the last year of Barack Obama’s presidency comes readily to mind.
McConnell and his ilk batter hypocrisy’s form so severely that renders it beyond recognition. They have tamed hypocrisy’s once-moral claim to the extent it now doubles as the ethical framework keeping the evangelical dominion from collapse.
Since “Dubya” ‘s Sunday School answer to the philosopher question, America has devolved into a wasteland where Bible-quoting gun slingers and pious ammosexuals run free while innocent civilians perish in a hail of gunfire.
Granted, few are the imaginations who could have foretold this shameful, regrettable predicament we’ve arrived at.
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Previously Published on Medium
Staffan Vilcans on Flickr Under CC License
(cropped)
