Two recent events of note: first, conspiracy theorist and Muslim-hater Laura Loomer convinced The Felon to fire members of the NSA for being insufficiently loyal or having the wrong politics. Second, Christian supremacist Joel Webbon and his podcast co-hosts anticipated the government shutting down Christian churches for doing things like marrying gays or allowing women to preach (Webbon is a complete misogynist).
For all their whining and lying about cancel culture (more here) and political correctness, the right-wing are enthusiastic practitioners. As Vaclav Havel said 50 years ago, when a government claims its entitled to rule because its ideas are true, dissent is seen as a threat. Governments that say they represent the will of God have never tolerated people saying “Well I think God prefers X.” Even if they have no power, aren’t resisting the government, just want to do their own thing, proposing an alternative vision of truth is seen as a threat. Webbon despises independent women and gays so he’s convinced himself they need subjugation (as I’ve said before, religious conservatives misogyny is a poisonous tree).
It’s no surprise that so many organizations are capitulating to the Felon of the United States (here’s a recent example) but it’s a foolish gambit. People who kow-tow to tyranny hope that their expression of loyalty, their cooperation with specific demands or stances, will save their butts. In reality, it’s never enough because the restrictions inevitably grow more restrictive with time.
As Fred Clark at Slacktivist puts it, it’s a game of musical chairs because the standards are constantly shifting and the range of acceptable beliefs keeps tightening. In the first round of Webbon’s fantasy theocracy, anyone who’s too pro-women or pro-gay loses their chair. In the next round, it’ll be women who make rape accusations (if there’s no conviction, Webbon wants them put to death) or black people who advocate for equality. Eager as they are for federal support for their own church projects, the right wing has little interest in religious organizations that support refugees or protecting their rights.
After that, who knows? People who think infant baptism rather than adult baptism is the way to go? Young Earth creationists vs. Old Earth creationists? Plus dissent from the Felon’s whims will always be grounds for taking a chair. Court prophet Kenneth Copeland claims if you don’t vote Republican, Jesus will punish you. How long before that becomes a measure of whether you’re a real Christian entitled to real religious freedom?
Part of that narrowing passage is because power corrupts: I’m sure plenty of megachurch pastors advocating for a Christian state imagine themselves as the new American pope (though a protestant one). Even those who don’t lust for power are bound to realize that if the government decides who’s Christian, they’re safer running the government than facing a tribunal run by other churches.
Another factor is that, as I said, the rules keep changing. Anti-vaxxers existed fifteen years ago but nobody would have held up anti-vax views as a litmus test. Now we have a raging anti-vax nutjob purging the government of anyone whose activities contradict his idiocy. Being POC or a woman and getting respect for military service now gets you shat upon. We’ve gone from the Felon promising an economic boom to a new right-wing orthodoxy that collapsing the economy is good. By this time next year, not believing in the sinister weather-control conspiracy may be a heresy. So may thinking the Felon is not the divinely ordained king of Canada. Amy Coney Barrett’s a Christian conservative but voting against the executive branch in a recent court case makes her “so ungrateful, so disgraceful, spitting in the face of the Constitution” according to Putin sock puppet Benny Johnson.
If they can come for trans people today, tomorrow it’ll be people who don’t want death for trans people. Or people who’s haircuts are too androgynous for the Commissar of Gender Conformity. We can’t be sure what the new rules will be but there will be new rules.
As JFK once said, our religious freedom is safest “where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.” The same is true of all our liberties. The people who’d cheer on Webbon’s ban on churches that are too pro-gay or pro-women may turn around tomorrow and discover their own faith is now heretical.
Even if they don’t, taking away someone’s chair — whether the chair is the right to speak, the right to vote, the right to run a business without paying kickbacks to the Felon — is always wrong. Even if it only affects one small group and nobody else. “They came for the Jews and I did not speak up because I was not a Jew. And then they didn’t come for anyone else.” is not how things work out, ever. Even if they did stop, decent human beings need to speak up for the Jews. Or the Muslims. Or whoever the target is.
Unfortunately too many people don’t want to stop the game of musical chairs. It’s so much fun seeing Jews/sexually active women/blacks/trans kids lose their chairs, and who knows? Maybe you’ll be the last one with a chair! Give it a chance! Sure, everyone else in the game thinks the same thing, and most of them will end up losing but why change the rules when you might get the winner’s chair?
Pushing back against “musical chairs is good!” is part of the fight ahead. Hence this post.
Excellent essay! These are increasingly scary times, but I know millions of other people in many other nations throughout history have endured far worse. Alas, the Felon, Webbon and others of their ilk seemed determined to drag us down into another hell hole in their attempt to impose their version of paradise on the USA and eradicating anyone who doesn’t fit their model of a “good citizen”.
Sadly, yes.