A month or two ago, I read a FB post from one of my friends that addressed the growing influence of neo-fascist Christian Nationalism on our politics. I commented in two words, Christian Taliban. FB’s AI immediately responded that my comment went against FB’s community standards, and that I might want to delete it before being sent to the FB cornfield (a Twilight Zone reference). I shrugged and deleted my comment. I have already spent too much time in Zuck Gulag, and that is why I started this blog a few years ago.
For the record, I am not a religious person. I do not align with any of the world’s great religions, attend their services, or indulge their rituals. For me, Christmas is about the Winter Solstice, overeating, and exchanging gifts. Easter is about chocolate confections, dyed eggs, egg hunts, and so on. I’m a dues-paying member of the ffrf, the Freedom from Religion Foundation, that advocates for maintaining the separation of church and state as it was envisioned in the establishment clause of First Amendment to the Constitution. All that said, I do my best to live a moral life in the firm belief that the only heaven or hell is right here on this Earth.
This evening, at dinner, Susan and I were listening to the Mehdi Hassan show on MSNBC. There was a short segment on House Speaker Mike Johnson’s assertion that, “The Bible comes before the Constitution.” To me, this is the very essence of the fascistic Christian Taliban.
Me: “Do you recall Conservative Christians clutching their pearls when John F. Kennedy ran for President?”
Susan: “Oh yes. My third-grade teacher told me that if Kennedy became President, we would all have to attend Catholic schools.”
Me: “I don’t recall anything like that – I guess because I was in the fifth grade. What I remember is those people asserting that Kennedy would be taking his orders from the Vatican, from the Pope in Rome, because he was a Catholic.”
Susan: “I remember that too.”
Me: “So here we are decades later, and the descendants (spiritual if not genetic) of those people are perfectly fine with making governmental decisions based on a Christian interpretation of the Bible. They’re the same people who so recently wanted to pass laws against Sharia Law (legal decisions based on an interpretation of the Quran). Today, they cry out for a Constitutional Convention so that they can rewrite the Constitution so that they can have their Christian Theocracy.”
And this is why I refer to people like Mike Johnson, MTG, and rest of the faux Christians who subscribe to fascist beliefs such as disqualifying any candidate for public office who is not one of them or at least White, Male and Protestant, as The Christian Taliban.
I am a loyal American, and I have no wish to live in a United States where such beliefs hold sway over the Constitution.