I cleaned my home office a week ago. Figured it was about time to dump files and writing samples and publications from a 40-year career in writing, editing and communications. Hey, I haven’t sought a paid gig for years now, having retired in 2016 -- and our kids and grandsons don’t need to be burdened with the task once I depart the scene.
It was a fascinating walk down memory lane -- or the lack thereof. I was stunned by the number of articles, brochures, speeches, booklets, newspaper op-eds, ghost-written magazine features and other pieces I’d evidently written for someone, sometime…but couldn’t remember answers to the basic journalistic questions about them: who, what, when, where and why. Only the how is still clear.
But there was one folded-up email that I did remember. As I read it, I was gobsmacked by its striking relevance to political debates taking place today. Change the name Dubya to Donald, and I could pretty much publish the rest as it was originally written.
I’d sent a scathingly angry response to a fundamentalist screed sent to me in 2006 by the woman who’d been my “bestie” in high school. She had moved off into the world of fundamentalist Christianity and thought it perfectly acceptable to call those of us who hadn’t followed suit “evil” and “sinful” and “un-American.”
I told her, “I detest fundamentalism of all types – Christian, Muslim, Jewish, you name it. Extremism of any type leads people who might otherwise be rational and reasonably intelligent to do or believe stupid things.”
“Like what? Like denouncing from the pulpit certain ‘other’ types of people who they consider evil or sinful, and then denying any responsibility or complicity when their followers take those beliefs to their logical extreme and torment or kill those ‘others’ in the name of ‘good’.”
“Like funding madrassas in the Muslim world and teaching impoverished young boys to hate Jews and Zionists and ‘American imperialists’ just because of who we are, telling them they’ll get 72 virgins in heaven if they die by committing jihad, and promising to pay their families if the boys-turned-young-men agree to hijack planes and fly them into buildings in the USA.”
“Like a preacher telling his flock to spread the word…that the secular government of California (and since when is a government body in America NOT supposed to be secular?!) is trying to require every teacher in the state to ‘teach kids to be gay’.”
This claim was the subject of her email to me. I asked her, “So whatever happened to all those school field trips to gay venues that your preacher said would be required? The legislation did pass, you know. But of course it had NOTHING to do with what you were told it did…did your preacher ever acknowledge his mistake and admit that his fears had been unfounded? Or did he just move on to the next scare tactic and get you all riled up about something else?”
“Like distorting American history by calling this a ‘Christian nation’ when it’s nothing of the sort. It was founded by men who were either Christians or Deists (who believe, as I do, that a higher spirit isn’t ‘out there’ somewhere watching and guiding and monitoring and looking out for us…it’s IN us…and that you don’t ‘do good’ on Earth to get to go somewhere else…you do good on Earth because it’s your OBLIGATION as a human being…which is also the basis of Judaism…”).
“This is a nation founded by people who carefully crafted a government NOT represented by or representative of any one faith. They called on God (or as the Hebrew National hot dog commercials would say, ‘a higher authority’) to guide their decisions and actions, but they DIDN’T establish a Church of America. They left England to get AWAY from its national church. We ignore that history at our national peril.”
“And finally, like telling fundamentalist Christians that it’s OK if the Earth is heating up and our government isn’t doing anything about it…it’s OK if the Mideast is exploding in one battle after another…because, after all…the End of Times is coming! HOORAY HOORAY!!! Hurry up and destroy the planet already…we’re gonna ascend into the rapture…and oh, yeah, you Jews…our ‘good friends,’ the ones we care oh so much about…you can join us too…well, 140,000 of you can anyway (hey, what if someone’s 140,001st on the list? Now that would truly suck)…IF, that is, you renounce your own faith and accept ours and IF you happen to be in Israel when it all comes to pass…then you can be lucky, too.”
Gee, thanks. With friends like that…
Today, just as I wrote in my friendship-canceling fury back in 2006, the fear thing still seems to be working. Then, fundamentalists declared that George W. Bush had been chosen by God (and, I added, the Supreme Court) to lead the nation. Today, they claim that a lying, grifting, adulterous, pussy grabbing, 91-indictments and convictions starting to occur (albeit far too slowly), Putin-loving wanna-be dictator is God’s choice for the presidency…because only Dubya could then, and only Don the Con can now, save us from evil. And the Supreme Court, once again, is trying to help.
Fundamentalists continue to rant against gay marriage. Don’t like it? Don’t marry someone of the same sex.
They continue to rail against choice and women’s bodily autonomy. Think abortion is wrong? Don’t have one.
They continue to deny science. Don’t want a vaccine? Don’t get one…but don’t expect to send your un-vaxxed kids to school with those whose parents want their kids to stay healthy.
Don’t like what’s in a book? Don’t read it, and don’t allow your kids to read it if you wish. But don’t tell others what they and their kids are allowed to read.
And don’t demand that your Christian nationalist doctrine be accepted as the law of the land and taught in public schools. There’s a place for religion: in churches and synagogues and mosques. Not in the halls of Congress. And not in the halls of our public schools.
Frighteningly, though, fundamentalists have pretty much the entire GOP – and a majority on the Supreme Court -- siding with them today.
So our battle is tougher now than it was then.
But, as worried as I am that they might successfully impose their Christian nationalist agenda on the rest of us, I take hope. Because they didn’t win back in 2006. Because we fought then, and we’re fighting now, to save our secular, multicultural, religiously diverse nation of immigrants.
We just have to win again. And again. And keep fighting and winning, for as long as it takes.
This isn’t just “their” country. It’s our country, too.