Hicks Fer Jesus

by digby

I just watched “Red State” yesterday. It’s very well done. The narrative seems slow moving and kind of meandering at first and then everything just sneaks up on you until by the end you are truly creeped out.

At first I thought it was a slightly unfair portrayal because he was only showing a very particular kind of red state person. By the end I knew why — he had a point to make and it’s scary as hell. He let these people make it for him. There are way too many Americans who truly believe that the government of the United States should be a theocracy. And throughout this film you see how that idea has so permeated a certain constituency that there’s almost no way to get through to them. (The film works well as a companion to Kevin Phillips’ “American Theocracy” and Michelle Goldberg’s “Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism.”)

There is one character in the film — a youngish car dealer in Mississippi — who represents an interesting contrast. He votes GOP because he perceives that they are looking out for his business interests but he doesn’t buy the social conservatism — although it was obviously politically incorrect in his social melieu to come right out and say it. He struggled mightily to make his point without insulting his tribe. (It reminded me a bit of certain hippies I knew back in the day who couldn’t quite come out and say they didn’t want to live in a commune because they thought they’d offend their friends.)

My favorite moment was when Mrs Gill, the Mississippi director of Concerend Women For America, gets upset that she’s been “worked over” by this interviewer who had just asked her what she believed in. It’s clear that when the totality of Mrs Gill’s racism and intolerance became manifest in the few minutes that she spoke, she suddenly realized that she had given herself away as a white supremecist and Christian nationalist. Naturally she claimed victimhood and ended the interview.

One of the things that’s obvious in this film is that these people are practiced phonies too. They say things like “we took us a trip to California and couldn’t believe what we saw out there!” like it’s 1952 and they’re Andy and Barney. You can’t tell me these people don’t watch TV. There’s a good part of their schtick that’s pure poseur — the “heartland hick fer Jesus” is very often a thoroughly modern American who’s playing just as many games as anybody else. Taking their “moral concerns” at face value and thinking they can be persuaded by tweaking issues and changing rhetoric is to be a chump. This is a tribal game.

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