“We” are losing the country to “them.”
Very recent comments by now-Speaker Mike Johnson brought to mind Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s “God damn America” sermon for the Bulwark’s Tim Miller. Asked if America faces a time of judgment, Johnson replied:
You all know the terrible state that we’re in. . . . The faith in our institutions is the lowest it’s ever been in the history of our nation. The culture is so dark and depraved that it almost seems irredeemable at this point. The church attendance in America dropped below 50 percent for the first time in our history since they began to measure the data sixty years ago. And the number of people who do not believe in absolute truth is now above the majority for the first time. One in three teen girls contemplated suicide last year. One in four high school students identify as something other than straight. We’re losing the country.
The divergent right-wing outrage over Wright’s sermon and non-response to Johnson’s criticism of America reflects more than a double standard for black preachers and white politicians, Miller finds. Even though in a sense their critiques of America’s failings contain similarities. The differences are more significant.
Johnson is saying that the American people are sick, present tense. That our culture is dark and irredeemable. That non-binary youth and people not attending church are causing us to fall from grace.
Wright argued that our government is sick. That those in power have marginalized certain groups and failed them.
Johnson is damning the American people, while Wright is damning the American government. So if you were inclined to be offended by one of these statements on behalf of our nation’s honor and dignity, on its face it seems Johnson’s critique was more sweeping and censorious.
Johnson wouldn’t be a white Christian nationalist if his comments weren’t steeped in othering, Miller notes:
In the dominant American culture, black men aren’t given the same leeway to criticize America that whites are. A white Christian patriot can talk about how things in America have gone to shit because of our sinfulness and his fellow white Christian patriots understand that they are not the ones being criticized. The connotation in his remarks does not point the finger at themselves or at the foundational core of the nation. Johnson is saying that Those People Over There Are Taking America Away From God. “We” are losing the country to “them.”
The “them” might be gays or critical race theorists or people with nose rings or liberals or Jews or Bud Light PR reps or woke teachers or atheists or someone else entirely depending on the day. But the not-quite-explicitly-spoken-but-completely-understood argument is: They are bad. We have done nothing. We are being punished for their sins.
So for Johnson’s allies there is nothing to be upset about in this condemnation of America, obviously. And Johnson’s foes don’t really care much about the moral judgment of someone they find morally repulsive.
But when a black pastor damns America that’s a different ball of wax.
The difference is over whose ox is being gored. (Does anyone use that anymore?) Miller observes, “For Wright to say that these actions of the American government are fundamentally sinful hits at the heart of the national story, ego, and identity.” Guess whose?
“Wright was not merely saying that America did bad things via its government but that we ourselves in some sense are bad.”
THAT, suh, is an insult to mah honor.
Ask a white person to feel shame over America’s past? Why … why … that’s almost worse than a Black man looking sideways at the flower of Southern womanhood. Which is why over a decade later Republicans assuage their hurt egos by dragging out the Wright sermon to drag black politicians. Johnson’s remarks barely raised a ripple.