Maybe it’s because Pavlovitz lives down the road a piece. (Okay, several hours down the road. It’s a long state.) But I follow his tweets because he seems so sane in a religious culture gone mad. Maybe it’s because I recall a time when evangelicals called the shots politically down here and Blue Laws were still in effect.
Then the textile industry collapsed. And the furniture industry. Southerners scrambled to rebuild their manufacturing base and put out the red carpet for companies from north of the Mason-Dixon and from across the Atlantic and from Asia. With those companies came people who were not evangelicals (Surprise!) and who did not share the parochial world view the South sought to protect against carpetbaggers.
Unintended consequences are like Murphy. They’ll get you when you’re not looking.
Pavlovitz reposted a December “sermon” on why he’s having trouble accepting Republican friends’ beliefs these days. He used to think it was about lack of education. If they were aware of the truth, the truth would set them free, etc. But no:
It’s only very recently that I realized that they already are aware:
They know their party tried to violently overthrow the Government and overturn an election, and is still actively perpetuating the big lie.
They know they are willfully prolonging the pandemic by shunning safeguards and opposing vaccines and peddling disinformation.
They know they’re gerrymandering and suppressing votes and installing corrupt electors because they can’t win elections any other way.
They know their party is fully infected with Proud Boy, KKK white supremacist domestic terrorism.
They know it is filled with unqualified, unstable sociopaths like Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz, Madison Cawthorn, and Marjorie Taylor Greene.
They know Donald Trump is a lying, vile, incompetent, traitorous monster who hasn’t had a noble instinct in his lifetime.
They know that their party is on balance, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, anti-LGBT, anti-Semitic, and anti-women.
They know all these things.
They just don’t care.
Worse than that, they’re happy about it.
They are “winning,” in whatever way they define that, and so the intoxicating ends justifies the sickening, violent, shameful means. They no longer have a need to weigh the morality of the people they are in bed with, no longer worry about abiding the teachings of Jesus, no longer have to do the uncomfortable work of examining their own hearts.
The victory trumps decency.
Over the past five years, they have seen the absolutely unfathomable criminality of Donald Trump and the Republicans—and despite knowing the depths of their misdeeds and the human collateral damage and the economic toll and the national disfigurement—they will vote Republican again without a moment’s deliberation. I can’t get over that.
They have Jesus on their side. Of that they are sure. What if Jesus won’t have them?