"God Will Not Be Mocked"- No, But Republicans Certainly Will Be, And Deservedly So
Arrogance, ignorance, and lack of self-awareness never go out of style
For at least two-thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols.
Aldous Huxley, Complete Essays, Vol. I: 1920-1925
You may have heard that Vivek Ramaswamy is running for President. Yeah, I don’t know who he is, either, but evidently, he thinks very highly of himself and thinks he has a shot at winning the GOP nomination.
Sure, and I’ll be crowned Miss Sweden in a couple of months; you just wait.
But, while Ramaswamy may not be the threat to The Former Guy that he thinks he is, there are a few good, God-fearin’, White Conservative Christian heterosexuals afraid of Ramaswamy for a couple of reasons:
No one with a name like that should EVER be President. The next thing you know, we’ll have a President with a name like Barack Hussein Obama. Wait…what???
Didja hear that Ramaswamy isn’t even a Christian?? Why, I bet he eats babies and drinks their blood., Ramaswamy’s non-Christian-ness is a SERIOUS problem for the White Conservative Christian heterosexual power structure.
Last month, Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy appeared on the Christian nationalist program “FlashPoint,” where he assured the audience that even though he is Hindu, he shares their “Judeo-Christian values.”
Ramaswamy’s appearance apparently did not sit well with “FlashPoint’s” audience, prompting host Gene Bailey to reassure viewers that “neither I nor anyone else on this team has or will ever embrace another religion” and “FlashPoint” panelist pastor Hank Kunneman to deliver a Sunday sermon attacking Ramaswamy’s faith and warning anyone who supports his campaign that they “will have a fight with God.”
There was a time when no one thought America could stomach a Catholic President. When push came to shove, pundits wondered, would their allegiance be to the Vatican or America? That was a concern throughout the middle of the 20th century…and then along came JFK, who showed that a Catholic President wasn’t an inherent evil. Nor was he a potential security risk.
And there’s no reason why Vivek Ramaswamy should be any different. As he said, he’s Hindu, but he share’s the “Judeo-Christian values” of Republican voters. As you can see, he can pander as well as any Christian candidate, so he’s plenty Americanized, yeah?
Not only that, he’s an American citizen…as in, I was born here, y’all.
That’s more than can be said for many of The Former Guy’s supporters, many of whom barely possess two functional brain cells to rub together and may have been born on the Planet Reebok.
“FlashPoint” continues to grapple with the fallout from Ramaswamy appearance, as far-right anti-choice activist Abby Johnson used the program Tuesday night to launch yet another attack on Ramaswamy’s faith.
“Satan is the author of confusion,” Johnson said. “Right now, the battle is coming for the presidential nomination and there is a man who is gaining traction right now as the presidential nominee and his name is Vivek Ramaswamy and he is Hindu. Those who are Hindu believe in many gods.”
“He speaks well, and he is very charismatic, and he says the right things,” she continued. “He says so many right things [that] sometimes I’m like, ‘Maybe he is the right guy.’ But he’s not, because our God will not be mocked.”
Perhaps their God won’t be mocked, but Johnson and her ilk deserve copious ridicule for their arrogance and ignorance. There are more than 3000 religions in this world, and it just so happens that THEIRS happens to be the ONE and ONLY REAL faith?
What a fantastic stroke of luck!
Their God is the ONE and ONLY real God? Isn’t it convenient that theirs is real, and the other 3000 or so are all false and fake? But how do they happen to know that their God is the ONE and ONLY true God? How did they arrive at that conclusion? How was that “truth” revealed to them?
Perhaps Ms. Johnson needs a remedial course on the separation of Church and State. I could revisit all the things that serve as precedents to support the wall separating the two that the Founding Fathers were so serious about constructing. They wanted a country where religion and government occupied their proper place but didn’t bleed one into the other.
The Founders had seen what occurred in England when Church and State became one, and they were determined to keep that from happening in their new country. And to date, their idea has held up for almost a quarter-millennium.
Even though many Republicans are very indifferent today to the separation of Church and State, they flirt with disaster when discussing inviting their God into our public schools and government.
Dismantling the wall separating Church from State would fundamentally change the nature of American governance, and not for the better. For people like Abby Johnson to presume that one must be Christian to rule wisely and adequately is a wildly misguided assumption.
Turning America into Gilead isn’t what I’d call a noble goal.
“Do not be fooled,” Johnson warned. “Do not be a victim of Satan’s confusion right now. This is an important time for us to have clarity of mind as we are going into an election cycle. So please discern. Please use discernment right now because God hates those who are willing to put up idols over him, and he will not be mocked.”
Ramaswamy and his campaign have targeted evangelical voters, as he has spoken recently at right-wing political events like the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority conference, the Moms for Liberty’s national “joyful warriors” summit, and TPUSA’s conference, where he promoted the “ten truths”—a set of short slogans meant to quickly affirm his embrace of right-wing political priorities—which begins with “God is real.”
While Ramaswamy is eager to assure right-wing Christian audiences that he shares their values, some religious-right gatekeepers are becoming alarmed by his campaign and therefore increasingly bold about reminding conservative Christian voters that he does not share their faith and therefore does not deserve their vote.
Ah, but beware…for Vivek Ramaswamy IS NOT LIKE US. He’s different. He believes differently. He has not accepted Jesus Christ as his personal savior and therefore is not worthy of the votes of good, God-fearing White Conservative Christian heterosexuals.
And Vivek Ramaswamy is certainly NOT worthy of being elected President of the United States because this is a CHRISTIAN nation.
Except that Ramaswamy is every bit as worthy as any other GOP candidate- because he’s a natural-born American citizen. And America is NOT a Christian nation; it’s a nation where more than three of four citizens self-identifies as Christian.
That’s a huge difference. Because YOUR God, Ms. Johnson, shouldn’t be OUR government.
And so here we have an example of how extremism is often it's own worse enemy. Consider the tableau; their preferred candidate, Trump, is almost certain to be occupying a prison cell by the start of the November 2024 Presidential Vote, which will all but ensure his losing the election. Not that he would win without such a outcome anyway, as evidenced by the result of the 2020 Presidential Race. In any case, the point is that given Trump's liabilities that already cost him an election even without multiple criminal indictments, you would think that these people would be loathe to a priori rejecting anyone who lacks such baggage, and so might appeal to a broader audience. Instead, they enthusiastically condemn a contender whose relative charm, personal success, and ethnicity would be a powerful rejoinder to criticism of the Republican Party being a party for white people, and if he were to emerge as the choice might give them a fighting chance to broaden their appeal. But there's zero chance of them having the pragmatism to see this, as your article has made abundantly clear. Which means essentially that they are grave diggers shoveling the holes for their own burial.