"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."
— President Lyndon B. Johnson to Bill Moyers
Moving the Mace Missile - Photo by the author
It was early afternoon and several obviously retired, white male, uninhibited lunch patrons were slowly wandering out of the American Legion in the sleepy little Central Florida town not too far south of the Villages. Some of them paused on their way to the parking lot and watched us as we swung an old Mace tactical missile onto a flatbed trailer. The jet-propelled cruise missile, hanging high in the air in a sling from a huge crane, had stood on a crumbling brick pedestal in front of the building since 1967. It was brought up from Orlando Air Force Base when the base closed. We were all veteran missilemen who had volunteered to disassemble the missile and prepare it for the move to its new home at a military museum up in Indiana. Several of us had actually worked on the missile itself when it was part of the old missile school there.
One of the bleary eyed patrons walked over to us, He stood between us and the missile, then turned and pointed up at the missile hanging in mid-air. “Yes, sir,” he slurred. “I used to fly that thing…”
We just stared at him. He thought it was an airplane. He apparently also thought we would be impressed with his supposed military contribution to defense of the free world. We simply stood and looked at him. When not one of us responded. He turned and shuffled off, muttering under his breath.
I can think of no better description of a barfly. Today, I think he would probably be wearing a red MAGA ball cap.
Why do I associate barflies with the MAGA movement? To paraphrase Elizabeth Barret Browning, “Let me count the ways!” First, and easiest to associate, is the word “Woke.” Your knee-jerk reaction to this word is indicative of your predisposition to your environmental influences, and no single group is as contradicted in its self-righteous assertions as the barflies. I agree the word “woke” is a poorly chosen word as it is intentionally improperly conjugated, automatically making it distasteful to anyone who has an ear for proper English. “Are you ‘woke’?” is without doubt the most ingratiating question a liberal can be asked as the answer is, “No, I’m awake, not woke” but, “Yes, I’m socially aware of Racism!” But I digress. Barflies fail to grasp the problem here.
No one group, except perhaps one comprised of white, enlisted, military veterans, so severely conflicts the meaning of the American ideals of freedom and liberty with the social definition of “woke,” which is simply being aware of racial prejudice and discrimination. The phrase “woke” has been weaponized by conservatives such as the Trump organization and Project 2025 to mean “socialist.” Flag-waving, freedom-loving supporters actually denounce the very freedoms they wave the flag for and fail to see the irony or idealistic contradictions of their actions. It’s the obvious idealistic contradictions that the MAGA supporters embrace that astonishes me, none more so than the deeply ingrained hatred that contradicts the teachings of their beloved Bible. Their heads literally explode when you point out Jesus was woke. They can not handle the fact that Jesus was a liberal.
So, how do they reconcile two separate, distinctly polar opposite and opposing social ideologies within a single belief? It’s like the fellow who said he used to fly our missile. They simply think they can get away with it. They simply think you don’t know any better! They’ll try whatever they can because they know no one in today’s society will call them out on their hypocrisy. It works for Donald Trump, it should work for them as well.
It helps to mask your double-standard if you have a well-oiled, powerful machine behind you. One that has an agenda that appeals to their racist, supremacist self-interests. One that supports their upcoming eternal life in heaven, whatever their definition of that may entail, as opposed to a life of eternal damnation, which by popular opinion, can’t be good. In fact, that highly polished, two thousand year old philosophy actually has manipulated its believers and followers to perform and obey its dictates in spite of the very rules of brotherly love they preach, but do not practice.
All you have to do is spread the Gospel for everlasting life that supersedes, and quite often contradicts, the rule of law. A Christian state is their goal, not a democracy. The United States of America is a democracy where all citizens are free to be Christian, or any other religion they so choose. They are not required to even have any religion to be citizens. According to the Hartford Institute for Religion Research, there are between two hundred and three hundred different Christian religions in the United States, each with its own hierarchy and power structure. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is estimated to have a value of over 293 billion dollars, the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church is worth between 22 and 79 billion dollars, the Seventh Day Adventists are worth 16 billion dollars, and even the often mocked Church of Scientology is worth over 2 billion dollars, including the former ocean liner Freewinds, which they keep moored in Aruba.
According to the Hartford Institute, there are over 1,650 Protestant megachurches in the United States, and most are worth millions of dollars. Churches are big, big business. They are all non-taxable. There is no control over or even official, government information about their wealth.
Will there be a religious coalition to finally control the United States or will history repeat itself yet again and culminate in yet another bloody, religious war that will end in either chaos or possibly the democracy originally intended by our Constitution?
We are currently a country of laws, not religious covenants. The last Christian nation did not fare well. Some of you may remember hearing about it, it actually happened in my life time. The Christians, both Protestant and Catholic, marched over six million men, women, and children of a religion the Christians didn’t like, into gas chambers, and then incinerated their bodies in huge furnaces. They murdered innocent civilians, just because of their religion, for four years. Twelve years, actually, if you count the time before the Nazis started using the efficient gas chambers. The incinerated people were Jews. The Christians simply reconciled their perverted religious views to accommodate their financial and social desires. It took a world war to stop the perversion of a religion that acted against the rights of others human beings.
If you think the newest version of Christian Nationalism can not possibly be forced upon the citizens of the United States of America, not only are you wrong, but there is a good chance you won’t survive long enough to finally see it fall asunder as all religious empires eventually do. Unless of course, you can convince them to come have a drink, and you can tell them about what it was like flying that airplane. You know, the one that didn’t even have a cockpit.
George
