The End is Near?

The end is near! The end is near! The Republicans are going to get out their guns and start shooting the rest of us! Oh, and the sky is falling, too.

I know what I would have said to this even a couple of days ago: Yeah, right. The Republicans talk tough, about how there should be absolutely no restrictions at all of any kind for any reason on building up huge stockpiles of any kind of weapon. (Except, oddly enough, nuclear weapons. I haven’t quite figured out why they find a nuclear weapon ban acceptable.) They say that people like the Las Vegas shooter should have been utterly free to build up his stash of weapons in his hotel room, weapons that he had altered from semi-automatic to automatic. They even say that kits that allow semi-automatic weapons to be so altered should be freely available for purchase by everyone, even people with a known history of psychiatric problems. Only after the man starts shooting should law enforcement be allowed to take any action.

But the Republicans aren’t really going to do this. They never plan to actually use all those weapons they are hoarding.

Well, that’s what I thought, until I was in Wal-Mart yesterday. The line consisted of people with huge numbers of things to purchase. The late-middle-aged woman ahead of me saw that I had only a few items, and asked me to go ahead of her. I accepted the offer, since it would help me a great deal and make no difference to her. They were, after all, still waiting for a prescription refill. I realized this was an Oklahoma redneck actually living by the Golden Rule rather than just talking about it. For about a minute, I felt good and thought maybe I have misjudged this rural Oklahoma hotbed of fundamentalist gun nuts.

Then, for no reason that I could tell, she started telling me that her husband had just purchased an AK-47 at a pawn shop for over $400, and she said that lots of people were purchasing them because they knew the price was going up, probably to $700, very soon. I wondered what had prompted her to tell me this. I looked at my T-shirt. Was it a flaming liberal T-shirt? No, it was from the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest in California. My shirt did not say, “Dump Trump, shoot me right here,” with a target painted on it. And the woman’s voice sounded utterly friendly and sincere.

I knew that here was my opportunity to learn something about the people among whom I am embedded, one of the few people in town who does not worship the NRA. I asked her why her husband purchased the AK-47. She talked about how, in her neighborhood down by the lake, there were drug deals going on all over the place. They have up No Trespassing signs but the drug dealers tear them down. I realize that an argument can be made for them to have a gun, but an AK-47? I did not ask this question, however. I just let her talk. I did not ask her in what way gun restrictions might harm them—surely, they have a good reason to get permission for a gun, to protect themselves. Surely her husband could pass a background check.

Finally, I did ask if he planned to actually shoot people with the AK-47. She said absolutely not—she is the kind of person who wouldn’t hurt an animal, much less a human. She even uses glue to repair turtle shells. She said she didn’t want to go to hell for shooting someone. She said her husband would just shoot the AK-47 into the treetops to scare criminals away.

I am assuming her husband (who was standing behind her, his mind a thousand miles away) was not crazy. But if he started shooting his AK-47, what would stop him from shooting just a little bit lower and maybe killing someone who was actually not a criminal? Can we be one hundred percent sure that her husband would never slip, for just a moment, into fury? He doesn’t have to be crazy; he just has to be imperfect, make a single mistake, which is something that all humans do—especially according to religious people like her who believe the mankind is sinful.

Unless, of course, she believes her husband is as perfect as God, which is blasphemy.

Moreover, whoever the person was whom her husband planned to shoot at, but not shoot, might be crazy, and have his own AK-47, and come after them. If I say you should have a background check before getting an AK-47, I do not mean that you are crazy, but that this should be a standard procedure to make sure that only people like you can make such an acquisition. The crazy intruder might shoot them, their children, and the grandchildren the woman was so profusely praising.

The chip reader beeped, so I removed my card and left, without drawing any conclusions from the conversation. The woman said she was stockpiling food since the Big Battle was about to begin. Strangely enough, it was all frozen food, which would decay if electricity was lost during the Big Battle. I let her continue hauling frozen dinners onto the conveyor belt.

You can see why I am now wondering if the Republicans are about ready to start shooting. Here is one couple who would not start The War themselves but who are waiting eagerly for the first sign that they believe will tell them it is time to start shooting.

This is also why I am an agnostic. In America, being a Christian means that you worship the NRA and the Republican Party, and probably Donald Trump also. In America, being a Christian has nothing whatsoever to do with Jesus. This is why I want utterly nothing to do with American Christianity. Maybe, if I move to France, I will start going to church again. In France, Jesus does not carry an AK-47 around.

A Good Friday Gospel

How did you spend your Good Friday? I spent the period between one and three pm listening to Science Friday on public radio. This show had lots of interesting things, except for one segment in which a science writer insisted that, as I interpreted it, it is impossible to say that God does not not not exist. Whatever. But even this person, who is creating something of a pro-religion stir in science communication circles, admitted that the God of western religions is mythological. He was defending Spinoza’s and Einstein’s God, a God that or who makes no difference whatsoever in the daily operation of the world or of anyone’s life.

Meanwhile, millions of Christians were reliving in their minds the story of Jesus dragging his cross through the streets of Jerusalem and then being crucified. This is supposed to be what the gospel is about: a man who was supposed to be the son of God getting killed so that all the sin in the world is potentially atoned for. I say potentially, because these Christians insist that a person must assent to a detailed list of beliefs before the Christians will permit the blood of Christ to actually do any atoning. But if you leave out the part about human Christians anointing themselves as the filter to decide whom God can or cannot save, the story itself is quite beautiful, a story of fallen creatures being redeemed into goodness. Who would not want to believe this?

Jesus was also an articulator of one of the most advanced visions of altruism (which is a recurring them on this evolution blog) in the ancient world.

But actually, to thousands of fundamentalist Christians, the supposed gospel of redemption from sin is quite secondary in importance. So is Jesus’ message of altruism. To the fundamentalists, the most important things to believe are: first, that the United States is God’s Chosen and Holy Nation on the face of the Earth; and second, the most important thing in life is that Jesus wants them to do is to collect assault weapons. If you are a liberal or a Muslim, they do not believe that Jesus wants you to collect assault weapons, however. And certainly, if you are a foreigner, your nation is not God’s Chosen Nation.

You may rightly wonder if I am making this up. But a gripey-looking old man left a flyer on my screen door handle a few days ago announcing an upcoming conference at a Baptist church in Durant, Oklahoma. (I hesitate to name names, but I am getting this information from the flyer.) It is called the Patriots Conference. Its avowed purpose is to reclaim America’s Christian heritage (the beliefs of deists such as Thomas Jefferson and John Adams apparently do not count, and the religious neutrality of the constitution must be ignored). One of the speakers is apparently going to talk about how accumulating assault weapons helps to prevent “the threat of tyranny.” There is something called the “Black Robe Regiment” about which nothing is said and apparently all the fundamentalists around here already know about. Their declaration of values includes the “use [of] firearms as central to the preservation of peace and liberty” (emphasis mine). And to make the emphasis on assault weapons absolutely clear, the conference organizers are going to give away a DPMS Panther Oracle ATACS .223 16” BBL. 6-Position Stock to one lucky attendee.

Now, if a Muslim group held such a conference, you can be damned sure that there would be an armed uprising in rural Oklahoma. It would widely be considered an open call for terrorism.

Visibly missing from their declaration of values is any mention of peace, either international or domestic. The death and resurrection of the Prince of Peace, and the reconciliation among people of the world that this supposedly made possible, is simply not mentioned. It appears to me that the main work that Christians believe Jesus did on the cross has no effect whatsoever on this conference or the list of values associated with it. To judge from this conference, Jesus came to Earth so that we could all have assault weapons. That is the rural Oklahoma version of the Easter story. (But their list of values does include a rejection of progressive taxation. What this means is that poor people and the Koch Brothers should pay the same amount of tax.)

I actually wish that I could attend this conference as a sort of sociobiological observer. But I will be out of town at an artistic celebration of blood, violence, murder, and passion. I refer, of course, to the Tulsa Opera production of Carmen.