Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke the famous words of my title during his 1933 inaugural address, as he began the first of his presidential terms. He stepped into the presidency at the height–or depth–of the Great Depression, when over thirteen million Americans were out of work and banks were closing. Roosevelt’s moment was not altogether different from the one in which we’re living, but his administration confronted it with a strength of conviction and daring that our current administration sadly lacks. We’re still awaiting the same level of resolve and creativity that slowly but surely lifted the United States of America out if its Great Depression.
Instead of policy to create strength and action in the face of the monstrous anxieties confronting us, too many of our leaders and would-be leaders are pushers of the fears that keep us awake at night and sitting up on the edge of our beds. Some of these fears are real, but many are only strategized and deployed for political gain of the scaremongers.
Yesterday (8/6/2020), Tennessee held its primary for federal and state elections to determine who will be on the ballot for Republicans and Democrats come Election Day in November. I don’t watch much live television, but in the little bit I watched during the run-up to this primary, I noticed that the nastiest political ads were largely among the supposedly Republican candidates for Phil Roe’s Tennessee District 1 seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Aside: I actually don’t like to use either Republican or Conservative for the politicians and politics doing business under these names. I have nothing against being truly conservative as long as it is forward-looking and not backward-looking, as long as it is compassionate in its thinking and policies and not meanly exclusionary and stingy to all but the wealthiest among us. My father and mother identified as Republican, as did I growing up. If I remember rightly, Dad even held on to being a Republican when changing to a Democrat in the Madison County of the 1960s and ’70s might have helped him get a local job; thus, he ended up commuting a good distance in order to find the work he wanted. But the party passing as Republican these days has absolutely no resemblance to that of my parents and their values.
The attack ads between the large number of candidates in what I’ll call the Trump Party, given that they all claimed him as their leader, were brutal. I was both surprised and not surprised that the only one actually labeled as dishonest and bent–Diane Harshbarger–won the primary. And it wasn’t a resounding victory, as she won with only 19% of the vote.
As expected, Harshbarger’s TV ads tend toward “fear-mongering,” racism, and the manipulation of these and so-called Christian principles. In another blog I ran across this description of a campaign video that she and her people titled “Salvation”:
Diana Harshbarger has a recent commercial that begins in black and white and . . . shows black people masked and committing violence. Then everything goes to color and a pretty little white family (daddy, mommy, and two kids) go skipping down a country lane. Racist? Yes. Christ-like? No. And yet as images of crosses and churches alternate in the visual, Harshbarger’s voiceover says, “Jesus is Lord, and his light fills our lives, even through the chaos, even as we’re attacked by our neighbor. His hand and our faith will guide us to salvation.” While she approves this message, I’m thinking that Jesus would not. This level of manipulation and drive to divide rather than unite leads me to hope that she suffers a resounding primary defeat.
from “Fear & Fear-Mongering” at River Jabbok Falls
I’m sure the blogger is disappointed with Harshbarger’s primary win, as am I. The “dose” of Tennessee fear and culture-war manipulation she’ll push over the airwaves and into the November election is to be dreaded. Dreaded, I say.
Sadly i didnt vote this year. I wouldnt even know who to vote for in Tennessee. I am so overwhelmed with trying to stay alive that local politics doesn’t even register. The process of voting has come down to democrates or republicans. Sad. They both represent nothing due to the lies the individuals tell to gain support. As you know, i lean to the republican lies due to the idea of abortion and economics. We need to work for what we want…global unity will never exist if man is involved. Another sad state of affairs. Come Quicky Lord.
Well, I’m concerned about at least a couple of things here: 1) you saying, “I am so overwhelmed with trying to stay alive,” and 2) your Facebook call for gun-purchase recommendations. (I also have a third concern, which is the number of enthusiastic recommendations you received.) What’s going on?
As for the rest of your comment, I’m with you on the lies of politics and human involvement in the world. While I can’t identify with either of our two parties, I read so-called conservative concerns to be more concerned about business and the economics of greed and less so about people and humanity. Those actions and principles that tend more to the “all” in “all . . . are created equal” and more to tending the needs of “the least of these” speak more to me, and I believe I find these more on the liberal side of things. Again, I’m with you on the probable impossibility of “global unity,” but I can’t give up on it. I don’t think giving up on it is in agreement with or implied in Matthew 12: 30-31. If the drive for global unity fails, then Christianity fails its Great Commission — it was probably always gonna fail, but it shouldn’t be a failure for lack of trying. Unfortunately, I think the failure is due to Christians who want to be the voice-in-the-bullhorn of Christianity rather than the hands and feet of Jesus.
As for abortion, I’m against it on moral grounds, but I’m also against making it a political issue. As a political issue it is nothing but a proverbial rabbit hole. This has proven to be the case time and time again over the past X number of years. It’s a moral issue, and if we’ve should have learned one thing about humans by now is that we can’t legislate morality. We’ve had endless political argument about an event–a personal decision–that is too far above our individual or collective-body-politic pay grades. If we recognize it as a moral issue, then we have to recognize all the unsanctioned fucking that leads to situations in abortion becomes an issue. That is, it’s not as if abortion is an amoral issue that jumps fully formed into our world; it is rather the end result of a whole series of moral choices and issues that lead to the for-whatever-reason unwanted pregnancy. We can no more legislate the morality of affairs and hookups of all kinds–not that these are the only actions that lead to aborting a pregnancy–than we can legislate abortion.