The Anti-Jesus Party-- Also Anti-America Party
After the House vote on Israel aid coupled with IRS disarmament on Thursday, DOA in the Senate, it became clear that the new speaker will likely be another failed speaker. Two of of our favorite DC reporters, Jake Sherman and Andrew Desiderio noted that MAGA Mike’s “decision to couple the aid with $14 billion in cuts to the IRS robbed Israel of the money it needs in the short term. And it robbed the Louisiana Republican of the opportunity to make law early on in his speakership. Now the Senate could soon dump a bill that pairs aid to Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan on Johnson’s lap— likely with provisions addressing the U.S.-Mexico border crisis. By then, Israel will need the money urgently and Johnson will have to figure out how to muscle it— or some other bill— through his chamber. Johnson has already told Senate Republicans he won’t accept grouping aid to Israel and Ukraine.”
By the way, I just want to mention one more time that there were a dozen treacherous Democraps who were willing to vote to disarm the IRS on behalf on the billionaire class— all scumbags, not a single good one: Josh Gottheimer (NJ), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL), Jared Moskowitz (FL), Jared Golden (ME). Don Davis (NC), Lois Frankel (FL), Darren Soto (FL), Greg Landsman (OH), Angie Craig (MN), poor senile Frederica Wilson (FL), Haley Stevens (MI) and Juan Vargas (CA).
MAGA Mike says he’s OK with aid to Ukraine but only in return for Democrats to give in to ignorant and Know Nothing (xenophobic) demands of crackpots like Marjorie Traitor Greene on immigration. “The problem with this argument is that,” wrote Sherman and Desiderio, “a majority of Republicans still back Ukraine aid, too, so it’s not just Democrats asking for it.” MAGA Mike is threatening to keep a Ukrainian aid bill from being voted on where it would certainly pass, despite tantrums from the Putin wing of the House GOP.
In an interview for Punchbowl, Hakeem Jeffries told Heather Caygle and Max Cohen that he believes that “every decision that Republicans have made this Congress [has] reinforced the extremism that has taken hold of the modern-day Republican Party.” Yes… the modern-day Republican Party. There are a lot of lenses with which to view that entity but because MAGA Mike comes out of a crazy religionist background and said the only way to understand his agenda is to read the Bible, religion will be one way to figure out what that party is doing to America. So who better to turn to that John Pavlovitz, who explained MAGA Mike’s and the GOP’s Christianity-without-Christ pseudo religion yesterday.
Pavlovitz suggests that if you “pay attention the next time you see a conservative member of Congress parading their supposed faith in a press conference, stump speech, or Fox News fluff piece…you’ll notice they use words like ‘God’ throughout and they reference ‘The Bible’ a whole lot and even mention ‘faith,’ but they completely exclude the very namesake of their declared religious tradition. This isn’t an oversight, it’s a necessity. There’s a simple reason for the omission: they can’t gaslight us with the words of Jesus.” He’s talking about MAGA Mike, but not just MAGA Mike… even Satanist freaks like Marjorie Traitor Greene, child sex traffickers like Matt Gaetz and public providers of hand jobs like Lauren Boebert proclaim their religiosity in attempts to deceive simple-minded voters back in their districts.
“You see,” wrote Pavlovitz, “over the past few decades, these people have become experts at slapping a shiny veneer of religion onto the most abominable of ideas and the most sociopathic of behaviors. They know they can weaponize the rather generic idea of ‘God,’ manufacturing a deity in their own bloodthirsty, morally-inverted, predatory image: a vengeful, joyless, avatar. They can wield a few random, poorly-exegeted obscure scripture passages like a hammer in order to justify their every phobia and hangup, making frequent mention of a Bible they’ve torn a majority of the later pages from. They can brazenly conflate Christianity and America and give life to the grotesque, Frankensteined violent nationalism they daily traffic in as if it were sacred, and they will find a small army of devoted disciples willing to suspend disbelief so they can ratify their hatred.”
Republicans can use all sorts of theological gymnastics, pseudo-piety, and performative religiosity to fashion something out of God and the Bible to build a theocratic order and fool their rank-and-file. But they can’t f*ck with Jesus.
They can’t make him say what they want him to say or get him to consent to their brutal wills— so they’ve simply erased him.
The Sermon on the Mount, his central treatise, is antithetical to the Republican ethos.
They are oppositional movements: the former rooted in empathy, focused on interdependence, and compelled to invitation— the latter built on fear, strengthened in cruelty, sustained on exclusion.
Jesus’ heart for the poor cannot be twisted into the open contempt the GOP regularly shows them.
His generous feeding of the multitudes can’t justify them taking away free lunches to children.
His call to be peacemakers and caregivers doesn’t allow for their warmongering and gun-lust.
His healing of the sick and suffering can’t be manipulated into denying people basic healthcare.
His compassionate heart for the hurting and the vulnerable can’t be transformed into their unapologetic cruelty toward immigrants and foreigners.
His command to incarnate love for neighbor and stranger and enemy, doesn’t mix well with strident “Don’t Tread of Me,” America First bullying.
There is literally nothing in the totality of Jesus’ words in the New Testament that does anything but convict and condemn the Republican Party in both philosophy and in practice— and they know it.
Republicans realize that if they were to even allude to Jesus, that his life and teachings would swiftly become the loudest and most powerful public rebuke of their vile movement, that his words would come and violently flip their very tables.They would be forced to admit that not only do they no interest in the compassionate, benevolent, open-hearted life of Jesus, they actively despise it.
So the vague GOP “God and guns” platitudes will come— and Jesus will be there to tell them that those who live by the sword, die by it. They will speak about America being a Christian nation—and Jesus will be there to remind them that God so loved the world.They will be there to trot out some antiquated tough guy, alpha male religion— and Jesus will be there to say the blessed will be the mourners and the last will be first and the humble will be raised.
Republicans will talk about legislating “Biblically”— and Jesus will be there to ask them where they are feeding and healing and loving and helping and welcoming.
They will revel in violence against the different and the disregarded— and Jesus will be there to remind them that he inhabits the least of these and they treat him the way they treat them.
So, the next time you hear a conservative politician or Evangelical preacher sermonizing about the God they claim they’re listening to and speaking for and governing on behalf of— do something that will confound and infuriate and confront them:
Just bring up Jesus.
