When I hear talk of “taking our country back” I rarely hear the voice of heroes come to save the Rebel Alliance, with Ben Kenobi as “our only hope.” I hear bigotry and division and might. I hear the faint call of the Empire coming to overtake the Republic.
I have no memory of my life in which I didn’t love Star Wars. I have vivid memories of seeing Return of the Jedi in the theater, watching scenes with the speeder bikes between my fingers and the ewoks fighting alongside the Rebels on Endor. I look at my sweet children and think about when I’ll share that same wonder with them.
Some of the memories really stick out. Like the scene in which we see an ewok look for the companion who was next to him, knowing that he must have died. I’m pretty sure I cried. They were so cute, so sweet. [This is something How I Met Your Mother got totally right, by the way.]
I’ve always been a sucker for rebellion. I really do hear the cry of the anarchist and the punk and want to stand up in solidarity. The appeal of Star Wars and The Hunger Games and Braveheart is this profound need for freedom, this overwhelming revulsion to tyranny, and deep suspicion of the powerful. When I see my own government, I see it always through the twin lenses of trust and distrust.
Considering how prevalent these themes are in our society, so cherished really, it is strange we struggle so with the paradox of trusting and distrusting the government. We tar and feather a person for not being patriotic enough and then condemn others for not being rebellious enough. Or perhaps we condemn them for being too patriotic and then condemn others for being too rebellious.
Somehow, we let people get away with saying that if we don’t support torture, then the terrorists “win”. And at the same time, if we don’t let some white men stockpile guns and munitions and push the “feds” off their land (because who wants another Waco or Ruby Ridge?), then we support the fascists and the U.S. is under a dictatorship. What frightens me is that these arguments often come from the same “side” and even from the same individuals.
We could certainly create a similar paradox for liberals, but none would be so current; none would include weapons and standoffs in the 21st Century. None would have direct threats involving the murder of government agents. Not now, currently. Not in this culture. And not with such frequency as the threat from the Right-Wing.
There is something about the storyline of rebellion that is addictive. We make the rebel the virtuous hero and the government into a villain. But in none of these is the government evil for simply being the government. In none of these is the government the eternal enemy for passing legislation it doesn’t like or due to fear that they have to give up a troubling way of life.
In each great story of rebellion, the villain isn’t a government, it is an empire. It isn’t a president getting his way by congressional authority, but true military dictatorship. These stories are about the rebellion that allows lives to flourish and people to live without fear. These stories are about attaining, not only autonomy, but vindication and hope. They are stories about acting, not only through rebellion, but for liberation. From actual slavery and oppression.
These stories resonate for me with the Southern experience. But not the white, “property-owning” men of the South. But the black men and women of the south. The ones without access to liberty and freedom and hope and joy. The ones who, after tasting freedom, were still subjected to Jim Crow; who were subjected to terrorism in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries in the form bombings, cross-burnings, and lynchings; who are subjected to the New Jim Crow. Wounds that are far fresher, and much more personal.
This is the curse of our war. A curse so unspeakable to some, that it gets euphemistic reference: that late unpleasantness. Or perhaps we’ll ditch the civility and blame the north and call them aggressors. But not us, the United States. Them. Other. No longer a we, but us and you. And, by the way, screw you.
When I hear talk of “taking our country back” I rarely hear the voice of heroes come to save the Rebel Alliance, with Ben Kenobi as “our only hope.” I hear bigotry and division and might. I hear the faint call of the Empire coming to overtake the Republic. I don’t hear freedom from tyranny, I hear a call to displace one kind of tyranny for another. When I see a rebel flag, I see a call to start a war of southern aggression.
When the governor of the great state of South Carolina says that “[Roof–the murderer] has a sick and twisted view of the flag.” I say “how can he not?” For isn’t that what this siren call of heritage is? To rebel against the United States, to call its laws counterfeit and determine for himself how things ought to be? Is he not heeding the call to take his country back by inciting a war? A war that began in South Carolina, no less?
We pretend that these words aren’t dangerous, that this is some isolated misunderstanding. These are sick people. But these people hear these words, which are intended to directly provoke people to act against…what exactly? That big, bad government. The one trying to steal their __slaves__. It’s time to protect freedom they say.
The bookshelf of Jim Adkisson, another church shooter, contained books which appeal to the total defeat and annihilation of liberals and liberalism. This is an appeal to the same narrative. Using this language of not only rebellion, but revolution.
It’s free speech! we say. Of course it is. But it is also hateful and dangerous speech, too. Speech that doesn’t need such a broad audience, nationwide access, and million dollar book deals. Speech that is pornographic in the truest sense and fragmenting our culture with its rage.
This is the kind of speech that, when taken literally, leads to violence.
Targets on the heads of politicians – from other politicians. The tinfoil hat theories of the feds invading Texas. This is the same kind of thinking that incited standoffs and terrorism throughout the country, with the most frightening being the Oklahoma City bombing twenty years ago.
And when these events happen, we wonder how could this happen? and we bemoan the emotional state of the perpetrator and we pray for the victims and then we go back to business as usual. But we never take into account the fact that these people are doing what they’ve been told to do. They’re trying to take their country back.
You don’t get to say “Obama is literally coming for your guns” and then say “I don’t know why he thought I meant literally!”
You also don’t get to say millions of Christians don’t believe the Bible because we speak of metaphor and myth rather than literal truth, and then brush off the literal interpretation of hate speech.
We live in a culture that has taken great pains to beat the metaphorical out of us. We speak in literal truths. We read only history and teach only STEM. We read our Constitution like we read our Bible: literally [except the 2nd Amendment and the Great Commandment – that junk needs interpretation]. We cut out art, music, literature, philosophy and we speak unendingly about productivity, efficiency, and fitting into the new economy.
We’ve pushed agendas to redefine life, creation, marriage, corporate personhood because we don’t like what science has revealed about our lives and creation and what society has come to believe about marriage and corporations. Gotta change those rules to protect the rules from the people who want to change the rules.
We cast the 20th Century in the form of war, from The Great War to the Second World War to the War on Poverty, then the War on Drugs, and then the War on Terrorism. It is no wonder that we keep talking about wars: from the War on Christmas to the War on… are we going to say it out loud? Admit that what so many want to call it, a War on White America and claim that it’s the same thing? Metaphorical fighting over white supremacy, using the language of violence, replete with the repeated urgings to “do something” and calls to action to take our country back. Who in their right mind would think a person isn’t going to take that literally? Who in their right mind wouldn’t feel responsible when someone does?
Of course we immunize ourselves from that sense of responsibility. We make ourselves the real victims. The defenses given for aggression always contain in them a justification of defensiveness. Acts of violence are always argued to be justified for their aggression because the other always acted first; they are always responding to an assault on them: they elected the wrong president or they were wearing the wrong clothing, so they had it coming. In the church, we’ve seen the same thing occur when we ordain women or LGBTQ persons or otherwise expand the gospel.
These literalists and killers aren’t our heroes. And we need to be able to say that their actions are not heroic in the least. Shooting doctors at abortion clinics doesn’t promote a culture of life anymore than killing blacks in a church promotes our heritage. Condemning these actions, not only for the literal killing, but also the true division they create between us.
These are not isolated incidents at all. They are products of this culture, following the plain meaning of the text, hearing that call to action literally. They are trying to take their country back from the secret Muslim terrorist.
And yet, these are our people. We cannot abandon them or ignore their pain and suffering. We cannot succumb to the ideology of hate and misogyny that drives intelligent people to pollute their culture and kill their neighbors. We cannot allow ourselves to condemn a sick and twisted individual who acted on the sick and twisted rhetoric of a sick and twisted culture.
He took the texts literally. Why do we expect him to do any different? We tell each other to do exactly that.
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