RURAL ROUTES/Margot Ford McMillen

What Is Wrong With That Man?

Piling atrocity on atrocity, like a game we played as kids, stacking sticks or blocks or building a house of cards, POTUS can’t last long. It’s all going to tumble down, or the entire staff will quit, or Congress will find its chutzpah and revolt or Korea will send its missiles. In one way or another, it can’t last. At least, that’s what we say to each other when we meet at the Quik Shop.

Then, going home to watch the news, we see POTUS pumping up a crowd and all of them grinning. “Good Lord,” my husband says to me, “He’s going to be President for life. Those people love him.”

And there they are, lined up on risers behind him, grinning to beat the band. So happy to be near so much power. Grinning like someone we’ve seen before. Oh yeah, Mike Pence.

Do we really want that guy, with that Mona Lisa smile, in charge?

Not all evangelicals go through life looking beatific. Some are downright snarly and scary, but Pence has that corners-up expression glued on and looks almost as if he’s witnessing the second coming already, dreaming about those golden slippers and those wings he’s gonna wear all over God’s heaven.

Maybe he’s just enjoying the power … but he may be one of the evangelicals that want to hustle in the last days. They see Trump, who moved the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, which they count as reclaiming the Holy City from the unholy infidels, as an active servant of a destiny controlled by God and written in the Bible. In a 2002 interview, Pence told Congressional Quarterly, “My support for Israel stems largely from my personal faith. In the Bible, God promises Abraham, father of the Jewish faith, ‘Those who bless you I will bless, and those who curse you I will curse.’ ”

The story of the Apocalypse, a.k.a. Last Days or End Times, as it has been interpreted by imaginative far-right authors and filmmakers, features an anti-Christ that might be like the UN or NATO. Defeated by an unlikely hero, destruction of the anti-Christ clears the way for the second coming of the real Christ. Trump again, vanquishing the unholy alliances.

Pence has a front-row seat for the Apocalypse and he’s happy to tell other evangelicals what it feels like. Much like Billy Graham or George Whitefield, preachers with their own infrastructure of advance men, publicity, and money-making books and speaking engagements, Pence can draw a crowd and reassure them that their leader is on-board with them. In all their battles for family values, right-to-life, and saving Christmas from the pagans, and same-sex marriage, the conservative Christians have told each other that they are embattled. Their preachers say it, so it must be true. Evangelicals can, with a straight face, tell pollsters that Christianity is as discriminated against as Islam.

Pence was instrumental in choosing the spiritual advisory board for the White House and it includes many evangelicals. At one gathering of spiritual advisors in 2017, Pence told the group, “I’ve been with [Trump] alone in the room when the decisions are made. He and I have prayed together. This is somebody who shares our views, shares our values, shares our beliefs.” And, in an early nod to the faithful, one of Trump’s early moves was to allow preachers the right to endorse political candidates from the pulpit, no matter how hypocritical that may seem to the rest of us.

There is a large industry built around preparation — spiritual, physical and mental — for the end times. In 2015, you could participate in a crowd funding, Indiegogo campaign to find a perfect red heifer to sacrifice in Israel and mark the beginning of the end. I saw the pictures — it looks like an ordinary Salers cow to me. We raised plenty of them on this farm back when we were into Salers.

Children of evangelical parents report that they are gripped with “rapture anxiety,” which is the fear that everyone else will be saved and disappear into heaven and they’ll be left to fend for themselves. Or, if they had a different set of preachers and parents, they might be terrified of the Tribulations, or Trib days, when believers will wander the world and scrounge up a living from an unfriendly world until the second coming.

Again, there’s an industry ready to prepare you for this unfortunate future which will, according to one expert, last 3.5 years. One website advises “store as much as you can but be ready to leave and take what you can when it is time … Also, please read the expiration dates and rotate food accordingly.”

So, next time you’re tempted to commiserate with the friend who says, “Just impeach him. Why is that so hard?” remind the speaker that there’s someone waiting in the wings. And waiting for his wings. And believing they’re within reach.

Margot Ford McMillen farms near Fulton, Mo., and co-hosts “Farm and Fiddle” on sustainable ag issues on KOPN 89.5 FM in Columbia, Mo. Her latest book is The Golden Lane: How Missouri Women Gained the Vote and Changed History. Email: margotmcmillen@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, August 15, 2018

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