The Violence Metaphor in Modern Politics

Mike Lindell in an uncharacteristically composed and businesslike moment

Mike Lindell, “the My Pillow Guy,” has announced his intent to run for the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee. Lindell, 61, has no prior experience in elective office or party organizing, and apparently no particular political experience beyond campaigning for Donald Trump. He’s spent the last two years yelling directly into the microphone on all-night basic cable about how Trump got ripped off, and in his mind, this apparently qualifies him for political authority.

Lindell’s on-camera outbursts started out comical, and for some people, still are. NBC comedian Seth Meyers still mimics Lindell’s grotesque behavior for cheap yuks. But more than two years later, his tantrums have crossed the line into something else, something downright tragic. Either he continues mishandling the microphone because he knows True Believers find his emotional outbursts persuasive, or something far darker is going on. It’s possible he has nothing left besides his spitting anger.

Over four years ago, I wrote that anger has become modern conservatism’s only emblem of seriousness. I wrote this after both Brett Kavanaugh and Lindsay Graham pulled Lindell-like antics inside the Senate Chamber. But four years ago, such anger was an isolated display. Lindsay Graham’s prior political career was predicated on displays of folksy charm that belied his deep party machine connections. And Brett Kavanaugh was previously (and has largely returned to being) publicly anonymous.

Since then, these displays have become something much more persistent. Mike Lindell’s two-year rage bender is perhaps an extreme example, crossing the line from pathos to bathos. But earlier this year, in the state where I live, Nebraska, an entire cadre of political neophytes seized control of the state Republican party, driven largely by displays of rage heaved clumsily into the microphone. This “leadership” then got Jim Pillen elected governor by stoking fears of CRT.

On the local level, another political novice, Paul Hazard, got elected to my city’s school board. Before running for office (he previously failed to get elected to the city council), Hazard was a state trooper—which, I shouldn’t have to specify, isn’t the same as being an educator. His qualification (singular) for office is his track record of getting screaming mad during school board meetings and town halls and, yes, shouting directly into the microphone.

Yeah, it's safe to say Justice Kavanaugh resembles Senator Graham

All these candidates pale, however, before the tragicomic spectacle that is Herschel Walker. Like his idol, Donald Trump, Walker has difficulty stringing together coherent sentences or staying on topic. This is perhaps understandable in Walker’s case: after fifteen years in the NFL, he probably has Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, a common brain injury in retired football (hand-egg) players. Also like Trump, Walker shows no prior familiarity with, or interest in, government or the entire legislative process.

More important than Walker’s tragic incompetence, however, is his behavior. Herschel Walker is a demonstrably bad person, with multiple credible accusations of domestic abuse, child abandonment, and attempting to induce various girlfriends to get abortions. Public progressives question how Republicans, the “party of family values,” can get behind a man who’s abandoned so many children and paid for so many abortions. Walker, like Trump, spits in the face of the values they claim to uphold.

However, placing Walker in the context of Donald Trump, Brett Kavanaugh, and Mike Lindell, a definite pattern emerges. Today’s Republican Party sees anger and violence as leadership qualities. Displays of macho savagery are more important to Republican leaders than competence, experience, or familiarity with the law. A leader, to today’s Republican party, isn’t someone who unites or gives vision. A leader is somebody who socks enemies in the jaw—even “enemies” like his own ex-wife.

Seriously, look at whom Republicans have supported recently. Donald Trump’s entire career was predicated on the promise to bring the hammer down on dissidents. Paul “ACAB” Hazard pledged to bring the same roided-out anger to the school board as he did to the highway patrol. And neither Mike Lindell’s nor Herschel Walker’s candidacies are predicated on policy, as they have none. They simply promise to shout down, or punch, anybody who dares to challenge them.

And unfortunately, this seems to work. Republican voters keep getting behind this series of reality TV stars, athletes, and camera-huggers. Herschel Walker is currently in a statistical tie with Raphael Warnock, an incumbent Senator, minister, and career civil activist. Real or promised violence has become the motivation of today’s Republicans, and it works. Faced with a panoply of digital-age problems, one major party pledges to answer with Stone-Age force, and their voters clamor for more.

Religion vs. Empire, Then and Now

Christian Scripture provides two birth narratives for Jesus Christ, and they’re kind of similar, but not the same. Matthew depicts Jesus born in Bethlehem, but not much before that; the dominant earthly power in Matthew’s Gospel is Herod the Great. Luke provides lengthy pre-birth anecdotes about Mary and her cousin Elizabeth, Mary’s interaction with the archangel Gabriel, and Mary and Joseph’s relocation to Bethlehem. Luke emphasizes Rome’s earthly authority, embodied in Quirinius, governor of Syria.

Either way, this narrative emphasizes that Jesus was born into an occupied nation. Stephen Prothero describes Israelite religion and national identity as defined by occupation, exile, and the promise of return. Matthew, a Jew, and Luke, a Greek, disagree over which occupation matters more, the domination of an Idumean client king or Roman conquest. What matters, though, is that Jesus didn’t arrive during the brief window of Maccabean independence, but under the shadow of Empire.

Empires carry laws with them, and always try to standardize morality. Consider American history. The nation couldn’t survive with slavery in some regions and not others; we fought our bloodiest war to finally end the institution. Afterward, we couldn’t survive with sectional racism, so, using nonviolent means like case law and legislation, the government managed to distribute segregation and Jim Crow nationally. This national distribution was so effective that we’ve been unable to reverse it.

Laws exist to standardize national morality, and unfortunately, America demonstrates how effective that is. That’s why it matters that Jesus came during a time of national occupation: because Roman law inevitably made changes upon Jewish morality. Maybe not ordinary Jews, or not all ordinary Jews anyway, as sects arose devoted entirely to anti-Roman resistance. But those who maintained power over ordinary Jews, in fixed buildings in large cities, needed to assimilate or get cut down.

Herod’s Temple in Jerusalem served the same ecclesial role as American megachurches today, as gathering places where ethnically and philosophically diverse peoples gathered to reassert their one shared identity. Though Jews were nominally descended from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in practice, anybody who followed the Levitical law became Jewish. Likewise, “Christian” describes a panoply of religious and philosophical premises; but in churches, we gather together, speak the Apostles’ Creed and Lord’s Prayer, and become one.

Yet the comparison between Herod’s temple and American megachurches carries dark implications. As Obery M. Hendricks points out, the temple priesthood wasn’t just religious leadership, it was a proxy government. The Fortress Antoninius, the command garrison of the occupying Roman legions, was built into the temple walls, and the priesthood had police authority over the Jewish citizenry. Though ordinary Jews lived with, or sometimes resisted, Roman occupation, the temple priesthood actively enforced occupying Roman law.

In the last two years, as I write, hard-right Christians have gone from denying Christian Nationalism exists, to openly embracing the term. Authors like Stephen Wolfe have published their blueprints for a religious state dominated by clergy with billy clubs. Wolfe presents this as Christian dominion, and promises to use police authority to enforce religious law, punishing heretics and atheists. But his list of supposed religious “heretics” includes feminists, BLM supporters, and even Christian Socialists.

Wolfe demonstrates how religion under occupation comes to resemble the occupying power. Gone from Wolfe’s, and other Christian Nationalists’ faith, is the prominent anti-state stance taken by former public Christians, from William Lloyd Garrison to MLK. Religion for Christian Nationalists, like for temple priests in Herod’s Jerusalem, becomes a matter of obeying laws, not of doing right by those least able to defend themselves. Righteousness and justice become whatever the state-friendly priesthood says they are.

Throughout his ministry, Jesus remained an observant Jew. He taught several of his most important lessons in synagogues, the Temple, and potluck dinners. Yet he disdained observance of law as its own moral good. Religious leaders, who earned their living enforcing laws, frequently castigated Jesus and his followers for disdaining cleanliness rituals, food protocols, and Sabbath observance. To the priesthood, law had become its own justification, regardless of its impact on the poor and defenseless.

Versus the law, Jesus presents something altogether more difficult: facing each situation as it exists, and seeking the truth. The truth for Rich Young Ruler was that he needed to part from his possessions. For the Samaritan Woman at the Well, the truth was that she needed to stop hiding from her past. Knowing the truth isn’t easy; it means going within, spending time in study, and taking a risk. But truth, not law, saves.

Nonpartisan Jesus vs. the Apolitical Church

Andy Stanley, Not In It To Win It: Why Choosing Sides Sidelines the Church

Atlanta megachurch pastor Andy Stanley endured intense criticism, some of it borderline violent, when he paused in-person worship during the pandemic. He never wanted to become a political lightning rod, but when angry parishioners accused him with cable-TV talking points, he realized that's what he became. To Stanley, political alignment is an abdication of the gospel message. I see where he's coming from, but I can't bring myself to agree.

American Christianity, in Stanley's mind, has become too invested in winning. Whether this means winning arguments, or winning elections, or winning the "culture wars," Christians seemingly care more about worldly victory than eternal truth. When we focus on winning America, Stanley says, we lose Americans. Earthly victory is eternal loss; we gain the world, as Jesus said, and lose our souls. Not exactly a fair trade.

This strictly partisan interpretation of Christianity doesn't jibe with historical Christ followers. Jesus spoke of the "kingdom of God," and importantly, he meant it. Ancient Rome didn't distrust Christians because they prayed more, but because they pledged allegiance to another King. The idea of Christians taking partisan sides in the frequent Roman civil wars would've made no sense, because Christians were already deemed disloyal to Earthly kings.

So far, Stanley and I agree. Jesus didn't come to endorse partisan alignment, and certainly not to defend existing power hierarchy. This applies across political parties, since both parties want power; the Messiah who promises to "make all things new" wouldn't support either party that wants power at others' expense. Jesus didn't call us to win, but to love, which we can't do if we're busy divvying the world into winners and losers.

Stanley goes even further. Not only did Jesus not come to win, but Jesus specifically came to "lose," by Earthly standards. Because this world is full of losers: the poor, the disenfranchised, the outcast, the ritually unclean. Stanley spends several chapters exploring this from different angles, but his upshot is basically that Jesus loves losers, not because they're especially holy, but because they're losers. We can't follow Jesus' example if we're busy winning.

Pastor Andy Stanley

Okay, in broad strokes, Stanley and I agree. I support his overarching thesis, because I disapprove of not only the recent rise of Christian Nationalism, but also the progressive Christian response that hides in government's skirts. Both options accord more power to human institutions, which necessarily robs power from "the least of these," the sheep that Jesus called Peter to feed.

But Stanley and I diverge on what that means in practice. Stanley evidently believes Christ's church should remain, in his words, "apolitical." Though he admits he began writing this book because he was appalled by the vitriolic partisan response to his pandemic policy, he seems to think that the response is to stand above the fray. The mere fact that he couldn't, that his attempt to avoid politics was interpreted politically, doesn't change his mind.

Millions of Black American Christians have learned that simply being alive, and loving as Christ first loved us, is a political act. That's true when Christians organize deliberate resistance to worldly injustice, as Dr. King and Howard Thurman proved. But the 16th Street Baptist Church showed us that, when your existence threatens the status quo, this world's powers don't need legal justifications to hate and destroy.

As Stanley himself says, becoming a Christ follower should mean a radical reorientation of life. We're called to love those this world doesn't love. That may mean, like James and John, leaving our family; it may mean, like Matthew and Zaccheus, leaving the protection that government authority grants. Loving others threatens "the world," which thrives by creating in-groups and exploiting our fear of strangers.

What Stanley seems to not grasp is that the radical love he advocates, is indeed political. It knowingly subverts the world's widespread desire to name enemies and seek victory, which powerful people use to preserve their advantages. Refusing to play the world's political game isn't "apolitical," despite Stanley's claim. Jesus refused to either acknowledge or refuse Pilate's authority, an action which spit in Roman authority's eye.

Again, I agree with Stanley, broadly. When Christians strive to "win," we play into Earthly power structures that divide the world into winners and losers, an unloving, anti-Christian attitude. He's right that Christ calls us to lose the world. But Stanley is wrong to describe this as "apolitical." The anger political insiders show demonstrates how wholly political it is when we refuse. We can't stand aloof from the consequences.

The Role of Art in a Divided Society

A still from Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins’ 1961 film of West Side Story

Sometime in the 1990s, I’ve forgotten exactly when, my sister’s high school theater program staged the classic musical West Side Story. Because of course they did, it’s standard theatrical repertoire. The only problem was, her school (she and I attended different high schools) was overwhelmingly White. The performance of urban tension between Hispanic and Irish communities, was played by farmers’ kids of mainly German and Czech heritage.

This meant, as you’d expect, brownface. Students playing the Puerto Rican Sharks gang dyed their hair, darkened their skin, and affected Latino accents. The White Jets, meanwhile, learned a stereotyped “New Yawk” accent and got ducktail haircuts. These students, who were entirely White and lived in Nebraska for most or all of their lives, immersed themselves in playing ethnically mixed East Coast characters, not always in the most sensitive ways.

Around twenty-five years later, my sister recalls that performance with a visible cringe. Troweling on makeup to play ethnically clichéd characters, which seemed broadly acceptable then, is patently unacceptable today. Nobody, except a few high-profile heel-draggers like Megyn Kelly, would pretend otherwise. But without the willingness to play characters who didn’t resemble themselves, I contend, these students would’ve deprived themselves, and their community, of something important.

West Side Story remains important theater, seventy-five years after its debut, because it addresses an important American cultural problem. The Jets and Sharks, defined by their race, attend the same high school and walk the same streets. But they never communicate, because they believe long-held bigoted myths about one another. When Tony and Maria dare fall in love, it transgresses one of America’s most cherished internal borders, the color line.

I’ve written before that teaching youth the humanities matters, because through art and literature, students see other people as fully dimensional human beings, with thoughts, feelings and dreams equal to their own. West Side Story reminds us that anybody, raised on such myths, could wind up believing them, and embracing the violence such division brings. Racism, this play reminds us, isn’t inevitable; it’s a choice we make, and keep making.

Arguably, that’s why White actors playing Brown characters is pretty specious, usually. If my sister’s high school had sufficient Hispanic actors to play the Sharks, they should’ve cast accordingly. No matter how sympathetically those student actors attempted to portray characters who were culturally or racially different from themselves, they’ll inevitably resort to stereotypes, sometimes hurtful ones, of people groups they’ve never actually met.

A still from Stephen Spielberg’s 2021 film of West Side Story

But simultaneously, if the school refused to perform this play, nobody would’ve had the opportunity to receive its message. Not the student actors, who needed to stretch beyond their limited small-town experience, nor the audience who, in Western Nebraska, seldom get to witness world-class art. Beyond the high school, getting to see top-tier theater means traveling to Omaha or Denver, and most people can’t spare that much money or time.

This elicits the question: is the message important enough to accept a less-than-optimum messengers? I don’t want to be mistaken for advocating brownface; the specific event I’m remembering belongs to its own time and place, and should remain there. But the event gave students and the community an opportunity to see people whose lives and experiences were wildly different from anything experienced locally. Even if those “people” were actors.

Questions like this will become more important in coming years. In 1957, when West Side Story debuted, Manhattan’s Upper West Side was predominantly working-class, racially mixed, and volatile. Within five years, the combined forces of gentrification and White Flight changed local demographics. By the 1980s, the Upper West Side was heavily populated with yuppies, while the ethnic communities celebrated onstage had been forced into dwindling enclaves.

The White small town where my sister attended high school has experienced something similar: there are now considerably more Hispanic residents, and even a few Black residents. Because the Hispanic residents are mostly agricultural workers, though, they seldom mix substantially with the community. Interactions with what locals call “Mexicans” happen in public places, like grocery stores; the actual community members seldom get to know one another beyond nodding hello.

Artistic expressions like West Side Story will matter more soon, as American society becomes more segregated, more hostile, more like the Sharks and Jets. Opportunities to see “the Other” as equally human to ourselves might make the difference between peace and violence. And sadly, not everybody will have access to racially representative casting choices. Cross-racial casting isn’t ideal, but it’s better than denying audiences the art they need to see.

Thanksgiving and the American State Church

Not the original photo (source)

I fear that, somewhere near Albany, New York, a TV station still has news footage of seven-year-old me wearing fake Native American war paint. I’d made a war bonnet from construction paper and an old terry-cloth headband, and wore it to the second grade Thanksgiving reenactment at Howe Elementary School, in Schenectady. I was the only student there representing the Native American side.

Every year, countless American grade schoolers make black conical “Puritan” hats out of construction paper and craft glue and replay the “first Thanksgiving” in mid-November. These performances are crinkum-crankum, and for good reason. The first Thanksgiving is part of American state religion, and reenacting it serves exactly the same purpose as children’s Nativity pageants on Christmas Eve: it forces us to verbally commit ourselves to the faith and morality represented.

Except, that faith isn’t equally represented. In every grade-school Thanksgiving pageant I remember, nearly everybody dressed as English Pilgrims. The uniformly somber men’s costumes, with buckles on their hats and shoes, while women bundled their hair into off-white bonnets and carried fall flowers against their pinafores. Nearly every year, the Wampanoag Indians were verbally acknowledged, but not present.

In 1982, in consultation with my parents, I decided somebody needed to represent the Indians. We didn’t really know what that meant. Thanksgiving history usually focuses on Pilgrims surviving a tumultuous winter, then learning (in passive voice) to plant maize and hunt wild turkey. In seasonal art, the Wampanoag are usually represented by one or two shirtless Brown men with feathers in their hair; the art emphasizes White people and their massive chuckwagon spread.

My parents are generally conservative, never-Trump Republicans, but they’ve always had a soft spot for Native American history. In the 1980s, though, their idea of Native Americans wasn’t differentiated by nations and regions; they believed a broad pan-American indigenous myth that mostly resembles Plains Indians. So that was our pattern, and I attended that year’s Thanksgiving pageant dressed as a White boy’s homemade idea of a Ponca warrior.

Forty years later, I struggle with this. By any reasonable standard, this was cultural appropriation: I, a White person, took it upon myself to tell the BIPOC story. But if I didn’t, who would? There was literally nobody else willing to speak that truth, that the Wampanoag existed and participated in that pageant. Without my clumsy, stereotyped mannequin, the Native American voice would’ve been completely excluded from that American myth.

A common clip art of the First Thanksgiving, with benevolent
Englishmen and highly stereotyped Native Americans

Our Thanksgiving pageant was considered newsworthy, and broadcast on regional TV, because our class partnered with the Special Education classroom down the hall. We were deemed a beacon of inclusiveness. Though both classrooms were entirely White (with an asterisk: several Jewish students), regional media wanted to praise our efforts. Camera crews, helmed by a pretty young human interest journalist, captured the whole event.

Because I was a kid, and this happened forty years ago, I don’t remember the event itself at all. My one clear memory is watching the news from Albany that evening to see our story. At one key moment, the camera zoomed in on me, the only Pretendian in the room, with my brightly colored acrylic “warpaint” and my war bonnet held together with hot glue. The journalist didn’t say anything. My presence was sufficient.

My family and I felt pretty good about that. Somebody, however feebly, stood up for the Native American presence at an important White mythological event. Forty years later, I can only remember that moment with a combination of pride and cringe. A White kid, amid forty other White kids, dressed as a Plains Indian in a Massachusetts harvest festival? The cheek of it! But… but it matters that somebody said it.

By today’s standards, that tin-earred display of cultural goulash was wildly inappropriate. But I also stood in the assembly to remind everyone, in this moment of American state church, that our mythology needed to be broader than it is. We not only preached that counter-myth to two second-grade classrooms, but with media assistance, our message carried regionally: Native Americans were there, and deserve representation.

I wouldn’t do that again, certainly. And if I had kids, I’d think long and hard before encouraging them to do likewise. But for all its ham-handed stereotyping and cultural appropriation, I also wouldn’t undo that event. Somebody needed to say it. Somebody needed to remind the American state church that its mythology has excluded too many people for too long. Maybe I was a clumsy, childlike prophet, but at least I said it.