Heather Cox Richardson is an American academic historian, author, and educator. She is also a professor of history at Boston College and publishes a daily on-line column, “Letters from an American.”
In her April 28th post, Richardson reported that at the beginning of his Sunday morning show – ABC’S This Week – host George Stephanopoulos said:
“Until now no American president had ever faced a criminal trial. No American president had ever faced a federal indictment for retaining and concealing classified documents. No American president had ever faced a federal indictment or a state indictment for trying to overturn an election or been named an unindicted co-conspirator in two other states for the same crime. No American president ever faced hundreds of millions of dollars in judgments for business fraud, defamation, and sexual abuse…”
After making this series of statements describing part of the reality of our present time and experience with a former President of the United States, Stephanopoulos made this more than sobering observation. “The scale of the abnormality is so staggering, that it can actually become numbing. It is all too easy to fall into reflexive habits, to treat this as normal.”
I think Stephanopoulos’ reported statement – considering the list of realities he had just articulated – is so important that I am underlining and putting it in bold type. “The scale of the abnormality is so staggering, that it can actually become numbing. It’s all too easy to fall into reflexive habits, to treat this as normal.”
It is so tempting to list many of the staggering abnormalities that numb us into treating them as normal. In the process of writing this blog I have made such lists and then deleted them THREE TIMES. It does not help much to regurgitate the abnormalities like gun violence, book burning, voter registration suppression, demonization of immigrants, lying political candidates, restriction of health care rights and access for women, and on and on. What a catastrophic societal change that such horrors are treated as normal occurrences in our time.
In all the list making of staggering abnormalities that are a part of our new normal one thing stands out for me that alternately enrages and overwhelmingly depresses me. Its only value is that the staggering abnormality I am about to describe drives me to more woodshop time. I go there resolved to work out my great frustrations by trying to make something useful. This is good therapy for me. Admittedly, with the high cost of lumber and the ever-increasing number of abnormalities now thought normal, this therapy is becoming ever more expensive. However, I cannot afford to stop. The cost of stopping is of far more consequence.
The staggering abnormality underlying, supporting, and promoting all of the other abnormalities we are experiencing is a twisted religious, nationalistic fervor calling itself Christian. The American phenomena of the Mega Church and its frequent turn toward being MAGA Mega in thought and motive is indeed an abnormality staggering in its impact.
The abnormality of the populist American MAGA Mega church religious scene is staggering and has come to be seen as normal. The resulting acceptance of this abnormality as normal may destroy we the people as it’s theocracy supersedes democracy.
I need more woodshop time! I cannot allow despair and a sense of absolute impotence to change these things to infect my soul. I must be involved in making something useful.
So, I think about these things while sawing wood.
As bad as things seem, we have been to such places before. Truth, freedom, love, honor, justice, mercy … these things – over time – prevail. They are often hard won, but they do prevail. As singers of the Song of Songs experienced centuries ago, no matter how difficult the times or challenges, this truth is always there:
SEE! THE WINTER IS PAST; THE RAINS ARE OVER AND GONE. FLOWERS APPEAR ON THE EARTH; THE SEASON OF SINGING HAS COME; THE COOING OF DOVES IS HEARD IN OUR LAND.
Solomon 2:11-12
Let us be resolved and devoted to study, promote, practice, and testify to a spirituality as evidenced in the example of the life and teachings of Jesus. Such a study of Jesus – the Jesus who well-knew Solomon’s Song of Songs – never leads to a theocracy and will not permit the acceptance of current staggering abnormalities as normal.