As I read the news each day with a certain sobriety and sometimes, despair, I see our age becoming contaminated by perspectives, beliefs and opinions that would have been normal in the dark ages of the 12th century, but has no real place in our post modern world. Often, I feel that some of my fellow citizens are quite ignorant, misinformed, selfishly motivated, self-absorbed and incapable of seeing any higher purpose in life outside of their narrow communities. This is not the majority of the citizens of our nation who are so indisposed, but enough of them to either vote to end our representational democracy or not even bothering to vote at all.
What really concerns me is the ascension of racism, bigotry, religious sectarianism, overall stupidity that appears to plague primarily individuals who espouse to be politically conservative. They seek to completely overturn the very thing that makes our country unique, and that is the inherent principals of civil equality, democracy, religious freedom, freedom of the press, and personal civic responsibility. What they seek to replace it with is autocracy, oligarchy, and minority rule by a Christian Nationalistic political entity. They seek a kind of medieval religious theocracy consisting of white Christian power-elites and their favored minions, dominating a disenfranchised public of minority races, non-white ethnicity, minority religious adherents, and those who are not part of the cis-gender and heterosexual population. It has often proven to be true that those who part of the disenfranchised other are often persecuted, discriminated against, exiled, and when that can’t be done, even exterminated.
When I was a young man, there were many politically fringe groups on both the left and the right political sides who were readily dismissed by mainstream political organizations of both conservative and liberal perspectives. These were the members of the John Birch Society, Neo Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, survivalists, gun-nuts, and other groups who sought to overturn and subvert our nation’s principles of civic equality. They had one common foundation, and that was a form of Protestant Christian nationalism. Yet these groups were vilified, mocked and shown to be basically against the majority who did believe in civic equality and other principles sacred to a republic. When I was a Witchling, I paid them no heed, but I was aware of certain aggressive Christian movements in my youth culture, such as the Jesus Freaks and the Moonies. However, the incident of Jones Town showed that any kind of religious extremism led to very unfortunate circumstance and should be avoided by all as a pathway to personal destruction. I had to fight against the intrusiveness of some fringe Christians, but otherwise, these groups were not something that I encountered or had to contend with at that time.
That was back in the 1970's, but in the 1980's Christian fundamentalism became popular along with Reagan Republicanism, and I noticed that some of these disaffected fascist groups were becoming more legitimate. Klan members and skin-head Nazis were not welcomed, of course, but that would unfortunately change over time, as the conservative political movement was revitalized in the post Watergate era by a form of religious nationalism. What I didn’t know was that this rebirth of popular conservatism in the 1980's went hand in glove with Dominionists and Evangelical Fundamentalists who saw the critical need to reform American in a manner that they thought agreed with their religious beliefs and perspectives. Through the 1990's and into the 2000's, this engagement with Christian Nationalism became ever more firmly entrenched in conservative politics. Still, the mixing of religious absolutism and national politics has always been a toxic brew, and the founders of the United States sought to eliminate that possibility by ensuring that the institutions of the government were separate from the church and completely secular to deal equitably with all people regardless of their faith. That separation was being challenged in a pernicious manner by the conservative-based Christian Nationalists.
I have always found that Christian fundamentalism deals with an obviously complex world in an overly simplistic fashion. It is based on the premise that Protestant Christian values and beliefs are absolute truths that cannot be denied or refuted. It promotes one set of ideas over all others, and denigrates all other religious traditions as false and inspired by the Devil. I have been told too often by individuals who are drunk on this delusion that because I am a Pagan and a Witch that I will be condemned to eternal hellfire if I don’t repent and become reborn in Jesus Christ. I can argue that their faith doesn’t contain any absolute truths, and is only subject to the context of their beliefs, which are completely different than my own. I am steadfast in this belief, but Christian fanatics to whom I have revealed this bit of truth act as if it beyond their mental abilities, and perhaps it is. There are no absolutes in the religions of the world except one, that they are based on a common human experience. This means that the world religions are either all valid, or none of them are valid. One religion alone cannot be the sole arbiter of truth.
My faith is backed by many decades of experience, but it resides within the context of my religion. I would never use those experiences as a means to negate the religious experiences of anyone else if they practice a religion that is decidedly different than my religion. Those who do not adhere to a religious perspective are not subject to it, whether throughout their lives or in the supposed after-world. An atheist is not afflicted by either my religious beliefs nor the religious beliefs of anyone else in the world. That is how things really work, so for some Christian to tell me that I am in error and that I am going to hell because of my faith, I can dismiss them as profoundly misinformed. I am at peace with this perspective of world religions, and with the firm knowledge that my faith is as legitimate as the faith of anyone else.
However, the dark times appear to coming upon us in this sad nation of political and spiritual turmoil. We had to endure four catastrophic years of a Donald J. Trump presidency, and it appears that we are once again poised on the precipice of the fall of democracy as he seeks to regain the powers of the presidency for a second, and likely, final time for us all. It would seem that the astonishingly incompetent, ignorant, racist, bigoted, corrupt, and autocratic tendencies of this man are considered not only as celebrated bonifides, but he is considered to be a Christ-like personality sent to redeem our nation, at least in the eyes of Christian Nationalists. He has also brought into his following all of the nasty far-right fringe politics of the Klan, Neo Nazis, Birchers, and sectarian Christian Nationalists and allowed them to occupy the forefront of his political movement. This event has transformed the current Republican party into the Party of Trump, and even when he is finally gone, that legacy will continue to live and perhaps, even thrive.
I am inspired to vote again next year to help make certain that Trump and his party of fascists will be denied the power that they crave. I will tell all my occult and Witchcraft friends and allies not to vote for party because our freedom to worship and to practice as we see fit will be in jeopardy. In this coming electoral year, like 2020, we will be experiencing an existential threat to all that we hold dear regarding our representational democracy, because Trump has declared himself to be the final candidate solution to what he and followers think is wrong with this nation. What he and his red cap followers seem to miss is that he and his Republican cult worshipers are the malady that afflicts our country.
It is not liberals, the Democrats, the Deep State, the immigrants, the gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transsexuals, queer folk of all strips, not to mention those who are not conservative Christians, like Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Neopagans, Witches, occultists and esotericists of all types that are to be blamed for the crisis confronting our nation. It is Trump and his cultists who the very serious problem facing us, and we who not part of this crowd (and are the majority, I might add), should vote them out of power to such a degree that the Republican Party will cease to exist. That is what I am advocating, and I believe firmly that anyone who votes for these clowns are themselves the true enemy of the people and the government of the United States.
If by some chance, we succumb to our own selfishness and not relieve the nation of this threat through our votes, then I suspect that our ability to vote will begin to be diluted until it disappears, making the U.S. into another autocratic state. At that time, I will likely have to move to another country, probably Canada, to continue to live, believe and practice my faith and magic as I see fit to do. Such freedoms will disappear in American, and I am certain that I will be part of the population that will be rounded up and sent to a concentration camp to be worked to death or exterminated.
Think that I am joking about this possibility? Am I spouting too much hyperbole? The door to autocracy was briefly opened on January 6, 2021, and then shut, but it was a near thing that might have ended our democracy. That was just a dress rehearsal for what it coming in 2025. As members of a minority religion and its practices, we are a vulnerable people, and Christian Nationalism sees us as a threat to their beliefs and to the kind of nation that they seek to build. We are also expendable, and few will protest or seek to intervene when the Trump black-shirts come to arrest us and relocate us to what will be our final destination - an early grave. These red cap fanatics, these MAGA adherents will have no scruples when it comes to attacking their presumed enemies, and the Christian Nationalists will be setting the tone and establishing their targets of interest. At that time, we will likely be doomed.
However, if we en-mass go out and vote against these evil and corrupt politicians and deny them their offices of power and privilege, then we can start to push back against the blight that infects our land. I don’t seek revenge or retribution for the masses who have been suckered into voting for Trump and the Republicans, I only seek to assist in their education and to help them acquire some compassion for people who are different then them. Yet if they deny themselves this rebirth of knowledge and insights, then they can crawl back into the rural quagmires where they came from, bereft of power and civic consideration.
I have hope for the coming year, but I am also looking at Canada as a last ditch refuge from the American Nightmare. Our nation will either reject fascism as it once did in the 1930's, or become another medieval failed nation-state, like so many others that are falling in this so-called century of enlightenment and post modernism.
Frater Barrabbas
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