Disenabling Evil

Oh my lower-case god, I just got off the phone with my Mom (upper-case!) and she reports that one of her TV evangelists announced today there is a general agreement among their ilk that “Sarah Palin has the mantle of Esther upon her.” Like, Esther from the Bible. As in, she’s the prophesied one. The anointed. And my Mom, bless her heart, is buying it. Her view is that all the reports of hatred and racism happening at Palin’s rallies are contemptible – that people would say such nasty things about Sarah! Her enemies in the media are distorting everything. I mention the miracle of videotape and she brushes it aside. At this point, the part of her brain allocated to independent thought is shut down and the workers have been sent home.

According to a description of a book I found for sale online (at Christianbook.com) called “The Mantle of Esther,” the story of Esther “shows readers how to present themselves before the awesome sovereignty of God and pattern a strategy for confronting evil.”

I’m guessing it turns out that the proper way to present oneself before God is with checkbook in hand. And regarding the intimation that Gov. Palin is blessed with supernatural insight into strategies for confronting evil… If her supporters’ behavior at her rallies is any indication, she doesn’t confront evil, she sends it an engraved invitation then meets it at the door dressed in a French Maid uniform and knee pads.

Sarah Palin represents the power of evil for fuck’s sake, she personifies it, she doesn’t stand against it! She sends it out, that power of evil, and rednecks and racists respond in droves. They flock to her rallies like vacant-eyed, pus-oozing zombies in the last hundred pages of a Stephen King novel. My Mom remains lucid and relatively clear-headed on most other stuff, but if they tell it to her on one of her religious channels, it’s gospel and facts cease to become even pesky things, they’re downright inconsequential.

Now I’ve tried to sit out the Palin-bashing because a) her performances are already an unconscious self-parody and it seemed redundant to me to poke fun, and b) the poking of fun is already well seen-to. But learning that the charlatans of television evangelism are selling this vile snake oil of Palin’s alleged anointment by upper-case God to susceptible senior citizens and the housebound via TBN, GodTV and Fox News the same way they sold them the Iraq War, I must say, really pushes my buttons. I went to a service during the run-up to the Iraq War at my Mom’s church, and the entire sermon – lengthy and repetitious as one might expect – was devoted to the impending crusade in the holy land (I swear they used that language, I sat slack-jawed). Turns it was only one of a consecutive series of similarly-themed homilies that lasted a month.

The geezers and the fringies bought it that time, and so far they seem to be lapping it up again. Sad, sad, sad. But preventable? Perhaps, depending upon how one feels about civil disobedience...

I say, if you have a crazy relative or friend who’s planning to vote based on deliberate lies and misinformation – like for instance that Sarah Palin is the new prophesied one after George Bush; you know, something quantifiably crazy – you have a duty to, at a minimum, be unavailable when they need a ride to the polls. Because you can’t talk the crazy out of crazy, but you don’t have to enable it either. Slip a “Matlock” DVD in and tell them it’s a marathon. Get really loaded and tell them you’re too drunk to drive them; hard for even a crazy mom to argue with that. You know damned well democracy will be better served by their lack of participation.

Pick up the mantle and do your duty. Confront evil. Keep a redneck or a born-again Christian you love from voting this year.