What to do about our cracker friends who've lost their way in Trumpland

  My Dad's last Sunday in Gaffney SC, roughly June 30, 1978, from the third Sunday of January 1962,  he started his sermon from the text I thank God for every remembrance of you.

     I was in the choir that Sunday as a 25 year old with my Brother and Sister, thinking What The Hell. The last three years there had been pretty rough, lot of tension after my sister came home one for a weekend from Mars Hill with a party of 7 or so girls, a missionary's son, and a black friend of all of them a gregarious basketball player.

    One of my mother's best friends in the church came by her at the organ, saw the fellow of color, Said to my Mother, well Louise I guess you are happy now, you finally integrated Bethany; turned back and went home without staying for the morning service.

   For some time, before tensions were rising as our family welcomed people of color to play basketball on the paved driveway that had a goal.

     Ive told versions of this story before, a couple that got published in Christian Ethics Today. But been thinking about it lately and my Dad thanking God for every remembrance.

    I brought that up recently in some facebook exchanges of mostly Gaffney folks now in their late sixties and a former editor of Charlotte's Creative Loafing, John Groom, a GHS 67 grad, said good luck with that Stephen; Ive had it with these people. I'm tired with the frustrations of trying to rationalize with people who refuse to accept Biden won the last election by 7 million votes, not to mention folks who flirt with Q anon. They can go to Hell.

     I'm tempted to throw in with him on occasion as recently as earlier this week when Facebook shut me down for hateful speech as I was in an online brawl with some Bama boys mostly 20 years my Junior Ive know for 30 years as far back as their 6th grade when I sub taught for them often. At one point I used the phrase Bull Sheet in defense of Jesse Jackson and John Lewis. 

    So where does the indulgence stop.

     I am reminded of the story I heard on NPR about three years ago of the black guy who had been up north and was coming back with a friend of color from New York back to South Alabama. As they got further south, through North Carolina, SC then into Georgia, he could sense the unease rising in his buddy. As the confederate flags and resonances of Dixie and other politically incorrect references to gun began to become publicly more evident, The South Alabama fellow said, relax, these white boys  are my friends, that's just how they roll. When I played High School football with them they'd fight any cracker from the other town who attempted to mistreat me and I would fight for them. I'm much more welcome in their home for dinner than you are in the condos of NYC.

    I don't think he was uncle Tomming. The same for the most part white boys in Collinsville Alabama who vote Trump and think MT Greene is on to something, and Tommy Tuberville is a decent man even though ignorant as dog poop; well he passed the down home test cause he went into the kitchen and spoke to the help  of my friend at Kelly's  Diner in Rainsville who used to run a tight ship administering the Cracker Barrell in Ft. Payne. Never saw her rattled.

    Her son at one time was a basketball coach at one of the blackest schools in Tuscaloosa.

    For me does that give them a pass on their voting dispositions. Heck no. But like Obama said of Jeremiah Wright, I could no more say I never went to church there than I could say my Mother wasn't a native of Kansas. (bad paraphrase).

   So my Dad thanked God for every remembrance, I guess even including the fellow who a month before came looking for his oldest son, Me, to stand on my toes and beat my ass in the ground, cause I had some reservations about his extended family influence in the Church.

   So What was my Dad, Sweet Billy, thinking. I guess he was going deep in the scripture cause it was the moments of conflict, gut wrenching differences that sparked insight into the human condition, and over time and accumulation erupted into the life of Jesus and what he did for all of us on the Cross.

   I think that's right. Russ Dean has just written a book, Finding a New Way Home which I gave the Steevie Treatment on this blog. His grades at Furman were better than mine. But I think we both understand Marney and Stewart Newman, Lolley and the Baptist roll call, Albert Blackwell, LD Johnson, Pitts at Furman, Will Campbell, that's the point.

    And my Dad Sweet Billy, he got it too. We were all alive. We were all there in the congregation that morning for yet another opportunity to figure where we were and how we got there, and there was a meal in the fellowship hall waiting for us, a home to go to after that meal, and for the Fox family highways to Knoxville Tn and the next chapter.

    So like most of you who read this, I'm pissed as Hell at Marjorie Taylor Greene, and the Birch Society fundamentalism of that Ga 14th District where my father and John Pierce were raised. I'm tired of the Bastard version of the Republican party we have now and John Danforth denounced last night on PBS Newshour, how they've whored themselves off to the dark money politics of the NRA and fundamentalism and shamed Alabama's Judge Frank Johnson and Abe himself.

     Ive known Tom Edsall now of the NY Times since 1986 and a strong chat at the Atlanta SBC. His piece a few days ago in the Times was an exhaustive exploration of how otherwise decent small town citizens of the 90s got bent toward Qanon and Trump salvation. And that after a scruting of the Ga 14 back in October in the New Yorker.

     Will Campbell said, you love one, you gotta love em All. And that includes members of my own extended family who over the years have extended grace to me when for instance LT Hartzog told my Dad in Gaffney, Billy, if it was my Boy, I'd kick his ass out.

     So they never stopped loving me, even some in the opposition faction of Bethany Baptist church that morning in 78 and likewise for me, at least for the most part not more than a week to ten days. Ha.

   But Marney said, we wrestle not against flesh and blood of any individual politcally looney and confused whitey in the Ga 14, but against powers and principalities and the rulers of darkness of this world.

     Like James Dunn and Bill Leonard said, America is and will always be a Mess. Azar Naifisi and Jill Lepore shed light for any HS Civics teacher worth their pay who will read it and provoke their students.  It's a bigger mess now than it has been in some time, but there is light in last years Gaffney High school Black History Month, the light is getting brighter at Furman with some initiatives there, there is light at Clemson with Trevor Lawrence and Darrien Rencher and the legacy of Chadwick Bozeman--I hope Rencher runs against Jeff Duncan and shines a little light up his Ass. There is light with Danforth and MAce and Rice and Kinzinger, the Illinois Republican who had a challenge to Baptist preachers last week in the atlantic.

    Colin Harris is sharing light monthly at goodfaithmedia as are many others. Religiondispatches.org and Baptist news, even Mitt Romney and Sasse; can't bring myself to say Liz Cheney but she is showing some moxey.

     Even among leftover Betas and resistors on facebook from Gaffney High School, all twenty two something of us (ha)

      Obama and Marilynne Robinson had a good conversation at the end of the print edition of the essay collection The Givenness of Things. Read that.

    For now, otherwise take care, God Bless America, Send Marjorie Taylor Greene home and convict Mitch McConnell of his sins as the gravedigger of American democracy before he spends an eternity in political Hell with Jesse Helms.