The Last Stand of the Bigots and, [Please, God] Raphael Warnock Goes to Washington

Here’s a carefully worded announcement. “The vice president, ‘welcomes the efforts of members of the House and Senate to use the authority they have under the law to raise objections and bring forward evidence before the Congress and the American people on Jan. 6th.” Way more than splitting hairs, this can only be parsed by a supercollider. 

The threatened action, in its very nature, raises objections. Check. 

But no one can bring forward evidence. Because. There. Isn’t. Any. Oops, not check. But perhaps checkmate in the chess game that has become Beltway politics. It’s the last stand of the bigots in Congress. 

“In their statement, the Republicans cited poll results showing most members of their party believe the election was ‘rigged,’ an assertion that Mr. Trump has made for months, and which has been repeated in the right-wing news media and by many Republican members of Congress.” 

Uh, doesn’t anyone remember the full name of a poll? The dropped word, the implicit word, is opinion. These are Opinion Polls, not Fact Polls. In fact, polls are just and only ever that: opinions. We live in a free country; everyone is free to have one, but just because we have opinions, that doesn’t make them facts. 

“Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, the top Democrat on the Rules Committee with jurisdiction over federal elections, called the Republican effort a ‘publicity stunt.’” I’m with Amy.  

“[A] growing number of Republicans in Congress have been eager to challenge the results, either out of devotion to the president or out of fear of enraging the base of their party that still reveres him even in defeat. That is the case even though the vast majority of them just won elections in the very same balloting they are now claiming was fraudulently administered.”  

This is the part I find particularly irksome. How can these politicos say, My election was valid, but the president’s loss—on the exact same effing ballots!@#$$#!@@@--was not. Cognitive dissonance, anyone? Humans are nothing if not entertaining. Personally, I think that if the rabblerousers want a presidential ballot recount, they should also be willing to have their wins recounted. I suspect that would hush them up in a big hurry. 

When will we have had enough, Beloved? 

Even the wiggly-spined Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) said, “I could never have imagined seeing these things in the greatest democracy in the world. Has ambition so eclipsed principle?” Well, thank you, Mitt. That’s a question worth asking. 

Has ambition so eclipsed principle?  

In too many places, yes.  

Enter Raphael Warnock, the senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, the spiritual seat that gave the world The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In the midst of a public campaign to release an unjustly accused prisoner, “a lower court ordered the young man’s release, and his family prepared to celebrate. But then the state attorney general, Thurbert Baker, announced that he would appeal the decision. 

“Mr. Baker happened to be a member of Mr. Warnock’s congregation. And so it was that on the following Sunday, Mr. Warnock singled him out for special mention. ‘[Mr. Baker] has said that it’s his job to be the state’s attorney, and that’s true,’ Mr. Warnock said. ‘But it’s my job to be the state’s conscience.’” 

Mr. Warnock would like to take his role to Washington. As of this writing, he’s in a dead heat with the hugely corrupt Senator Kelly Loeffler. There is a definite chance that this Baptist preacher will win, and take his conscience to Washington. 

The Times calls his offer to his opponent “a preacherly rhyme.” Personally, I think it’s a diagnosis and a prognosis, and believe me, as a medical intuitive, I know without question that those two are not the same thing. Here’s his slogan: 

“People who have no vision traffic in division.” Gulp. Gulp again. He’s so right. 

Do the Republican senators who are wasting their constituencies’ time and money challenging election results that have been proven, tested, counted, courted, and come up clean in 59 of 60 lawsuits have a vision? A real vision? I have to say no. Oh, except their own personal visions of themselves remaining in power. Yeah, that for sure.

Isn’t their publicity stunt divisionary? Um, ye-essss, bless us and splash us, my precious, a greeting known as maliciously gleeful from the thoroughly evil Gollum. Honestly, of course their ploy is divisive. The question I have is: to what purpose? What purpose could more division bring to an already-divided electorate? 

 “‘I have spent my career and my time as pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church trying to bring people together,’ Mr. Warnock said in an interview, when asked about his defense of religious leaders who have criticized the United States. He called bringing people together difficult work. ‘It requires that we actually talk to one another, rather than about one another,’ he said. ‘It requires deep engagement because, I think, bigotry feeds on fear.’” 

The OED offers these synonyms for bigot: “dogmatist, partisan, sectarian, prejudiced person, racist, racialist, sexist, homophobe, chauvinist, jingoist, anti-Semite.” None of the major etymological sources offer an etymology of the word although they agree it comes from Old French. They all default to “Origin unknown.” 

You know my penchant for my own brand of etymology, though. How’s this? Bi- as a prefix always means two. You see it in biennial, bifurcated, bisexual. This tells me that those who are bigoted have a double-agenda, two, perhaps opposing, goals. 

Consider, Beloved, ambition and principle, as suggested by Senator Romney. Here’s another pair: “devotion to the president or … fear of enraging the base of their party.” 

Mr. Warnock alleges that bigotry is based on fear. What else could it possibly be based on? It’s the political version of xenophobia, fear of difference. So often in these culture writings, I affirm that, at base, we are all the same, that we all want the same things, that we must see our similarities. I still maintain that all these urgings are true. 

But we must also see our differences, and not ignore them. As a white, cisgender, queer preacher—all of which could be said about me—I am very different from Raphael Warnock who also claims the preacher label. We are the same, and we are different, Beloved, and it would behoove all of us to put on our big kid panties and deal with both. Because neither thing is going away any time soon if ever. 

There is a joke told in seminaries the world over that jumbles pseudo-scripture. Candidates for ordination are told that we are to “comfort the afflicted,” and we twist it into an exhortation that we are also to “afflict the comfortable.” It always engenders a good seminarian laugh.  

Beloved, right now the comfortable in this beautiful country of ours, if we’re doing any thinking at all, are indeed afflicted. We must be. There is too much inequity, too much dissonance, and way, way, way too much noise. 

There are myriad scripture passages I could quote on this first Sunday of the new year. Two especially come to mind. First, “no one cannot serve two masters.” To those elected officials who claim to be exercising their authority in behalf of We the People, desist. You cannot serve ambition and principle at the same time.  

Second, “there is nothing hidden which shall not be revealed.” The duplicity of the officials in the challenge will be revealed, make no mistake. Maybe not today, or tomorrow, but soon enough. There is no hiding from the consequences of our actions no matter how hard we try. 

Stacy Abrams describes Mr. Warnock, “What I see in Raphael Warnock, every time we talk, every time we engage, is this belief that is core to him: that morality demands that he do good.” Morality, Beloved, trumps bigotry every time. 

The official election day for Mr. Warnock’s race is January 5th. I wish him every blessing possible. In prayer for him and for our country, I’m praying for a win for morality. Won’t you join me? 

Dr. Susan Corso is a spiritual teacher, the founder of iAmpersand, and the author of The Mex Mysteries, the Boots & Boas Books, and spiritual nonfiction. Her essays address the intersection between spirituality and culture. Find out more at www.susancorso.com