decency makes bad guys nervous
I don't make a habit of reading David French for the same reason I don't make a habit of staring directly at the sun, but I must admit that I enjoyed his recent New York Times column on James Talarico.
This is a gift link to the piece in full but if you just want to read the parts I pulled out and posted below, you can do that too.
Talarico doesn’t just root his policies and ideology in his Christian beliefs, he’s a seminarian willing to dive deep into theology. When he’s arguing with the religious right about, say, Christian nationalism, he makes a specifically Christian argument to counter a poisonous Christian movement.
“Jesus liberates,” Talarico said in a sermon in 2023. “Christian nationalism controls. Jesus saves. Christian nationalism kills. Jesus started a universal movement based on mutual love. Christian nationalism is a sectarian movement based on mutual hate.”
And, later:
For example, in an interview with my colleague Ezra Klein, Talarico criticized the evangelical focus on abortion and homosexuality in politics. “It’s remarkable to me,” Talarico said, “that you have an entire political movement using Christianity to prioritize two issues that Jesus never talked about.”
And, later:
Put simply, if the primary American divide is between right and left, then Talarico isn’t that interesting. There’s a long history of progressive religious activism in the United States, just as there is a long history of conservative religious activism. White evangelicals might be overwhelmingly Republican, but American Christians are remarkably diverse politically, and we’ve been arguing with one another for a long time.
Yet if the primary American divide is between decent and indecent, then the equation changes. Talarico shines.
Or, to put it another way, Talarico is one of the few openly Christian politicians in the United States who acts like a Christian, and by acting like a Christian he reveals a profound contrast with so many members of the MAGA Christian movement that’s dominated American political life for 10 years.
I'll stop citing here before the Times drone strikes my house, but it's a good column and it made me think. I don't really give a fuck about the United States outside of a few contexts (including "many of my friends live there and I like them" and "without NBA/WNBA basketball and Major League Baseball IDK who I am") but I pay attention to what is going on there politically for reasons that are obvious to anyone who lives in the shadow of a superpower. Their stuff influences our stuff.
A guy I used to be friends with used to express considerable surprise and confusion that I would keep up with American news. I would tell him that American news affects the rest of the world, and that American influence permeates many aspects of Canadian culture. His attitude was always something close to bemusement —— to him, America was simultaneously the centre of the universe but also a place that non-Americans shouldn't look too closely at.
This is because he was stupid, and probably still is.
🌲 gonna
🌼 go
🌱 touch back to
🌳 grass work
🌷 now
If you enjoyed this post, click the little up arrow chevron thinger below the tags to help it rank in Bear's Discovery feed and maybe consider sharing it with a friend or on your socials.