Special Places in Hell
“‘I would bet strongly it was good Republican voters who couldn’t stomach voting for Roy Moore, but didn’t want to stay home,’’ said Brent Buchanan, a Republican strategist in Alabama. ‘It was a protest vote.’’
One was Senator Richard C. Shelby, the Republican dean of Alabama’s congressional delegation, who said over the weekend that he could not vote for Mr. Moore and had written in the name of “a distinguished Republican’’ whom he declined to identify. Stephen K. Bannon, President Trump’s former White House adviser, said on Monday at a Moore rally that there was ‘a special place in hell” for Republicans like Mr. Shelby’ “How 22,800 Write-In Votes Changed the Alabama Election, New York Times, December 13, 2017).
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“‘Christians believe in redemption and forgiveness, so they’re willing to give Donald Trump a chance,’ said Mr. Strang, who is a member of the president’s informal council of evangelical advisers. ‘If he turns out to be a lecher like Bill Clinton, or dishonest in some kind of way, in a way that’s proven, you’ll see the support fade as quick as it came’” (“Has Support for Roy Moore Stained Evangelicals? Some Are Worried,” New York Times, December 14, 2017).
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“On Monday, the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting published an extensive investigation alleging that Mr. Johnson had sexually assaulted a 17-year-old parishioner at the Heart of Fire Church in nearby Louisville, an evangelical church where he was bishop.
The parishioner, now 21, said that in the early hours of Jan. 1, 2013, after a New Year’s Eve party at the church, she and Mr. Johnson’s daughter slept over at an apartment below the fellowship hall. After falling asleep on a sofa, she said, she woke up to find Mr. Johnson — who was drunk after going to a bar earlier in the night — kneeling over her. He proceeded to kiss her, grope her breasts under her shirt, put his hand down her pants and penetrate her with his finger, she said.
Mr. Johnson had been in the House for less than a year after defeating a Democratic incumbent in the 2016 election. During the campaign, officials in his own party had criticized him for inflammatory Facebook posts, including one that depicted Barack and Michelle Obama as apes, and another that read: ‘Allah sucks. Mohammed sucks. Islam sucks. Any of you Hadji’s have an issue with me saying this, PM me and I’ll gladly give you my address. You can come visit me, where I promise I will KILL YOU in my front yard!!’” (“Kentucky Lawmaker Kills Himself Amid Sexual Assault Allegations, Officials Say,” New York Times, December 13, 2017).
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I quit reading the news after making it through the last of these stories. Yes, call me biased or slanted, but all of these came from The New York Times, so you know the way my heart bleeds.
But my mind, oh my mind. I have a morning headache even with my coffee fix (Red Rooster Holiday Roast).
First, as if this is news to my faithful blog readers, I am not an evangelical Christian. I was christened in the First Methodist Church of Bessemer, Alabama, and while I left that faith to become a nominal Reform Jew, I am neither sorry about being christened, nor upset that I was basically forced to go to church for the first fourteen years of my life ( I went for four more years, but that was mainly because of my friends, among them the cute girls who enjoyed sitting with the guys on the back pew).
So, I don’t believe in Hell, and I didn’t even when I was a Christian. Now, I was told I was going to Hell while in college, by an evangelical who got affronted when I told him that I didn’t believe a loving God would ever consign someone to Hell. I got this idea from my Christian mother, verbatim.
I love how people who aren’t supposed to judge both know about intimate places in Hell and who is going there.
Now, about these special places. I mean, you really have to have investigated Hell to know about all of those exclusive apartments. Your guide must have had you spending hours on blueprints or physically checking the routes.
I wouldn’t let Stephen K. Bannon guide me through a local shopping mall, much less through a political movement. I do find it odd that given all the chaos, mayhem, sadness, hatred, and attempts at genocide in our world, he has decided that conservative Republican Senator Richard Shelby, and any Republican who thinks like him, has a townhouse in Hell awaiting him/them.
That he said so publicly, that I’m sure many believe him, is truly staggering.
I don’t know what Ivanka Trump knows (think about writing such a sentence and all its implications!), but when she says there’s a special place in hell for people who molest children, well, if I did believe in Hell, I might be agreeing here, and to that I might add, “also for people who needlessly and sadistically harm animals (and No, I don’t mean Mitt Romney even though I’m not sure how you manage to get your dog on your car roof and fail to notice till it’s almost too late).”
Oh Ivanka, I do feel for you. No matter what is proven or disproven about your father , you are stuck with him. And consider the statement above about evangelicals and Trump: they would consider him a lecher a la Bill Clinton if Trump really has molested/assaulted those women, “in a way that’s proven.” What proof are they going to need? How does one make such a case? I can’t prove it, but I can also use the eye test, and the ear test. I have read and listened, and I know what my aching head and heart have concluded.
Oh, and the fellow who killed himself, mentioned above? Mr. Johnson? He was a first term congressman from Kentucky, and not the brand of Republican Mr. Bannon would consign to a special place in hell. He killed himself, or at least that is what the Kentucky police believe, this week after first denying the molestation charges and saying he would not resign. He is a father and grandfather. If I had been accused of such a crime and knew I was innocent, I am reasonably sure I would fight with all my might and not take my own life. I don’t know what was in this man’s heart or mind, but I do know this:
“The woman reported the assault to the Louisville Metro Police Department within months of the episode, but no charges were filed. However, her account was corroborated by family members, by her therapist’s notes from the first half of 2013 and by Facebook messages she exchanged with Mr. Johnson, the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting wrote” (NYT, 12/13/17).
Reported within months; no charges filed. She came forward; she did the right thing. Four years later, the story comes out. Her accuser is dead. What about her life now?
What shall we do? What shall we ever do?
And just where in this world are we heading?
Maybe the answer is Alabama. At least, that’s where I am heading today. My mother awaits me.