Disillusioned White Fundamentalist Dreams of Military Takeover

I wrote Monday that the tea party wants to pee on America and call this experiment in democracy over. On that very same day, Rick Joyner of MorningStar Ministries admitted as much, saying that our “republic can’t last much longer” and that only a military takeover can save us.

Watch courtesy of Right Wing Watch:

There’s no way our republic can last much longer. It may not last through Obama’s second term. There are a lot of people that feel it can’t. There are forces at work right now seeking to undermine and to destroy the republic. There is a glib and an almost joyful disregard of the Constitution. A belittling of the Constitution. We can’t make it without that. That’s our foundation, our moorings. We’re headed for serious tyranny.

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Joyner prayed to his god that he save America from the forces that seek to destroy it (he should look in the mirror as he says this and be careful what he asks for). He said “no election is going to get the right person in there who can restore us because the system is so broken…” He concluded by saying that “I believe our only hope is a military takeover – martial law.”

While most of us would doubt the patriotism of somebody who would so readily give up on the Constitution, no doubt a military takeover by a military that has been thoroughly infiltrated by crazed Evangelicals sounds great to Joyner. Never mind that it is those like Joyner who have been most instrumental in bringing damage to the document they claim to revere.

Certainly, a military takeover would save people like Joyner from enduring the consequences of their own actions – another resounding liberal victory on Election Day 2016. Maybe if God doesn’t save them with a direct and personal intervention by means of a Second Coming, he will do so indirectly, by nudging the military to remove our black and therefore despotic president.

It has become increasingly obvious that tea party Republicans have no interest in the America that is, the evolving America that is the fruit of the Constitution. From the very beginning they have wanted a different America, an America of their fantasies. When they talk about “taking back their country” THAT is the country they are referring to: one that has never existed. President Barack Obama – no more than our new Miss America, Nina Davuluri – embodies the spirit of this make-believe country.

Fox News Radio host Todd Starnes caused a stir when he said that Davuluri does not “represent American values.” Tea partiers get this: how could she? She is neither white nor blonde nor toting a rifle – and like Obama, despite being born in America – she will never be a “real” American. She is different. Like Obama, she will ever be the scary “Other” in tea party eyes.

Starnes opined via Twitter that “The liberal Miss America judges won’t say this — but Miss Kansas lost because she actually represented American values. #missamerica.”

Because of her looks, because of her name, Davuluri was called an “Arab” and a “Muslim.” One tweeter, perhaps thinking of Barack Obama, called her Indonesian. She was, like Barack Obama called a terrorist.

In fact, Davuluri is of Indian, not Arab descent. But she is as American as you and I because all of us – if we are not immigrants ourselves – are descended from immigrants. We are a nation of immigrants, of all ethnicities, all religions, all skin tones.

We have already seen what tea party Republicans are willing to do to America if they can’t get their way. If they can’t have THEIR America none of us can have America. President Obama has told them they don’t get to have a do-over for the last election but it is almost as if what they want is not a do-over for the last election but a do-over for the Constitutional convention.

Tea partiers expend a lot of verbiage on the Constitution but they don’t really like the Constitution, which is very secular and fails to mention their god, their Bible, and their Ten Commandments. Not even a nod or a whisper.

They seem to take an almost joyful delight in the idea of an apocalyptic end to American democracy so that their “godly” and shining city on a hill can rise from the ashes to embody an America that was “supposed” to have existed, an America of white evangelical Christians.

RMuse wrote last month about Larry Klayman,

[W]ho penned an inflammatory article titled “Obama, Come Out With Your Hands Up,” and cited a laundry list of imagined offenses that in his mind warrant the people’s support to overthrow the government because according to him, Republicans, the judicial system, and government officials lack “the will or courage to remove the mullah-in-chief from office.” Klayman is not new to obsessing over removing Democratic Presidents from office. He filed no less than 18 lawsuits to remove former President Bill Clinton from office, but his preoccupation with President Obama is freakishly dangerous with an angry religious and racially-motivated citizens’ army determined to take down this President.

Sadly, these episodes are likely to become more, not less, common. We can decry people like Joyner or Klayman, or on another level, people like Pennsylvania police chief Mark Kessler and Sheriff Joe Arpaio, but all of them are as much symptoms as causes of this unrest among racist and bigoted white Christian tea party Americans.

They did not get the America they want, and now, like children throwing a tantrum, they are going to punish us all, and the country we love, for failing to fulfill their plantation fantasies.

Hrafnkell Haraldsson

Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.