FEBRUARY 20, 2021 – Years ago I ate occasionally at the Texas Steak House—a restaurant chain where on a budget you could pretend you were in the money by eating . . . steak. The slab of beef came with extra-large fries and a piece of “Texas toast,” about two inches thick and soaked in butter. It symbolized the main attribute of the restaurant’s namesake: bigness.
Today, Texas experiences big trouble. You might say, “Texas is toast.”
The images of misery down there are familiar to all of us bystanders who are smugly warm, well fed, well hydrated, and can go “full spigot” when it comes to water. But we’re all in this together, whether we like it or not. Sooner or later one person’s extreme independence leads to dependence on others—via local distribution of often begrudgingly paid national tax dollars.
“We’re all in this together,” however, is not part of the American ethos, let alone a Texan trait. This prevailing strain in our culture runs counter to what I learned in Sunday school.
God is losing patience with America. Despite all signs from heaven . . . er, earth . . . we in our arrogance of individualism think we can go it alone; that we’ll prosper most only if we’re left alone, unfettered by government restriction, regulation, or interference (though not by governmental support). Worse, we obsess over our freedoms—including the freedom to deny science.
I think the denial of science is what drives God crazy. Goons souped up on falsehoods and waving “Trump” flags, smashing up democracy? God’s seen versions of that movie before. But wholesale wreckage of the whole damn planet when we ought to know better? There’s a deeply troubling first.
“Dang namnit!” I can hear the Big Dog say to flabbergasted Fox and Friends. “I create the Jetstream to keep arctic air in . . . well, the arctic, and you keep burning fossil fuels and weakening the Jetstream so that cold air slides down where I never intended it to be—at least for another few thousand years. What the hell?!” Then to the speechless Friends, I imagine Mad Dog . . . I mean, Mad God . . . adding, “And until you mend your ways, take ‘In God we Trust’ off your me-damned money!”
Yet, being the chosen creatures we are—dare I say, “God’s creatures”?—we Americans get all juiced up on the Texas-sized notion that government should be confined to an area the size of Rhode Island. Consequently, “Don’t tread on me!” works out to mean, “Don’t tread on my power grid!” and “Don’t mess with Texas” creates a full-blown “mess.”
I don’t think Republicans are clued in to God’s worldview. So far, I hear only dissonance—blame assigned to radical, leftist, socialist support of renewable energy and, of course, “the weather,” which means, “God,” except weather patterns are affected by climate change, which is caused by . . . God’s creatures. Oops.
What the country needs right now is Texas-sized respect for science . . . and God—before we’re all toast.
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© 2021 by Eric Nilsson
