"You can't play this game we lost all the pieces
Hold your breath and just wait
Someone else will pay for your sins"
Marilyn Manson - Tattooed in Reverse
Cartoonist Minna Sundberg's whiplash swerve into Christianity during the pandemic made me curious enough to check back a few times and see what she puts out post-insanity. Her current project... what's it called again? Sell You Downriver? No, wait, Journey Upstream - is, I'll admit, better than I'd expected. She remains a gifted visual artist, even more obvious now that her computer broke, causing her to drop some digital support wheels to a reduction in background detail but no drop in characters' expressive, individualized antics. More interestingly, she took a step back from the foaming-at-the-mouth proselytism toward which she'd leaned at the end of Lovely People, and instead of the expected wall-to-wall rants against unbelievers (though I'm guessing those are coming soon enough) has mostly run through some quaint "be nice, don't be selfish or mean" childhood moral lessons. More interestingly, a couple of swipes at holier-than-thou facetiousness and hypocrisy can be or even were directly applied to the faithful themselves. Well, colour me pleasantly surprised I guess. Maybe the Finns are just doing it better?
It's certainly hard to find such self-criticism here in the States, especially with election fever ramping up. The redcaps' power base remains as always "white evangelical protestants" a.k.a. rednecks, and the effervescent idolatry they direct at their orange bullshitter would be the envy of any golden calf. His calling for a convention crowd last month to "cheat like hell" made a few headlines (especially as half of Republican candidates have pre-emptively refused to acknowledge any election result they don't like, indicating they plan to do exactly that) but commentators by and large shied away from the "so help me God" and general parochial tone of the gathering, including his injunction: "You know what happens if you don't vote. You go to hell." Umm, acktchelly, it's bearing false witness against your neighbours in a legal process like an election that's supposed to send you in that direction surer'n shootin' up a grade school. Funny how Christians never bother reading those commandments they insist on chiseling into courthouse walls.
Just like they don't seem to mind pissing on their own grandfathers' graves by turning Neo-Nazi. And there's a wider pattern there. The core of conservatism is religious after all, if not explicit supernatural belief then certainly an implicit faith in an ordered world. You need only listen to a few of their economic arguments about "the invisible hand of the market" or pie in the sky promises of industry self-regulation, to hear the same irrational belief that some other force... out there... will ensure things work out. It's an infantile impulse, the same causing the feeble-minded to constantly invent magic daddies up in the clouds. An infant may be unable to articulate the belief, but its faith in its elders is absolute - by necessity. It must know, with a certainty, that if it makes the right noises, coos or cries, its needs will be met by outside forces, its belly filled, its crotch wiped, its temperature regulated, its attention stimulated to develop its neural pathways. Parents may well understand the conscious effort and planning which under-write this guarantee, but to the infant it all just *is* like... well, magic. And you don't even need to learn the word abracadabra. It all somehow just works.
Not any particular creed but authoritarianism itself is the crux (pun intended) of the mentality. Mindless dependence on a boss. On a parental figure. Lynch your neighbour in the name of the Ten Commandments today, toss them out tomorrow, so long as some figure at a podium tells you it'll somehow work out. After all, you serve a higher cause, conveniently embodied in a pulpit-pounder of one stripe or another. Not your fault you were misled, poor you. It's not morality, it's moral evasion, sure as any toddler will steal a cookie given half a chance and expect the jar to be replenished. You can still lie, cheat and steal in your own daily life because the big man upstairs (or in office) is gonna fix everything. Because you're utterly and absolutely full of shit. I don't care how many cuddly cartoon animals you draw climbing to the allegorical source and peak of all morality, this entire species' history has shown the supposedly hard and fast rules of code and canon, of external morality, exist solely to be weaponized against targets of opportunity, then ignored at earliest convenience.
Cheat like Hell. Amen.
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