The Rise of a New Savior

“By their fruits ye shall know them” -- Matthew 7:16-20

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White evangelicals were so key for Trump that, had no white evangelicals voted, Clinton would have won in a landslide, 59 percent to 35 percent. – The Washington Post

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“I would rather spend countless millennia in Hell than one day in Pat Robertson’s Heaven” – Keith Gottschalk, WJBC-AM, 2003

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I think I’m going to Hell.

Wait, I pretty much believe I’m going to Hell and have for some time now.

I was born and raised Roman Catholic; fell out with divorce and tried other faiths and didn’t care for any of them.

Most of what I know is Christianity, either in training or practice. I think Jesus Christ was a pretty righteous dude. His followers are another matter entirely.

But they will see glory and I will be cast into the Lake of Fire™ for things I have done and said – too many here to list.

I’m not sure if Heaven is the place pictured in Monty Python’s ‘Meaning of Life’ where it’s Christmas every day and everyone ‘looks smart and wears a tie.’ Or, if it’s like the images in churches where everyone lolls on clouds all day forever praising God and eating grapes. Either way, it seems rather boring.

I, on the other hand, have always pictured Heaven as the biggest, newest and bestest football stadium. Heaven are all the people sitting in the luxury loges (like Jimmy Falwell and Pat Robertson and Billy or Franklin Graham) the box seats are for the saved who aren’t the Superstars of Christianity (sounds like a late night record offer, I know – 12 original hits, 12 original stars), purgatory people (see, I didn’t forget about the Catholics) are in the cheap seats waiting for a ticket exchange, sort of like the Green Bay Packers season ticket wait list. Those in Hell are divided between working the concession stands and restrooms or serving those in the luxury loges. The babies in limbo get to forever wander the concourses, looking out into the field but they can never go in. They get an occasional beer and hot dog to keep them happy.

Except if you're a Browns fan. 

 As far as being in Hell though, it won’t take much getting used to for me. I’ve worked in the service industry during the holiday season.

But the real reason for this post is this story in The Washington Post:, Hopeful and relieved, conservative white evangelicals see Trump’s win as their own. The writer interviewed a number of people who described how easy it was to cashier in all their moral scruples to vote for Trump. Makes for fascinating, insightful reading and causes me to reflect on my experiences with Christianity.

If honesty is going to get you into Heaven, this guy might make it to the big box:

“People wanted to vote for Hillary because they’re like, ‘Trump is a bigot.’ He is! But Hillary is 10 times worse,” (Cornerstone Church member) Scott Risvold said, sitting on an overstuffed couch in the lobby at Cornerstone Chapel, 45 minutes early for the Wednesday night worship service.

Hint

I admire that, I really do. The only thing he didn’t say was what Hillary was 10 times worser at. But that’s probably because that libtard journalist wouldn’t put that in there.

“Every church is going to be influenced by the culture,” (Cornerstone Church Pastor) Hamrick said. “The issue becomes, will the church rise up and become an influencer of the culture?”

Good God man, you’ve only had 2,000 years to do it and had a stranglehold on public morals for many centuries of those. Maybe that was the reason for God allowing Democrats and Gays, I dunno.

On the opposite couch, (CC member) Rob Cole nodded. “My sister, I just wanted to unfriend her on Facebook today. Because she’s a die-hard Democrat,” he said. Cole told Risvold, who worked in military intelligence before leaving the service last year at 29, about a video he watched online in which a Christian speaker abroad hailed Trump’s victory. “It really makes you feel great to be a Christian,” he said.

So you must be feeling really, really good, since you resisted the temptation to reject the sister sinner (at least for now). And, of course, this was foretold:

“For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.” – Matthew 10:35

OK, I didn’t see anything about brother against sister, but maybe that’s a given. It was in my family anyway.

And, after all, in the first part of that verse, Jesus says:

“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.”

Remember THAT this Thanksgiving.

So, see, Trump is prophecy. I can’t see him riding a pale horse, however. Putin yes, Trump, not so much.

On we go:

That’s how (CC member Rose) Aller, the substitute teacher, felt, too. “There’s been a big attack on our Christian faith. I think Christians took a big stand this time and said we’re going to stand up for our faith.”

That ‘big attack’ was no doubt launched by the same people who brought us The War on Christmas™ Hmmmm. Maybe Python was right and Heaven is a place where every day is Christmas and those who dare to say happy holidays are thrown into The Lake of Fire™

Feelings. . . 

The morning after the election, Aller said, a black second-grader came into her school and declared, “Trump was elected, so we’re moving.” Aller said she responded, “We’re going to miss you. Let me know when your last day is. We’ll throw you a goodbye party.” She says she’s sure the boy knew she was joking.

Har de har har. Of course she knew. She could see his heart!

Hamrick preached Wednesday night about the culture that has bewildered and infuriated evangelicals during the Obama years. “There’s gender confusion. There’s sexual identity confusion — people are inventing words now,” he said in his teaching. Mentioning the pop star Miley Cyrus, he continued: “Pansexual. What do all these words mean?”

I know that new and big words are difficult for you types but remember -- Google is your friend. Unless you consider the Internet the Devil’s Playground™

But hey, VP-in-waiting Mike Pence believes you can pray the gay away (and probably all matter of sexual perversion) and if that doesn’t work there are ways. . . other ways.

Cardinal Biggles. . ..  the RACK!

And finally:

“It’s like every day our morals in America are being chipped away. Now on the radio you can say words you couldn’t say eight years ago,” said Risvold, the military veteran. “The more we go immoral and crazy, and everybody’s feelings count — I feel this and I feel that.”

Yeah, I know how you FEEL man. I just know it. OUR morals are being chipped away. Damn, pretty soon the pastor’s wife (that harlot!) will probably get a tattoo.

And as for feelings, I get ya’. Men shouldn’t have them. They’re supposed to be reserved for the wimmen folk especially at that time of the month where they pay for Eve’s sin. Feelings get us into a lot of trouble. It’s best we keep them inside us.

I dunno, I remember all the Christian folk talking about their feelings that the world was persecuting them. They didn’t want to make that cake for the gay person because it made them feel like sinners. Stuff like that. I guess certain feelings are OK, others aren’t.

Before you join me in the snark fest, remember: these are the people who are going to Heaven. Not me, not you – them, because their bible tells them so, IF they do everything God commands.

Taxi! 

Which always confused me during that time I was a Lutheran and was taught that we were saved by Grace Alone™ I wish these Christian churches would get together and come up with an agreed upon way to stay out of hell. I guess no matter what you believe, voting for Donald Trump was a start.

Again, though, I’m confused. Not all the Christian churches supported Trump. Many Christians thought his views and actions were very un-Jesus-like.

But I guess these are not the ‘Evangelical’ Christians, so perhaps they are Fake Christians. I guess that’s a problem: people can call themselves whatever they like and Risvold says that’s a problem.

I looked up the word ‘evangelical.’ Merriam-Webster online says this:

of or relating to a Christian sect or group that stresses the authority of the Bible, the importance of believing that Jesus Christ saved you personally from sin or hell, and the preaching of these beliefs to other people

having or showing very strong and enthusiastic feelings.

It’s funny, I read this article and have been in and out of Christianity all my life and I don’t think Mr. Trump has anything to do with it or evangelicals. I mean, he’s never even talked in tongues. Well, wait, maybe he did.

But the people who claim to be Evangelical Christians are supposed to remain apart from convening with those whose lifestyle is an abomination to the Lord.

But in this case, they cast their lot with the unrepentant sinner because. . . they wanted power; not to protect themselves but for themselves so that they may conquer in the sign of the cross via the U.S. Code and the Supreme Court.

Other Christians have cast their lots with dictators throughout history and it never went well for them.

So we seem to have a dispute, simply enough, between those wanting Trump to use God’s law to trump man’s law. And it seems that some Christians now see the rise of their flawed champion as their golden opportunity to create a world that the Commander in The Handmaid’s Tale would be proud of.

It’s all so confusing. They all seem to be trying to save themselves from perdition by making the rest of us conform to their belief system whether we like it or not. And they believe they have finally found their savior.

This reminds me of something from a long-ago play where these same issues were fought over:

Roper: So now you'd give the Devil benefit of law!

More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

Roper: I'd cut down every law in England to do that!

More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you — where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast — man's laws, not God's — and if you cut them down — and you're just the man to do it — d'you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake.

A Man for All Seasons

At this point, I’ll vote for the Constitution over the Bible, thanks.

See you in Hell!

Psychiatry R Us

I went to see my drug pusher today.

She has a nice office, of course, in a nice building and she has a lot of pretty professional plaques on the wall and a special chair given to her by the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh. And she’s been listed as one of the top psychiatrists in the metro area by Pittsburgh Magazine for at least two years in a row.

And, frankly, she stinks at what she does. And I probably should find (yet) another psychiatrist, but I am so tired of it all.

Maybe she's still practicing?

Today was the day I knew I wasn’t going to get any more help from her than I already am. 

I told her about my ER visit and how, after all the tests, they could find nothing wrong with me. I also told her that since then, things have not been getting better with the reprimand still hanging over my head and a supervisor who gave me a yearly rating guaranteeing between the two personnel actions, that I will not be able to leave this job, even if we want to move.

I made it very clear that the drug regimen is not working.

I made it very clear that the work situation was untenable. 

All she wants to know is whether I’m going to kill myself. And how. And she wondered about my rusting shotgun.

Exasperated, I said, no, I’m not going to kill myself but if I did I know it wouldn’t be with a shotgun that doesn’t work. 

It was Col. Mustard in the bedroom with the bungee cord

Well, how, she asked.

I gave this a few seconds of thought. Drowning myself in the koi pond sounded romantic but I didn’t think she’d buy that.

Um, how about a bungee cord from a doorknob? Seems easy enough, and, like those exercisers you see Ronco pushing at Christmas, they fit over any doorknob anywhere – at home, at work, even in your doctor’s waiting room!

Seriously, I wouldn't kid you

Instead of seeing the humor (hell, no one ever sees the humor, I think they’d rather see you off yourself since it would demonstrate that at least you’re a serious person), she asked me if I had any bungee cords at home.

Seriously?

Yes, seriously.

Doctor, do you want to come over to my house and take all my bungee cords? Because if I ever must bring home something large in my car or move, I’ll have to buy a whole other set.

Words fail me some times. This was not one of those times.

I really think we're making progress here

“Look, while you’re there taking my greasy bungee cords, why don’t you help yourself to all the knives and forks in the kitchen too,” I said. “I mean I don’t mean to be disrespectful (but I did), but there are so, so many things you can use to off yourself, it’s only limited by your own imagination!”

See why I’ve gone through so many, many mental health professionals in my life? 

As for the drug regimen that is clearly no longer working, that seemed to panic her about as much as the phantom bungee cords (I mean seriously, have you even LOOKED at pictures of suicides doctor? I could show you a few sites. . .).

Her solution was to double down and prescribe more of the same, which we did six months ago. 

Happy happy happy happy

Yes, if it’s clearly not working, let’s do much more of the same.

With that kind of thinking, I think she has a clear shot to be the next general manager of the Cleveland Browns.

As for the job, her solution was quite novel.

“I just think you need to find a different way of thinking about your job,” she said. 

I am seriously not kidding. 

And that’s when I knew it was game over.

You see, I think my psychiatrist is probably pretty book smart. But I think judging from what I’ve seen of her credentials and FB site (yes, I spy on everyone – I was in Military Intel, it’s in my blood) that she can’t put herself in the shoes of her patients. I asked her to do that today and she said “I’m trying.”

She can’t. She has never known the want, the pain and the fear inside of people she is looking to help. She can’t relate to it. There’s always a book solution, always another pill, always some, well, bullshit rationale that will keep the patient from bleeding out mentally. At least until they do. 

But for Christ’s sakes, don’t die on my watch. The paperwork is such a pain.

Often time I have caught her looking at me as if I was some sort of exotic insect. I suspect many other patients have noticed the same thing as well. We fit somewhere into the diagnosis matrix of the DSM V. Some of us are just a little harder to identify, classify and index.

So, the next time I go back to see her, everything will be fine. I won’t waste her time by whining about intractable issues of jobs and medications and she can get me in and out in enough time to protect her billable hours because her nice Lexus in the parking lot needs paid. 

No sense fighting for treatment or a solution. There is no solution and treatment, it seems, is pushing the latest drug the pharmacy rep has just given her samples of (I’ve seen all manner of trinkets on her desk with drug trade names on them). 

I should have given up on treatment a long time ago. I was stupid. I believed the advertising, the hype, the caring professionals who said, in the nicest ways, that they wanted to help you. 

It’s an industry, like everything else. As for your mental concerns, what it comes down to is this:

You’re on your own sucker. 

Gratitude

Disclaimer: these feelings of gratitude could change at any time, especially tomorrow.

I've been struggling to write lately. Tomorrow is the soon-to-be-famous Address to the Director and I was thinking about writing on that but since I've been informed that the Stasi reads the blog, why tip my hand?

The old fallback for mental health bloggers and other pitchers of woo is to do 'the gratitude column.' Of course, that's akin to singing 'Climb Every Mountain' as their shoveling dirt in your grave, but whatever.

1. I am most grateful for my wife without whom, I would not be here today. Probably. Out of 7 billion mortals, I'm convinced she's the only one who not only gets me but can take living with me. Believe me, it isn't easy.

2. My hometown Cleveland Indians are one game away from winning their first World Series since 1948. As someone who attended their first Indians game as a 10 year old and skipped class in college to catch noon games, this is a big deal.

3. Despite an absolutely atrocious diet, for some reason, all the major organs, including the heart (!) are in pretty good shape. Yes, the liver has been battered but is better than it was three years ago. I have no idea why this is happening.

4. Even though it is rapidly filling with yarn and knitting accessories (caution to anyone marrying a knitter), I love my house and especially my basement sports bar/newseum. This is the only house I have lived in in my entire life that I feel totally comfortable in. It took awhile after the police raid to get back to a point of feeling somewhat secure, but that was not the house's fault.

5. I still like my Mustang. It was not a life-transforming machine, but then no one should count on a car to do that. It's still pretty sharp and fulfills a long-held dream from young adulthood to own one. And I figured, if mommy and daddy gave me one for my birthday in high school (as did happen) I probably would have crashed it anyway.

6. Coffee. I bought a new coffee machine yesterday and can taste the difference this morning. Thank whomever for coffee. How could we live without it?

7. Fall - my favorite time of year. After a particularly difficult getting-the-yard-ready-for-winter session yesterday, I sat for awhile and watched the wind whistle through the orange, red and green trees and felt a bit of childhood come back to me. Nothing like the feel and smell of fall. And when you get to be my age, you really have to stop and savor every one. You never know.

8. Friends - I still have some. They're mostly on the Internet. Some I haven't seen in awhile (since my high school reunion) and I hope they haven't given up on me. I know I'm a pill but I'd like to think I'm not really that bad a guy. At least my wife tells me so. I still have a friend in my home town - I don't get to see him and his wife very much anymore. Most of my IRL friends are my wife's friends and I don't get to see them much at all. And all the friends I lost, I still think about and wonder how they are doing.

9. Family -- not much left here. My two boys are really my pride and joy and even though I hardly ever see them, they know I love them with every Amazon delivery. Everyone else on my side is dead or not speaking to me because of long held grudges against my mother. My family, as it were, is my wife's family and I get the impression they think I'm a weirdo but they tolerate me the times I see them once a year.

10. The Cleveland Browns -- whenever I feel like the biggest loser on Earth, a pathetic waste of human space, a damaged, despised waste of potential, I think of the Browns and then I don't feel so bad.

Ah, hell, this is degenerating into 'gratitude with conditions,' so I'll stop it here. It's already a longer list than I thought it would be.

Epic Battles of Staying Awake to Watch Sports

In fact, it was this exact one!

It started with a transistor radio and an earplug.

Back in the day, we only had one plug to put in one ear. You decided which one. 

You know, when it was funny

Downstairs the Browns are on Monday Night Football playing the Chargers. My dad kept the sound low so up in my bedroom, I would sleep and not crawl out on to the landing to try and listen to Cosell, Gifford and Karras (at that time).

But I had the little radio and the earphone. The problem was the Browns were on WHK-AM, a 5,000 watts station that, at night, did not have the magical properties the 50,000 watt WWWE had.

Huddled against the cold bedroom widow, trying to turn the radio this way and that to hear Gib Shanley through the fuzz and static, I had to keep one ear open to make sure dad wasn’t coming up the stairs.

Yeah, he’d do that occasionally. The thing is, he was a big guy so you could hear the stair creak. So I had a few seconds to stash the radio under the pillow and pretend I was asleep.

You see, my parents were big believers in putting the kids to bed early so they would be rested and ready for school tomorrow so they could relax without us getting in the way.

Shortly before my mom passed, I asked her – why, why why, the 7:30 p.m. bedtime until third grade?

“Because we wanted a break from both of you,” she said.

Right that way up the stairs kids

So when Bob Barker said “good night and hoping all your consequences are happy ones, “that was the time to hit the stairs.

I can remember in May, lying in bed in broad daylight while kids younger than me were playing in the yard next door.

Kids have too much energy to sleep that early. So I would pile my news books under the bed to read until I fell asleep. If I had to, I’d read by night light.

My mom blamed reading by the night light for screwing up my vision which meant money spent in eyeglasses.

Browns vs. Namath in the very first MNF 1970.

Back in the 70s, all the NFL games were on Sunday afternoons except for Monday Night Football, which was as much as ‘show’ as a game. For any team to be showcased in front of a national audience was a big deal. Since the Browns were a mediocre to poor team (like now) they didn’t get many MNF games. 

Kings of the butthurt

In fact Browns fans would get butthurt if their Sunday game wasn’t featured on the MNF halftime roundup. In the typical ‘everyone is against us’ Cleveland mentality, we took it personally. Cleveland takes everything personally.

So when Monday night rolled around and the Browns were on, well, tough luck kid – it’s a school night.

So now that I’m old-er and faced with the prospect of sports I want to watch beginning at 8 p.m. or later (good God, why? Oh, right, West Coast ratings) and tomorrow being a work day (bright-eyed and bushy tailed at 7 a.m.) I wage a titanic struggle to overcome sleep.

I knew last night’s Stanley Cup game was going to be a struggle. I drank coffee all day but that elixir has lost its magic jolt and now I primarily drink it because my doctor said it’s good for my liver.

"I heard Gottschalk actually was thinking of going to bed!"

So I knew what to expect this morning when the opening strains of Roxy Music’s Avalon ‘jolted’ me awake at 5:15. You know the ‘shit, I was right in the middle of a dream/oh my God, I can’t believe I’m this tired’ feeling. 

Work, at least in the morning, will be a bleary-eyed experience, filled with Keurig coffee and head nods. Hopefully by the afternoon, I’ll be out of slumberland.

But of course, it was worth it. Pens up 2-0 and all’s right with the world. If they had lost, I’d be tired AND grouchy. 

At least in adulthood, I don’t have to furtively hide under the covers and sneak the play-by-play past my dad.