Are You a Conservative Christian? Have Fun Worrying About The End Of The World Instead Of Living Your Life Today
Some Conservative Christians confuse the pain and suffering of minding their own business with the Apocalypse
I receive all kinds of newsletters because of my work; one of them is the Gab newsletter, written by conservative social media network founder, Andrew Torba. From pre- to post-COVID, Torba’s newsletters have gone from boosting Trump and encouraging traditional patriotism to an increasingly gloomy, and now completely apocalyptic, survivalist, Rapture is Coming Any Day vision of today and death for the future. It’s all survivalist all the time. And … well …
I’m a Christian myself, so I have some ability to empathize with Andrew and the others who are part of his movement. I’m not saying “sympathize” or “agree,” by the way. Use your dictionary.
I can also easily see that there is some serious disconnection with reality going on. It’s the same disconnection that has drawn followers to apocalyptic beliefs and actions throughout history. Who knew that the famous Renaissance painter Botticelli painted “end times” after hearing this from Savonarola: a man who wanted to burn Botticelli’s more famous secular, sexual, and beautiful paintings? Those end times never came for civilization as a whole although many died in plagues and violence during that time (and most others we know of) in history. As to Savonarola? It didn’t end well.
I’m not saying Torba is today’s Savonarola: far from it. Torba and the Gab crew want to take care of themselves more than they want to hurt others. Back in the friar’s day, you had a reasonable chance of getting knifed on the way to the market and thrown in the Arno. You could get robbed and knifed while standing in the audience listening to Savonarola scream how damned to Hell you were. Then they would throw your body on the Bonfire along with the other Vanities.
But Torba is as riled up as Savonarola was. Here’s his dialog. You can read it on your mobile device in complete safety in the comfort of your climate-controlled home:
“Everyone has noticed things we used to take for granted are gone …”
True! There are a lot of “traditional values” that are gone. Yesterday when Bruce and I went to Epcot, we saw a variety of young couples: gay, straight, trans — enjoying themselves and openly expressing affection. People having to stay in the closet for their entire lives? That is gone in many areas, if not everywhere.
But Andrew Torba is more concerned about minor conveniences he enjoyed as part of the economic and commercial system most people did take for granted. Andrew seems to have felt that the height of civilization was the ability to choose from 800 different kinds of ice cream 24-hours a day, delivered via DoorDash. This would also include the God-Given Right And Divine Ability To Select Any Carpet Color And Have It Installed The Next Day For $129.99.
Hey Andrew, check this out: when I was growing up, there were:
No cell phones
Stores closed at 5 PM
Regular people had 2–3 pairs of shoes
Soda was an occasional treat
There were 3 TV channels
I could go on: for pages. Let’s start with … what I am doing right now, what Torba does with his newsletter and Gab “ecosystem,” was not possible nor even barely imagined, when I was growing up. And I’m not that fucking old.
A lot of times when I talk with people in my age range (excluding Pettigrew), they wax nostalgic for the good old days. And in terms of basic health and happiness, most of them have a point.
People today are fat, sick, and nearly dead: 10% of the population takes medication for high blood pressure and almost half of the adults in the United States have hypertension. That’s because 75% of U.S. adults are overweight or obese, and less than 20% of the population gets the recommended 150 minutes of weekly exercise. That would be 2.5 hours of exercise. A week.
Fat, ugly, undesirable, unsuccessful, unfamous haglet here averages 1 hour a day. Every day.
Maybe that puts me into a different — maybe better — category than the anonymous “keyboard warriors” who like to call me names because I’m a woman unwilling to keep my mouth shut and sit on a couch watching Oprah until I eventually blend with the ScotchGuard fabric.
Where was I?
Torba’s got a long list of complaints, none of which actually point to the collapse of our society, a phenomenon that ironically, I agree with him about: a phenomenon devoutly to be wished.
I don’t mean to lecture ultra-Evangelical Christian Torba about Jesus Christ’s word, but it’s kind of ironic that the things Torba says our society is losing out on aren’t things that Christ would say were good: fully-stocked grocery store shelves and bustling logistics networks smoothly operating due to “service workers." Torba throws in some anti-Soviet Union rhetoric for good measure; he missed skool lessons (I did too — I had to learn it on my own) about how the Red Army beat down Nazi Germany — at the cost of 10 million, yes, that’s true …
Jesus Christ did not say anything about fully-stocked grocery shelves. Jesus Christ did not say that God appears in supermarket freezers next to ten flavors of Eggo waffle and 60 varieties of Lean Cuisine. Seventy-five varieties of snack cracker are not the pinnacle of civilization, Mr. Torba, and the loss of 100% of snack crackers, Chee-tos, Doritos, Chip Ahoy, Triscuit, and goddamn Oreos do not signal that our society will suddenly become Mad Max.
You don’t like the way your sh*t life is going, Torba, because you neglected a pretty important Biblical lesson: mind your own business. People are quitting “service jobs” left and right because they want to make different choices with their lives. Are you going to go out and fill potholes, Torba? How about stocking those store shelves with “essential products” like 50 different kinds of Oreos? How about pulling an all-nighter to deliver a truckload of Triscuit to the WalMart Distribution Center? None of these products existed when I was a child — and also the kind of public works Torba says people take for granted — those didn’t exist either. I remember people drowning in flash floods all the time.
Commercialism and “civilization” are two vastly different things. So are “capitalism” and “civilization”. Torba has a problem with Lenin and Stalin: so does most everyone else in the world. They were “evil dictators.” They’ve also been dead a long time. This nation not only is not immune to evil, we have long, slow, inefficient, yet inexorable oppression that isn’t led by any one person.
The good part is, as individuals, we can seek and find a way out. We don’t have to eat the corporate foods that are making us so ill. We don’t have to consume the media that dulls our minds and convinces us our best life choice is to work as a “service worker” for $11/hour, with the faint hope someday of getting a 2-week vacation. We don’t have to enlist in the military. We do not have to follow rigid social guidelines for who we live with, how we care for each other, or whether or not we have children. Not one of these conversations existed in public when I was a child. They all exist in reality right now.
I read Torba’s newsletter because despite his spiraling downward into Savonarolism, he’s someone who did come from a place of ethics and morality. And ethics and morality are about us as individuals. It’s a part of health and wellness. It’s part of living a good life in the here and now.
And a good life isn’t about stuff. It’s not about things. Christ says this loud and clear, over and over. I watched the world I grew up in became insanely about stuff: money, tech toys, clothing, objects, houses, cars, boats — yachts — private planes. For women, it became about looks in a way that devalued nearly all of us.
This is nothing new: it’s been true throughout history.
It’s ironic that people who come out of a Bible-based Christian tradition are in total fear, collecting survival gear and moving to restricted enclaves out of deadly fear that the very things which degrade our lives and dampen our spirit — are going away.
Andrew, millions of SKUs aren’t civilization. People are. And the less damage and harm we do to ourselves and others: I’m pretty sure that would sit well with Jesus Christ. At least, that’s my belief from reading The Bible.
It’s OK to go off by yourself. It’s okay to be with others you get along with. Just don’t try to take everyone else with you.