Lucifer Enters the Arena

Well, we all knew Hillary was going to be portrayed as Cruella de Vil at the GOP convention. We knew this because she was already being labelled in devilish ways, so who didn’t expect more of that?

But – Lucifer?  C’mon,guys.

It’s standard practice, if folks are fighting over what the common good is, then you try to unite them around an evil they all know.

But – Lucifer?  Really?

Saul Alinsky, who actually was a pretty darn good non-violent community organizer (please don’t forget the non-violent part) has been viewed as Satanic for decades now by the GOP, who were talking about Welfare Queens back when Alinsky was organizing the poor to force slum landlords to make repairs.

So Alinsky came up, in about the first sentence of Ben Carson’s speech, because Hillary wrote a paper about him when she was an undergrad. And Carson noted that Alinsky somewhere mentioned that Lucifer was the original rebel against law and order.

And Carson just took off from there, and in about one sentence deduced that Hillary, who admired Alinsky, was therefore s servant of Lucifer.

Lucifer?  Really?

So this is how it’s going to be this election cycle. Hot. Pitchfork hot. Red hot iron hot. Flames a-leaping hot. I do expect an ad with Hillary wearing Devil horns, maybe by next week.

Personally, I don’t think her Mommy ads are cutting it. You know which ad I mean, the one where little kids are watching Trump make fun of folks and say rude words. And then Hillary comes on, saying seriously, Our kids are watching.

These ads aren’t working because the issues for which the GOP is caricaturing her as Lucifer are way more important than her ad. I think she needs to address the hell fire, not the branding of her as the Devil – for real. The endless street killings ISIS is pulling off. The shooting of police and the shooting of black men. What’s really up in Syria, and in Turkey.  And the policy that can help us, as fear-mongering does not.

It’s been a week of craziness in the GOP Convention, and goofiness, too:
Melania using Michelle’s speech;
Cruz attacking Trump,
Trump upstaging Cruz,
the delegates booing, yes, actually booing Cruz,
Cruz stealing the news cycle for a day,
and Lucifer entering the conversation:
for all this, there have been some hopeful signs in the GOP convention.

Four years ago, their convention was, as Dave Letterman put it, 50 shades of white. The only black face in the room was Condoleezza Rice’s. This time, there are a lot more non-white faces, Asian, African-American, Latino.  Still not a national amount, for sure. But, say, 15%, I’d guess. That’s a step forward, for the whitest party, the don’t-change- our-society party.

And there are openly gay folks there. Caitlin Jenner is there. An openly gay speaker is going to talk. Some of the surrogates, if not openly gay, are at least half-way out of the closet. For the party with the ugliest anti LGBT platform in history, this is a small step in the right direction.

There’ve been women at the GOP convention for a long time. But not at the mikes. Eight years ago Sarah Palin got a thunderous welcome for being tanned, fit, fashionable, and saying the word Lipstick into the microphone. Hey, wasn’t that enough? Isn’t lipstick what women are about? (For the record, I love lipstick, detest Sarah Palin.)

This year there are women presenters, not many but some. And though what they say is god-awful conservative stuff, it is not unintelligent. This is a step forward – for the GOP.

And Trump is talking about undoing the legislation that has muzzled preachers for more than 40 years, legislation that threatens to take away their tax exempt religious status if they say anything about politics.

This is a very good idea! Because, while we may have been spared some religious idiots, we have lost the great preacher orators who spoke to the nation, and led us. We have lost the Martin Luther Kings and the William Sloane Coffins. We have lost the Rabbis who spoke to the nation about Vietnam. We’ve lost the moral compass setters. And we need them. And, yes, we’ll have to endure the politicals of Franklin Graham and Joel Osteen.

No, I won’t vote for Trump in order to get this done. But I want it done. And I want to acknowledge that it is a good idea, and it has come out of this messed up, volatile, tempest-tossed GOP convention, and this lewd, impulsive, self-congratulating man, Trump.

Whatever else we may say about this GOP week, it has not been a four-day info-mercial. It’s been unpredictable and rocky. And very political. And interesting.

Let’s see if Lucifer will turn up next week, at the Dems meeting. Stay tuned —
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Image: Satan Sowing. Rops, Félicien, 1872. Vanderbilt Divinity school Library,
Art in the Christian Tradition.