It’s always frightening to me when people insert violent imagery into political appeals. It’s even scarier when the person delivering the violent imagery is a third degree black-belt known for kicking butt like Chuck Norris. Growing up I liked Norris. He was the star of horrible films like The Delta Force and was a real master of the martial arts. As a kid there are few things cooler than karate and B-movies.
As an adult I’m frightened and disgusted by Chuck Norris. Yes, I realize he’s in his seventies and I could probably outrun him at this point, but I’m frightened of him because of his rhetoric. His recent Youtube message about the demise of the United States made the 2012 Presidential Election sound like a holy war. The first time I saw it I thought it was probably from Will Ferrell’s Funny or Die website, but sadly there was nothing funny about it.
While it might sound like I’m going overboard, Norris basically equates re-electing Barack Obama with the triumph of Satan. If you doubt me just look at some of these lines. Early on Chuck says “our country as we know it may be lost forever” and later he reiterated that point by saying ” . . . and watch our country go the way of socialism or something much worse” (emphasis mine). Norris also adds the quote “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men and women do nothing,” which is saying that re-electing Obama is the triumph of evil.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCrlvsMdFi4
Perhaps you are mad at yourself and want to watch this thing, you can also just read the text at the end of the article.
The most chilling line in the whole thing comes from Chuck’s wife Gena “We will preserve for our children this last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness.” This is an obvious example of crazy Evangelical speak, and it should scare the piss out of you. Not only have Chuck and Gena set political discourse back fifty years, but they’ve turned the 2012 election into a referendum on “good” and “evil.” That referendum becomes completely absurd when you remember that many Evangelicals don’t think of Mormons as true Christians, while Obama is a, ya know, Christian.
The Norris Family is not alone when it comes to turning the upcoming Presidential Election into a battle between cosmic forces. This kind of “God Judgement” for political things is common in the Republican Party and Evangelical Circles. It took about five seconds to find some examples on the Google (click here and here and here, all of those are doozies, but the last one, whoa!) which means while that type of thinking may not be necessarily mainstream, it’s mainstream enough that thousands if not millions believe in it.
This is not an anti-Romney or anti-Republican piece. I know there are many sane individuals who will be voting for Romney in November (my father is one of them and I like him), but I haven’t seen Mitt disavow the Chuck Norris video yet. I know that I have conservate Pagan brothers and sisters out there, and that’s fine. We can’t all agree on everything, but it’s important to know who is sleeping in your bed. Anyone who would turn a Presidential election into a potential Armageddon is not going to come out swinging for the rights of minority faith. I don’t see Mitt Romney opening up religious re-education camps in Kansas or anything, but with a Republican Congress (and perhaps Senate) I can see potential cracks in the boundaries between church and state.
Getting back to Chuck, there’s sadness and emotion in his voice. He truly believes the madness coming out of his mouth. I don’t doubt his patriotism, or the conviction of his religious beliefs. What bothers me is how warped his convictions have become. The end of the world because of a political candidate? I just don’t understand how people can go through life being that hateful and that fearful. I want to believe that Chuck is a good guy helping other people, but when I picture him in my head all I can envision is a guy filling up his basement bunker with canned food. I miss the guy from The Delta Force.
What’s saddest about all of this is how it contributes to the broken politics and broken political system in the United States. Instead of listing sane reasons not to vote for someone it becomes about someone’s twisted interpretation of God. There’s no real political discourse in the United States because our elections have been turned into Holy Wars of Biblical proportions. I’m not sure we are headed for a thousand years of darkness, but this election season has felt like nine months of stupid so far.
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The text of Chuck and his wife Gena:
We are here to talk about a growing concern we all share. If we look to history, our great country and freedom are under attack. We’re at a tipping point and, quite possibly, our country as we know it may be lost forever if we don’t change the course in which our country is headed.
With our country at a crossroads, Chuck and I have asked ourselves what we can be doing to help support this great country we’re blessed to live in and how we can encourage our like-minded American brothers and sisters to unite and let their voices be heard,” she said. “It is estimated that in the 2008 election, 30 million evangelical Christians stayed home on voting day and Obama won the election by 10 million votes.
We know you love your family and your freedom as much as Gena and I do, and it is because of that we can no longer sit quietly or stand on the sidelines and watch our country go the way of socialism or something much worse.
Our only hope is for each of us to make that we have not only registered to vote in the primary and general elections in 2012, but to make sure our voices will be heard by casting our votes on election day.
As Edmund Burke said, ‘All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men and women do nothing.’
Our great president, Ronald Reagan said, ‘Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected and handed on for them to do the same.
President Reagan went on to say that ‘You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children and our children’s children say of us we justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done.
Please stand with us, let’s unite for God and country. And may God continue to bless the United States of America. See you at the polls.
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