{"id":11603,"date":"2012-11-16T16:42:21","date_gmt":"2012-11-16T21:42:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?p=11603"},"modified":"2012-11-16T16:44:44","modified_gmt":"2012-11-16T21:44:44","slug":"nra-life-during-wartime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2012\/11\/16\/nra-life-during-wartime\/","title":{"rendered":"NRA: Life during wartime"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Nicolae: The Rise of Antichrist,<\/em> pp. 74-89<\/strong><\/p>\n

This one time I flew into Chicago to catch a connecting flight to Appleton. I was supposed to have 40 minutes to make the switch, but delays leaving BWI meant I\u2019d only have about 15 minutes to get to my gate on the opposite side of the airport. I raced down the walkway and \u2026<\/p>\n

Oh, nevermind. That\u2019s a boring story. Almost everyone who has ever flown has a version of that same story, and even calling it a \u201cstory\u201d seems like a stretch. The logistics of commercial passenger air travel can often be stressful, but that doesn\u2019t make them interesting<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Poor Jerry Jenkins does not realize this. \u201cWrite what you know,\u201d the old adage says, and what Jenkins knows is business travel as a commercial airline passenger, so that\u2019s what he gives us here in Nicolae<\/em>. As a result, his account of World War III ends up being less exciting, and less eventful, than even my non-story about that time I just-barely caught my flight to Wisconsin.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
It\u2019s not just a cell phone, babe, it\u2019s a UNIVERSAL cell phone.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When this series began, Rayford Steele was a pilot for a commercial airline. Three books into the series, he still seems to be one, even though now he\u2019s flying the global potentate on the one-world government\u2019s equivalent of Air Force One. Ferrying around the Antichrist and his retinue of global princes on Nicolae Carpathia\u2019s shiny new plane doesn\u2019t turn out to be any different than Rayford\u2019s old days punching the clock for Pan-Continental. The arrival of the potentate\u2019s plane doesn\u2019t disrupt any airport\u2019s usual routine. And neither does World War III and the destruction of Chicago, New York, Washington and London.<\/p>\n

That gives a surreal quality to this chapter\u2019s focus on the mundane details of life-as-usual at a major airport. It makes Jenkins\u2019 attention to detail come across as inattention. The more he adds realistic touches based on his own experience as a business traveler, the more unreal his story seems.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just the story, setting and events that are unreal. It\u2019s also Rayford\u2019s behavior and the choices he makes.<\/p>\n

Thanks to the eavesdropping system installed by his friend Earl, Rayford was able to overhear Nicolae outline his attack on the cities of North America. Amanda, who was seated next to Nicolae as he laid out that plan, was inexplicably unable to hear him. So now Rayford knows that San Francisco is set to be destroyed shortly after his plane refuels and takes off. But Amanda has no idea.<\/p>\n

This is information Amanda needs to know. She\u2019s about to get off of Nicolae\u2019s plane to try to catch a flight out of San Francisco to someplace nearer Chicago. Rayford knows that if her flight doesn\u2019t leave the airport before he takes off, then Amanda will be killed in the ensuing attack. Her life may depend on her knowing that. But for some reason, Rayford refuses to tell her:<\/p>\n

Just before the initial descent into San Francisco, Rayford huddled with Amanda. \u201cI\u2019m gonna get that door open and you off this plane as soon as possible,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m not going to wait for the postflight checklist or anything. Don\u2019t forget, it\u2019s imperative that whatever flight you find is off the ground before we are.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut why, Ray?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cJust trust me, Amanda. You know I have your best interests in mind. As soon as you can, call me on my universal cell phone and let me know Chloe and Buck are all right.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Rayford has this pattern of saying, \u201cJust trust me,\u201d or \u201cI can\u2019t tell you why\u201d even when he very well could<\/em> explain further. That makes it seem like he\u2019s testing Amanda\u2019s loyalty and willingness to give him her blind trust. Kind of a high-stakes test, too.<\/p>\n

Frustrated was too mild a word for the way Rayford felt as he landed the Condor 216 in San Francisco and taxied to a private jetway.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Beaten-to-death is too mild a description for Jenkins\u2019 over-reliance on this construction.<\/p>\n

Rayford knew beyond doubt that shortly after takeoff toward New Babylon, San Francisco would be devastated from the air the same way Chicago had been. People would die. Business and industry would crumble. Transportation centers would be destroyed, including that very airport. Rayford\u2019s first order of business was to get Amanda off that plane and out of that airport and into the Chicago area.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now you understand Rayford\u2019s great frustration \u2014 an airport is about to be destroyed and there\u2019s nothing he can do to save it.<\/p>\n

He didn\u2019t even want to wait for the jetway to be maneuvered out to the plane. He opened the door himself and lowered the telescoping stairs to the runway. He motioned for Amanda to hurry. Carpathia made some farewell small talk as she hurried past, and Rayford was grateful that she merely thanked the man and kept moving. Ground personnel waved at Rayford and tried to get him to pull the stairs back up. He shouted, \u201cWe have one passenger who needs to make a connection!\u201d<\/p>\n

Rayford embraced Amanda and whispered, \u201cI checked with the tower. There\u2019s a flight to Milwaukee leaving from a gate at the end of this corridor in less than 20 minutes. Make sure you\u2019re on it.\u201d Rayford kissed Amanda and she hurried down the steps.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What follows over the next several pages is a detailed account of Rayford\u2019s stalling the airport crews and slow-walking his \u201cpostflight checks\u201d to ensure that Amanda catches that flight to Milwaukee. This is interspersed with scenes of Buck\u2019s high-speed wandering around the Chicago highways, but there\u2019s about five pages of material here in which Jenkins attempts to build suspense around Rayford dawdling and killing time until Amanda\u2019s flight takes off safely.<\/p>\n

Bombers are striking cities across the continent. The destruction of San Francisco is imminent. All of those \u201cground personnel\u201d and helpful folks in the control tower whom Rayford stalls over the next several pages will meet a fiery death moments after he takes off. But Jerry Jenkins decides that the best way to ratchet up tension in his thriller is to have Rayford double-checking items on his postflight list while saying things like, \u201cSafety first.\u201d<\/p>\n

The tower tells Rayford that Amanda\u2019s flight is \u201cbehind schedule about 12 minutes.\u201d This news is meant to intensify the suspense here, but it only serves to remind readers that everything in this chapter is impossible.<\/p>\n

Amanda is buying a last-minute ticket from San Francisco to Milwaukee. It\u2019s a routine flight between the two cities, so it\u2019s more or less running on schedule.<\/p>\n

But how likely is it that routine flights into Milwaukee would be running on schedule if O\u2019Hare International in Chicago were shut down? With that airport closed, one would expect a ripple-effect of delays and cancellations all over the country.<\/p>\n

Particularly since O\u2019Hare isn\u2019t the only airport shut down at this point in our story. The airports are also closed in three other major cities. Factor that in and it seems even less plausible that Amanda could just skip up to the counter and grab a seat on a flight to Milwaukee.<\/p>\n

Now factor in why<\/em> all those airport closings have occurred. Most flights in and out of Chicago, New York, Washington and Dallas have been cancelled, delayed or re-routed. The others were incinerated by the perhaps-nuclear bombs that destroyed those cities.<\/p>\n

In what universe could it possibly be true that such things could occur without any disruption of normal commercial flights from San Francisco to Milwaukee?<\/p>\n

A single small conventional explosion at a single airport would likely create havoc and massive delays at airports all over the country. Here we have full-scale, perhaps-nuclear aerial assaults destroying at least four major cities and their airports with no disruption at all in passenger travel in other cities.<\/p>\n

Or set aside the nuking of Dallas, Chicago, New York and Washington \u2014 that\u2019s too vastly absurd to contemplate. It was just in the previous chapter that we read of Rayford\u2019s escape from Chicago to a military air base near Dallas. During that flight there was talk of being on the alert for hostile insurgent aircraft.<\/p>\n

I still can\u2019t make sense of this talk of a militia air force. I can\u2019t figure out whether this is actually part of Jenkins\u2019 preposterous plot or if it\u2019s only meant as Nicolae\u2019s preposterous cover story scapegoating the militias for the assaults carried out by his<\/em> air force (which we\u2019ve been told, repeatedly, is the only remaining air force in the world). But whether there are actual enemy fighter planes in the sky or whether Nicolae is just lying to the public by pretending there are \u2014 either way that ought to mean that routine flights from San Francisco to Milwaukee would be cancelled.<\/p>\n

Amidst all this howling absurdity and impossibility, we do see one brief glimpse of something like humanity in our hero. It\u2019s just a tiny flicker, and he quickly suppresses it, but for just an instant as he chats with his co-pilot it occurs to Rayford that this man is about to die. He\u2019s leaving the plane to be replaced by Rayford\u2019s usual partner. Shortly after this young copilot exits the plane, Rayford will take off and then the bombs will fall and this man will be killed along with the ground crew now fueling his plane and everyone else at this airport and everyone else in this city.<\/p>\n

It even half-occurs to Rayford that he might have a chance to do something or to say something that might save this man\u2019s life \u2014 that he could warn his co-worker of what is about to happen to San Francisco.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s going on?\u201d his copilot asked. \u201cI want to switch places with your guy as soon as I can.\u201d<\/p>\n

If only you knew what you were walking into,<\/em> Rayford thought. \u201cWhere are you headed tonight?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat possible business is that of yours?\u201d the young man said.<\/p>\n

Rayford shrugged.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hey, he tried,<\/em> right? Make some small talk about the guy\u2019s plans for the evening, then maybe swing the conversation around somehow to suggesting that maybe those plans should include running as fast as he could to get his loved ones and flee the city in the next half hour. But then the guy had to be all snippy and rude and disrespectful.<\/p>\n

Shrug<\/em>. Oh well. Now he\u2019ll get what\u2019s coming to him. He\u2019ll soon see that he should have been more deferential and respectful to Tim LaHaye<\/del> Rayford Steele.<\/p>\n

This is one of the most pernicious running themes in these books. Extreme suffering is always deserved<\/em>. People are rude or impatient, or they fail to show the proper deference for Rayford and Buck, and thus those people deserve death. Note the way the authors call attention to the copilot\u2019s youth there \u2014 \u201cthe young man.\u201d That\u2019s not to heighten our sympathy for the tragic death of someone so young. It\u2019s to reinforce the disrespect he\u2019s showing to the older, more experienced pilot \u2014 to reinforce that he deserves to die. That means Rayford doesn\u2019t have to care about him anymore and you, dear reader, should shrug off his death as well.<\/p>\n

Rayford shrugged. He felt like the little Dutch boy with his thumb in the dike. He couldn\u2019t save everyone. Could he save anyone?<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He doesn\u2019t continue thinking about this long enough to attempt to answer that question. \u201cCould he save anyone?\u201d<\/em> No. Because he doesn\u2019t try<\/em> to.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s nothing like the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dike. That boy sacrificed himself so that everyone else could flee to safety. Rayford is fleeing to safety, and he\u2019s willing to let everyone else be sacrificed to ensure that he gets away.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"NRA: Life during wartime","description":"\"Write what you know,\" the old adage says, and what Jerry Jenkins knows is business travel as a commercial airline passenger. So that's what he gives us here in Nicolae. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/141"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11603"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11603\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}