I Couldn't Help Myself

I'm a bit of a documentary junkie.  I can't help myself.  I enjoy history and like hearing the stories of those who came before us.  I had a bit of time on my hands yesterday and watched a couple of documentaries.  I tried to watch one on the Knights Templar, but that one really didn't do anything for me, because the story was incoherent, and the story was dry.  For the first time in ages, I didn't finish a documentary.  As I browsed through other possibilities, I saw that Tiger King was listed under documentaries.  That's not a documentary; it's reality TV, which is a television genre I don't enjoy.  I didn't watch the show while it was running, and I'm not gonna start now, thank you very much.

I stumbled across one called Bad Faith and decided to give it a watch.  The story discusses the rise of Christian Nationalism in America, touching on the KKK, but really focuses on how the Moral Majority has shaped our current political climate.  I think it's worth your time, and didn't see anything that was patently incorrect or false.  In fact, a lot of what was discussed falls in line with my education and my experiences growing up.

The one thing I will say is that the story left me feeling a little... hopeless.  I tend to work with the expectation that people are rational beings.  This fundamental assumption has bitten me in the @$$ more than I'd care to admit, but I continue to hold out hope.  Unfortunately, this story drove home the point that Christian Nationalists are operating from a belief system rooted in religion, and the belief system is ingrained in such a way that they don't want to negotiate with people whose viewpoint is different from their own.

In all honesty, I've kind of been quietly carrying this understanding for quite a while, but have generally chosen to overlook the reality, again, because I keep holding out the hope that I might be able to win a heart here or a mind there.  But it really hit me hard when a pastor essentially said that Christian Nationalists would rather burn it all down than compromise.  I get that Christian Nationalists are not a majority of America... heck, I doubt they're even a majority of Christians, but I could be wrong there.  Regardless, if even a quarter of Americans identify themselves as Christian Nationalist, and if they genuinely hold the mentality that they'd rather break our country and destroy our republic than compromise, then we're in serious trouble.

So yeah, the show was educational; I learned something.  But I did not feel better after the lesson ended.  Unfortunately, it was a documentary, and I couldn't help myself.  Oh, by the way, I still recommend it.

One other thing... I had forgotten that Ronald Reagan said Make America Great Again, way back in 1980.