Alabama Chief Justice Tom Parker indicated on the show he was a proponent of the āSeven Mountains Mandate,ā an explicitly theocratic doctrine at the heart of Christian nationalism.
Alabama Chief Justice Tom Parker, who wrote the concurring opinion in last weekās explosive Alabama Supreme Court ruling that frozen embryos have the same rights as living children, recently appeared on a show hosted by self-anointed āprophetā and QAnon conspiracy theorist.
Parker was the featured guest on āSomeone You Should Know,ā hosted by Johnny Enlow, a Christian nationalist influencer and devoted supporter of former President Donald Trump. Over the course of an 11-minute interview, Parker articulated a theocratic worldview at odds with a functioning, pluralistic society.
āGod created government,ā he told Enlow, adding that itās āheartbreakingā that āwe have let it go into the possession of others.ā
This is why Iām talking to you. This is just made a percentage you made up. The politics are so much more complicated and youāre writing off innocent people out of your - justified - personal grievances. Hating your enemies is good (they hate us after all!) but you need to make sure youāre correctly identifying your enemies.
The religious affiliations of adult people in Alabama are as follows: Christian ā 86%, Non-Christian Faiths ā 1%, Other faiths ā 1%, Unaffiliated (religious ānonesā) ā 12%
Yikes, right? However, we can subdivide this further. Of those Christians, Evangelicals (the ones chiefly associated with the Christian Nationalist political movement) represent 49% of all Christians. Yikes again! Theyāre almost a majority of all Christians, and Christians are the extremely dominant majority of all people in Alabama. Those are our enemies.
Instead of just giving up on the South we need to unite all the disparate groups against Christian Nationalism and crush them like the cockroaches they are. We can defeat them and we canāt just give up and let them win the South.
We need a new Reconstruction.
Those percentages are meaningless. If I walk into a restaurant and see a guy at a table with 9 Nazis, I see a table with 10 Nazis.
Christianity has 2 groups left; the people who are fascist motherfuckers and the people that condone fascist motherfuckers because they get what they want out of it. Thatās 99% of the South. That other 1% are people who need to leave.
I donāt have any inclination whatsoever to engage with the Christians. None. They want to start shit, Iāll be glad to finish it with a fucking smile on my face, but Iām not into fighting the American Al-Qaeda alone and I damn sure donāt have any reason to live amongst them in the meantime because you think I have a duty to do so.
Again, when did I ask you to fight Yāall Qaeda alone? In fact I literally said youāre free to leave and it isnāt your job to stay in the South to fight them in the first place! You keep building up strawmen to attack and I donāt know why.
As to the legitimate point that āIf I walk into a restaurant and see a guy at a table with 9 Nazis, I see a table with 10 Nazis.ā I think itās worth pointing out they arenāt at the same table. They donāt go to the same churches, they arenāt in the same social groups, theyāre literally different.
Iām comfortable saying all the Evangelicals are enemies but not literally all Christians when some denominations literally have queer pastors and do same sex weddings and the like. Thereās clearly different factions and we need to drive deeper wedges between them instead of lumping them together.
Donāt go around making more enemies - we have enough of them.
Let me say this unequivocally so thereās no way to get it twisted; Christians are my enemy. I donāt have a single reason to break them down by denomination to figure out which lunatic sect is better or worse than the others. They are all equally worthless.
Just exactly what are you saying? Because youāve been trying to guilt trip me about leaving this den of shit bags for the entire threadā¦ Saying Iām āleaving people behind to dieā which is incredibly dramatic seeing as Iām still here at present.
And keep in mind, Iāve been behind enemy lines doing my fucking part my entire adult life. Thereās nothing else I can do. Not that my vote in a red state did much of anything at all. Exactly what do you expect me to do? Have you never been to Tennessee? They threaten to attack city council members for just asking them to clean up their yards. Weāre not talking about some idyllic Southern caricature here. This is a place full of āGod Hates Fagsā bumper stickers and even the police are scared to pull over people in pickup trucks because they know those people are carrying weapons. This isnāt going to be a boastful march out of town for me. Itās sneaking out under the cover of darkness.
Then let me say this unequivocally so thereās no way to get it twisted. I was objecting, specifically, to when you said ānothing in the bible belt is worth savingā. Thatās an incredibly fucked up thing to say and we shouldnāt abandon the innocent people who canāt escape. We should do what we can to save the people worth saving. We should try to find Christian allies that can be aligned against the Christian Nationalists. That doesnāt mean I expect you to personally live in the South, thatād be stupid, I live in Iowa and Iād be a huge hypocrite to demand that of you.
Not you. Us.
But when you say ānothing in the Bible belt is worth savingā you are ignoring the fact that there are people down there that need our help and itās in our own best interests to help them, because they will be crucial allies against Christian Nationalism. Nothing means no one. Fuck that. There are people in the South worth saving from the South. Theyāre not all monsters and we need all the help we can get, and they need us too because with the way politics in this country are going the mass lynch mobs and race riots are going to be starting up again very soon.
I understand hating Christians. I did too for many years (I was born in Kentucky) but theyāre not all monsters. Christians are literally the majority in the US. You have to grapple with this if you want to win when this cold culture war goes hot. I have not, at all, been guilt tripping you about leaving. Get the hell out of there. I am only angry that youāre saying we should give up on the South entirely.
At the very least, weāre going to need allies for when we reinvade them and force them to go through a new Reconstruction period.