What Rubicons are left to cross?
What Rubicons are left to cross?
Metaphors of dissent & power
This wasn’t the post I had planned to write this week. It’s a holiday week here in the US, and I had been planning to post something in the perennial genre of mental health and the dynamics of being a creator online today—specifically, about my own personal reticence to hit publish.
Instead I’m writing about SCOTUS, which has been on a violent tear across legal and political norms of late: further criminalizing the unhoused, gutting the legal precedent us normies now know is called Chevron deference and undercutting regulatory oversight powers of the executive branch, and making specious distinctions between “gratuities” and “bribes” that all but guarantee government corruption and ensures monied interests supersede all others.
But yesterday’s decision throws everything into question and uncertainty.1 In its immunity ruling, the 6-3 majority extended legal immunity for the “official acts” of presidents (without defining what constitutes “official” and “unofficial,” an ambiguity that will no doubt favor both SCOTUS and POTUS). In her dissent, Justice Sotomayor wrote:
“The relationship between the President and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.”
Suddenly those frequent comparisons of Trump to King Cyrus that have been part of the evangelical/New Apostolic Reformation/alt-right infospheres over the last year become even more troubling.
The frustration and constant grief of seeing this play out because of the political choices of white evangelicals has its own dimensions that I may need to explore separately later on—but it is not lost on me that yesterday’s ruling would not have occurred without the long chain of events that lead to Trump’s election, the appointment of three judges, and the caustic consequences of so many of this court’s rulings. White evangelicals have their hands on that chain. Their leaders forged it, and their followers took it up.
The “Last Straw” Catalyst
I will leave the legal analysis to others more capable and qualified than I am. But I will posit this question: will this be the “last straw” that spurs changes in both our political leaders & their followers, or must we wait for something else?
In the pre-interview rundown for Exvangelical, I walk my prospective guests through the show’s typical three-act structure: where and how were you raised in the faith, what spurred you to leave that faith practice, and where are you now? The real action in the interview is in acts two & three—what’s past is prologue, and what I really want to know is what the catalyst for personal change was like. Was it death by a million cuts, or a single sudden epiphany or catastrophe, or somewhere in between?
There’s power and bravery and courage in these parts of the story, because it often involves intense vulnerability to ‘go against’ your community’s values in order to preserve your own (and, for the most vulnerable, your self).
Evangelical culture emphasizes “community” in so many ways. If you’re paying attention—and evangelicalism cultivates hypervigilance around one’s social standing, so there’s a good chance you are—you are constantly aware of what behaviors and beliefs are considered within “good standing” in the community, and those which will not be tolerated or accepted.
Exvangelicals as individuals are people who, at one point or another, ‘went against’ their community. Something or someone forced them to change. This isn’t always voluntary—sometimes there is a personal epiphany or a profound shift in belief, sometimes there is a horrifying instance of abuse. Regardless of circumstance, a rift has occurred in their stories. Things have changed. They dissented or were found disdainful, and it cost them their community.
There’s lots of metaphors for dissenting from the majority, but it’s telling how many are militaristic. For a person to dissent is to “break rank.” But for a person with power to claim yet more power it is to “cross the Rubicon,” to take an action in which there is no going back. Caesars cross Rubicons, not Christs.
The metaphor of the crossing of the Rubicon is used to valorize charismatic leaders. But that same event also symbolizes the fall of the Roman republic (limited though it was) and the beginning of the empire.
My question for those in political office now who have an opportunity to stand in opposition to these events is this: what legal Rubicons are left to cross? What other norms must be broken before you are woken from your trance? What will be the catalyst to make Democratic leaders realize they have bound themselves to norms out of allegiance to a higher ideal that is not reciprocated? What will cause you to break rank, to dissent, to act?
The POV of the last few paragraphs has veered back and forth between people with no power and people with tremendous power. I am a mere keyboard warrior; my word is my only weapon. But others have power. Leaders have power—political leaders in particular, in this case.
One of the drafts that’s sitting unpublished is all about never knowing what the “last straw” will be. I’ve been thinking about that a lot in light of the continuous sex abuse scandals that plague churches, about the SBC’s recent attempts to formalize their diminishment and subjugation of women in their ecclesial spaces, and so on. Despite a growing counterpublic of people speaking out about the harm they experienced in these communities, there are still millions of people who attend these churches, who have not yet reached their personal “last straw.”
I’m left to wonder what it will be for our elected leaders.
Uncertainty is something I value in a lot of areas, but not in the institutions citizens are supposed to rely on, or the loose “norms” that preserve .