While on a road three-hour road trip with my wife from Selma, AL to Orange Beach, I saw one of those “Jesus 2024: Our Only Hope” signs on the side of the road. I’ve grown so accustomed to MAGA madness that propaganda of its type hardly phases me when I see it in Washtenaw County and Wayne County, MI where I live and do business—I could not imagine still living in Monroe Co., MI. Yet, when we passed by that Jesus 2024 sign, I may have launched into a rhetorical paroxysm for the next forty-five minutes (my poor wife)!
I have spent enough time in and proximity to American Evangelical churches (WASPs going forward; I also include non-denominational Christianity with this term’s application) to understand the intentions behind this gesture despite its seemingly innocuous messaging. “Jesus 2024: Our Only Hope” is misdirection because reality has set in; the chickens have come home to roost as Malcolm X once said; WASPs made their bed and have to lie in it; WASPs must reap what they have sown. There are not enough clichés in the English language to illustrate how WASPs betrayed their savior Jesus Christ to vote for a multi-divorced, racist, sexist, and ablest white man for president.
Meanwhile, their kind either remains overwhelmingly supportive of a candidate who is a convicted felon and found liable for sexual abuse, sexual assault, and defamation by a jury while the judge presiding over the case insists that by the letter of federal law, the former president raped E. Jean Carroll, or, they shift the moral goalposts, confirming that Individual 1’s religious affiliations are irrelevant regarding their support. Why would WASPs hypocritically support a morally bankrupt candidate? It is because white supremacy is their god, and Trump is its prophet. Ta-Nehisi Coates describes this phenomenon as thus:
In Trump, white supremacists see one of their own [….] To Trump whiteness is neither notional nor symbolic but in the very core of his power [….] Replacing Obama is not enough—Trump has made the negation of Obama’s legacy the foundation of his own. And this too is whiteness. “Race is an idea, not a fact,” writes historian Nell Irvin Painter, and essential to the construct of a “white race” is the idea of not being a nigger. Before Barack Obama, niggers could be manufactured out of Sister Soljahs, Willie Hortons, Dusky Sallys, and Miscegenation Balls. But Donald Trump arrived in the wake of something more potent—an entire nigger presidency with nigger health care, nigger climate accords, nigger justice reform that could be targeted for destruction, that could be targeted for redemption, thus reifying the idea of being white. Trump truly is something new—the first president whose entire political existence hinges on the fact of a black president. And so it will not suffice to say Trump is a white man like all the others who rose to become president. He must be called by his correct name and rightful honorific—America’s first white president.
The remaining WASPs are understandably ashamed by association. Many of my contemporaries have left the Church and are not coming back. Others fashion themselves as #Exvangelical, whose characteristics range from nebulously spiritual to belief in a Supreme Being, yet with formidable incredulity toward organized religion. Then there are those who install Jesus 2024 signs in their yards.
I discovered that Alabama, a perennially read state, was the point of origin of these signs in 2020:
“We just decided we would start a campaign for Jesus, so people could see it and be a part of it,” said lifelong church member Joyce Hubbard, who works as a utilities manager in Ramer.
Hubbard then hit upon the idea of using election-style, red, white and blue “Jesus 2020” campaign signs. “We don’t see Jesus’ name out there,” she said. “We’re going to put him out there. He’s the one that doesn’t lie to you, who keeps his promises.”
Unlike politicians, Jesus can be trusted all the time, she said.
“He’s already the winner,” Hubbard said. “We want people to elect him to be the leader in their life. It’s not political, not denominational, we’re not trying to swing anyone’s votes.”
People have speculated about ulterior motives in attempting to affect the race between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden.
“We’re trying to keep politics out of this,” Hubbard said. “Our focus is on Jesus.
*SIGH TO SUPPRESS INNER RAGE INTENSIVIES*
I have already delineated why they didn’t see Jesus’ name out there. WASPs overwhelmingly voted for a man who pretended to believe in God when it was politically convenient to do so; they support him even after dispensing with the facade that he was chosen by God. So then, who is the intended purpose for these Jesus 2024 signs?
The answer to that question is voter suppression***.
The idea of “keeping politics out of this,” while proselytising is peak WASP hypocrisy that works most effectively within its own echo chamber. People who see that sign are less likely to think that they need to go to church on Sunday than they are to wonder if someone is going to mark Jesus as a write-in for President of the United States. What if the person who sees that sign goes to a mosque or synagogue instead? Now this sign is as much a politically hostile symbol as the Trump 2020 flags that stayed up years even after January 6.
An “apolitical” Jesus is straight up historically preposterous. Every time Jesus spoke to a woman (the woman at the well, the adulterous woman, and the woman with the issue of blood to name a few off the dome; here are seventeen more examples), it was an act of social apostacy. When Jesus ate with sinners, the Pharisees—the clergy of the time— took umbrage.
So, when WASPs talk about promoting Jesus’ name during two presidential election seasons while they’re suspiciously absent during midterms, I wonder if they mean White Jesus the Colonizer. Disaffected by the de facto conservative choice, Mr. Two Corinthians, rather commit what they would consider heresy by betraying their ideological underpinnings and voting for the other party, they have turned toward misdirection under the pretense of (self-)righteousness. Rather than mimic black churches and Get Souls to the Polls, these WASPs abstain from voting, contradicting their conservative brethren who brandish their faith as a pillar for their culture war at the ballot box. The Jesus 2024 sign peddlers are asking others to join them in their electoral agnosticism, doing nonsense like writing in Jesus for president.
I know this because it happened to me when 2008, when a Black family friend wrote my wife and me a multi-page letter explaining why we should not vote for Barack Obama for president.
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***Okay, I confess: “voter suppression” must meet specific legal criteria: methods often involve state laws that, when taken together, make it more difficult for eligible voters to cast their ballots. The tactics for this involve restrictions on voter registration drives, overly specific voter ID requirements, gerrymandering, voter purging, etc. “Voter suppression,” then, entails specific actions taken in order to prevent individuals—oftentimes targeting minority populations—from exercising their civic duty to vote.
In psychology, “suppression” involves the deliberate pushing of a thought out of one’s mind; it is a conscious process, which is why the qualifiers for “voter suppression” entail direct actions. “Repression,” however, takes place passively; it is a subconscious process. The message behind Jesus 2024 advocates’ efforts registers subliminally—because they feel neither candidate qualifies for their vote, they will disinvest. Implied, is their desire that others will do the same. They are not telling people to not vote, nor are they telling people to vote. Their insidious messaging is a non sequitur, while also contextually relevant. They hope others will buy into the thought of the election not mattering in the grand scheme of things (and what an exceedingly white privilege thing to consider).
Thus, “voter repression” is a more accurate term for what Jesus 2024 signs seek to accomplish, technically rendering the title to my blog click bait. Few will care about semantics; what those WASPs are not doing is registering people to vote. Based Black church!
Blerd Beats 