WATCH GRID: Jesus is Haitian

Here are four things

One:

In hindsight, I’d been noticing it all along, but had been around-the-clock trained to pretend otherwise.

By then, I’d witnessed our designated national bogeyman having morphed from Russian to African-American to LGBTQ to immigrant to female to impoverished, with numerous overlaps, side quests, stray shots, and reroutes along the way.

Throughout, I remember having the faintest sense that conservative leaders seemed to be preternaturally aware of ever-fluctuating danger trends, as if they were regularly observing national flareups on the same situation-room map, and I remember feeling like pastors and male relatives had all been debriefed on the circumstances while gathering somewhere off-camera, away from the kids.

Other times, it was obvious what’d inspired all those men to rally toward the same target. As soon as 9/11 occurred, their crosshairs swung toward anyone remotely reminiscent of being Arab and/or Muslim.

But over the following year, it became clear to angry Americans that the vast majority of their Muslim neighbors had zero interest in committing violence (and/or, people got tired of yelling about the same thing every day).

And one of the first “issues” to hot-tag back into the spotlight was immigration.

Partly, its resurgence was due to 9/11 itself, which had occurred five days after President Bush had first met with President Fox of Mexico. So in summer 2003, when John McCain and company proposed new immigration laws (the kind that would lead to immediate excommunication if proposed by a conservative today), it was a matter of getting back to previously scheduled business, sure.

But at the same time, conservative voices began pouncing on immigrants as the villains du jour, the latest attempted replacements for Russia, America’s previously credible foil for five consistent decades. Increasing the urgency, those voices were also in need of a topic to distract from the Iraq War’s already-deflating popularity. To me, then still an adolescent learning how to actually pay attention, the shift toward yelling about immigrants felt as sudden and random as a new topic emerging on Whose Line Is It Anyway.

Honestly, one of the best ways to track what was in the national discourse at any point in the Y2K era is to look at what South Park was covering. And yep, here was April 2004, a meme that’s now lasted two decades (because it’s actually been around for so much longer than that):

As an adolescent, watching Sauron’s eye flit from one marginalized group to another on a whim (including during the 2004 election, when it jolted back toward LGBTQ people) became undeniable evidence of … something.

Eventually, evidence of this:

The easiest way to gain power is to spot the lowest-ranking members of society and start blaming them for shit.

Sometimes, we’re led to describe this tactic as if Southern Evangelicals invented it 19 seconds ago, which makes it feel feasible to pin all the problems onto a single group, as if we can simply delete one monolith and everyone who’s yet to escape it, then never think about the problems again. Well right now, a New York City man of dubious spirituality and his Ohio Catholic sidekick are the latest in a millennia-long, globe-spanning line of caste-minded assholes, so clearly our situation is more dire than that.

I have zero interest in trying to convince you that the ancient story of Moses vs. an anonymous pharaoh literally happened in the same way as the Book of Exodus’ telling (though I can convince you it was inspired by some memory of real people striving against real people, because of course it was). Mainly, look at this:

“The new pharaoh said to his people, ‘Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we. Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, or they will increase and, in the event of war, join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.’ Therefore the pharaoh set taskmasters over the Israelites to oppress them.”

Hey, that’s great replacement theory, in both form and function. For almost as long as we’ve been writing, we’ve been chronicling dickheads who accumulate power by telling large groups to hate small groups. Over and over, immigrants have been the most popular target.

That’s why the Hebrew Bible includes dozens and dozens of reminders to welcome immigrants even at personal expense (including verses written after Israel’s most famous leaders had behaved exactly like that pharaoh), and it’s why Jesus specifically emphasized those verses as non-negotiable and mission-critical. People have always needed to be reminded, because hate has always been tempting and rewarding for a handful of people, even as it costs not just its victims, but almost everybody else as well.

Immigration has long been great for America, and for the last few years, immigration has been making Springfield, Ohio great again, challenges and all.

Reportedly, J.D. Vance knew his lies about Haitian immigrants were lies even before he began spreading them. Now, he’s sticking with those lies even after admitting on air that he helped “create” them and even while dismissing the harassment they’re producing in Springfield. Having previously worried that Donald Trump will be “America’s Hitler,” Vance is now raising the question of whether he’d meant that as a compliment.

Vance’s “spreading disease” thing is also a lie.

I don’t care to know much political theory, partly because I am no longer a college sophomore.

I’m good with just this: Every time we elevate the lowest-ranking people, we improve the future for everyone else as well, and it’s a whole lot easier to invest in elevating those people if we accept that we don’t inherently deserve anything better than what those people have, that we have never been different from anyone in any meaningful way.

As society changes its goldfish mind on whether trans children or Palestinian children or Haitian children are the bigger danger, the gospel has always been consistent. The gospel is solidarity, and solidarity is the gospel. (Sunday school teachers with objections to that statement, meet me after class.)

James Cone, the landmark Black liberation theologian, said:

“To suggest that Christ has taken on black skin is not theological emotionalism. If the Church is a continuation of the Incarnation, and if the Church and Christ are where the oppressed are, then Christ and the Church must identify totally with the oppressed to the extent that they too suffer for the same reasons. … Black is holy, that is, it is a symbol of God’s presence in history on behalf of the oppressed.”

And as two other wise people put it:

As noted a few weeks ago, communion has never been about wine vs. grape juice, this kind of bread vs. that kind of bread, or this denomination vs. that “heresy.”

Instead, in the words of a Haitian resident of Springfield who was describing his American-born neighbors recently crowding into their local Haitian restaurant, communion has forever been this:

“They’re sending a strong message: … They’re here eating with us.”

Jean Baptiste Bottex, “The Last Supper”

Two:

Three:

Four:

This college football season, my goal for this free newsletter is 1,000+ new requests for libraries to add copies of my (objectively good) novel — and once we get there, I’m going to give $1,000 to a charity selected by one of you.

After three weeks, we’re well over halfway to that goal, with libraries approving a whole bunch of them pretty much right away. (Thank you!) For next week, I’ll make a map showing where requests are coming from, but so far, the busiest states in each per-capita weight class have been D.C., Oregon (overtaking Kentucky), Colorado, and North Carolina (overtaking Illinois). Every state is on the board, plus Australia, Canada, and Scotland. (The most room to grow: California, Mississippi, and Oklahoma.)

Now, I’m guessing the latter half of these 1,000 will be much tougher sledding, so each new request will be super appreciated.

It’s easy:

1. Find your library’s request form, likely online. Ask them to add Hell Is a World Without You.*

2. For likely success, include the link to this review and/or the book’s Wikipedia page.

3. Let me know (jasonkirkbook at gmail.com or comment below or whatever) which library you asked.

* It’s already in numerous libraries, so if it’s already in your town’s, how about your alma mater’s, your county’s, etc.? If they already have the audiobook, how about print, etc.? If the form wants an ISBN: hardcover is 9781735492650, ebook is 9781735492629, and audiobook is 9781735492667. Pick whichever. If it asks for genre: adult fiction.

Thank you again!