Last night I was visiting, sitting watching TV with several people I have known for quite a while. TNT was showing “Into The West”. Much of this epsiode was, of course, on the relationships with Indians and the White Man. I was certainly into a mode where I was feeling myself less endeared toward the idea of “being an American”, and thinking instead about how that loyalty to country is so inducive to jettisoning a distinctly Christian “response” and reflection on the many sorted and sad instances of what can only be seen as a kind of “collateral damage” to the “Building of America”.

Anyway, one of those present asked me “If the treaties had worked, do you think the Indians would have progressed” (and what I heard implied was “the way we have….technology , medicine, transportation, etc.” I reacted to the first part of that question first, because I am well aware of this person’s conservative leanings, and that they rather resent what they call my “anti-Americanism” (particularly since it became punctuated by so much “anti-Bushism”). I asked “Why DIDN’T they work?” (the treaties). They rolled their eyes. To the the second part I asked “Depends on what you mean by progress. OUR kind of ‘progress'”. They were perturbed that I wouldn’t answer a “simple question”, and I said “Those two underlying assumptions stopped me from going there” (I don’t think I said it exactly like that, but was trying to communicate that……”Underlying assumptions” die hard …usually they don’t die at all, but are defended well beyond what they are worth (except for the assumptions that are the perspectives toward which we journey as Christians, devoted to participating in the Kingdom of God).

There followed a lot of attacks , which included (joined in by some other conservative Christians in the room) “you ought to get out of the country if you don’t like it” and “PRESIDENT Bush is his name” and the topper of all: when referring to my blog which they had been reading for the past couple of years, they announced that they had not read it since March, because it would be “a waste of my time”.

I came home and felt completely drained, and deflated. One person had referred to “the people I follow” , and when I asked “those people being…….” asking for specifics, and they said “Liberal democrats” and I replied “the prophets were talking about justice and reconcilation and the poor and ‘trust in horses and chariots’ long before there were Republicans or Democrats, Conservatives or Liberals, or even America”. I added “Actually, I have begun to hone in critically on ‘liberal democracy’ ( a nod silently to Hauerwas, Jim Wallis, and Radical Orthodoxy).

All of this has been turned up on the dial a hundred fold since the Bush administration took power. Fueled by outlets such as Fox News and virulent hate talk from the likes of O’Reilly, Ann Coulter, and carefuly crafted political points from the pen of Karl Rove (who everyday reminds me of the similar fear-hate-mongering of the Southern Baptist fundamentalist takeover campaign in the 70’s, and its extension into the administration of a victorious right-wing via the mass firings and removals of Missionaries, Seminary teachers, and Denominatinal workers). (I am SO hoping that something that Rove and the Bush administration don’t expect or count on comes out of this Plame leak affair that is being hotly contested right now. I would love to see the scenario Joseph Smith envisioned after the outing of his wife as a CIA operative: that Rove be “frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs”)

The disturbing discussions and tone of the conversation also has its elements of frustrating me that I can’t seem to be at all “fluent” and “with it” (the examples that could be used just don’t seem to flow very well in the heat of those moments).