Here's a Christmas-themed picture posted by United States Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky. Note the cheerfully decorated tree behind them. Note also that each member of the shit-eating-grin faced members of the Massie family is sporting a military weapon. Massie himself, as befits the father of such a family, carries the piece of artillery that is by far the most threatening. He's so proud.
I must be out of the military-Kentucky loop, because when my friends send me Christmas cards, they will characteristically include a message such as "peace on Earth, good will toward men, or perhaps something about "joy" or "blessings." Massie's card says, "Please Santa, send ammo," which is not, I believe, a traditional holiday greeting.
Massie's card is deliberately provocative. It's designed to piss off the libs. In your face, pinkos! But it's so blasphemous and misjudged that it might also offend mainline Christians. Goodness gracious, I hope so. Though frankly, I haven't heard much of an outcry from the pulpits.
But now it has come to pass that it's not just blue-staters that are offended. Massie has gone and pissed off the Lord himself -- who has retaliated with a series of tornadoes which have swept through Massie's home state. Can there be any doubt, any possible probable shadow of doubt, that the Ancient of Days has responded to the Massie family Christmas card with lightning and thunder? Vengeance is mine, I shall repay, saith the Lord. It's obvious -- although I am shocked to observe that I have not yet heard any megachurch preacher draw the undeniable conclusion. I'm waiting.
When I first set astonished eyes on the card, I guessed that Massie, though an important office holder, must be what I have heard called in Vermont a "local yokel." Trash. A rube. An exterminator or mortician or gun-toting bar owner who lucked into Congress because no more respectable person chose to run. Because what person of intelligence, sensitivity, experience, or a modicum of education honors the spirit of Christmas with a display of assault weaponry? Imagine my surprise when I looked up Massie and discovered that he has a raft of degrees and extraordinary prizes from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He's clearly brilliant (in a MIT kind of way). But even if he were a pure pocket-calculator I-don't-give-a-shit-about-anyone-but-myself libertarian nerds, shouldn't he have been exposed, in New England, to enough human beings of all sorts to recognize that his Christmas greeting is monumentally offensive not only to his fellows and (as we have seen) to the Lord of Hosts Himself?
Or perhaps he knows that our tearful country is so riven that an irreligious display of such a sort will amuse and motivate his allies and torment his opposition. And will strike gold with political donors.
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