James Talarico is Andy Beshear with a lot more hairspray.
I particularly enjoy the application of the “50 years” frame to this argument, which must mean that all Christians passionately supported abortion and gay marriage just 51 years ago.
Talarico and Beshear are playing the same cynical and soulless game, reducing moral questions to the plane of seeming. Democrats have what they perceive as a marketing problem, over and over again. The bitter clingers are against a bunch of stuff, objecting to the wisdom and kindness of (for example) sex-change surgeries for children.
The apparent solution is for leftists to apply the language of faith to political impediments caused by faith, guessing that they can defeat beliefs with slogans and postures: If you don’t want to trans your kids, what if we told you that God says to trans your kids? What if we told you that love is Biblical, and abortions and sex-change treatments are love, so abortions and sex-change treatments are Biblical? Problem solved, right? If people prefer X, but you want them to choose Not X, then you just tell them that Not X is X, and then they choose Not X because you’ve declaratively transformed Not X into X. We gilded the trans thing with some God words, so now trans thing is God thing.
Infamously, the Kentucky governor just used this maneuver to defend sex-change treatments for minors, arguing that his faith tells him to love:
The Biblical injunction to love one another is actually about sewing surgically constructed vaginas into teenage boys so they can become girls, you see, so you have to agree with Democrats. God, Andy Beshear wants you to know, requires your agreement with Andy Beshear. As The Federalist said a week ago, “Leftists Invoking Jesus To Mutilate Kids And Defend Rapists Heap Judgment On Themselves.”
But this performance is every single thing that the Texas state legislator and U.S. Senate candidate Talarico does every single day, in an endless performance of a pastor character that he wears like a skinsuit. Talarico enrolled in a seminary as a politician in his 30s, so now he can be described on the campaign trail as a seminarian, dressing up his politics in the appearance of incipient religious authority. The Lord has spoken, friends, and he says to support Talarico for Senate. Make your love donation today! He’s a secular televangelist, Huey Long with an implied clerical collar he functionally borrowed from the wardrobe shop. Talarico’s Instagram account frequently depicts him “delivering sermons,” in which he talks about deeply spiritual themes like having “a bruising election year.”
As a psychological question, the casual application of religious language to grossly unfit political demands reflects a complete inability to believe anything. Words all live on their own islands, not connecting to anything or describing anything. The Bible says, yadda yadda, trans something, have my speechwriter add the rest, and be sure to throw in some Jesus stuff. Authority is an appearance: If you put on a clerical collar, people have to do what you say, because having a clerical collar is being in charge of morality. The object is the authority, with nothing underneath the appearance. Anything you describe as clergy becomes clergy as soon as you invoke the image associated with the word: monkeys, rocks, James Talarico.
- Person A: Give me your wallet
- Person B: No
- Person A: I’m a pastor, God says give me your wallet
- Person B: Here is my wallet
If only Bonnie and Clyde had been able to figure out this important cultural wrinkle, right? “Hands up! God says this is a robbery!”
What this means as a political problem is that people who live by the assumption that all faith is a meaningless and expedient surface posture can’t speak to people who have actual faith. They just can’t, no matter how much they simulate the maneuver. It’s like trying to connect a one-inch hose to a 1/2-inch faucet — the threads don’t line up. People who believe that words can be sprinkled on are unable to move people who believe that words convey meaning.
In Texas, Democrats believe that they’ve solved a cultural problem by choosing a candidate who says God-sounding-stuff a lot. We’ll see.
