American History part 4 -- From Carter to Obama

This is taking longer than I anticipated. I guess 250 years is a long time. 
1. From Revolution to Fracture
2. From Civil War to World War
3. From Roar to Reagan
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18. But the real shift came with Ronald Reagan

But first, we should mention Jimmy Carter. Before Reagan swept in with a cowboy hat and camera-ready smile, there was a one term Democratic president. He was a soft-spoken peanut farmer from Georgia, quite unexpected really. Sincere. Intellectual. Doomed.

He called himself a "born-again" Christian, the first president to say somethng like that. Of course, that didn't mean anything in my Christian circles. After all, he was a Democrat. We always had a reason to vote against a Democrat even before Roe v. Wade. The reasons changed, the vote remained the same. After all, we humnans are herd animals.

Carter promised honesty after Watergate, and he delivered. He was a truly honorable man. Thus of course, doomed. 

He was everything Nixon wasn’t. He was transparent, humble, moral. Maybe too moral. Can you be moral and be president? He told Americans we were addicted to consumption. He asked us to turn down the thermostat. He wore sweaters on TV and talked about rising above our national gloom. 

Meanwhile, inflation soared. Gas lines stretched for blocks. Iran took Americans hostage and wouldn’t let them go. In one of the final acts of his presidency, we botched a rescue attempt and lost 8 servicemen in the process.

Carter did broker a landmark peace in the Middle East between Egypt and Israel. An astounding achievement. Since Israel had declared itself a state in 1948, there had been little but war and hostility with its Arab neighbors. But that diplomatic triumph was overshadowed by domestic frustration. What Americans remembered was inflation, gas lines, and the failed rescue of hostages in Iran -- not the breakthrough at Camp David.

He was a good man in a bad moment. Far too boring. Far too intellectual. And America wanted a showman, not a sermon.

19. Reagan was charming, confident, camera-ready. He talked about America like it was a sunset movie. He said the government wasn’t the solution. It was the problem. Sounded good to people who were tired of the government telling them what to do (especially when it came to blacks).

Reagan marked the end of a decades long flipping of the parties. The Democrats had once been synonymous with Jim Crow and "state's rights," a tool to keep the blacks in their place. Now the Democrats had somehow become the champion of civil rights and voting rights. And the Republicans, once the party that had freed the slaves, now found itself now the champion of state's rights and resistance to these developments.

They called it Nixon's "southern strategy." Appeal to the disaffected Democrats in the South who were angry over the changes the rest of the Democrats were leading nationwide. It worked. By the end of Reagan's presidency, many of those who were once southern Democrats had become southern Republicans. Reagan himself had once been a Democrat.

By the 1980s, what remained of the earlier Republican Party’s identity was its loyalty to big business and deregulation. As Hoover had said, "Let the markets self-correct." Now Reagan put a new spin on the economics of the 20s.

"Trickle down economics." If you slash taxes on the wealthy and on big business, their increased investment in the economy will "trickle down" to the ordinary person. That was the concept. With more money in hand, businesses will raise wages for their workers. Their increased wealth, the theory went, would eventually drip down to the rest of us.

It has never seemed to work, although two more Republican presidents since have also tried it. Each time, the pattern repeated: tax cuts for the wealthy, soaring deficits, and eventually, economic trouble. Reagan's own Republican rival, George H. W. Bush, famously called it "voodoo economics" -- before becoming Reagan's vice president, and later, president. 

The rich got richer. Wages stagnated. And despite the promises, prosperity never quite trickled down.

20. Perhaps the most significant piece of Reagan's puzzle was the full alignment of evangelicalism with the Republican Party. Evangelicals in the North had long leaned Republican, while many Southern evangelicals had historically voted Democrat -- the party of segregation and state's rights. 

That all changed in the late 20th century. The issue that fused evangelicalism with the Republican Party was abortion. It became almost unthinkable for an evangelical to vote for a Democrat. The thing is, many southern Democrats initially supported Roe v. Wade. The outrage came later. Something deeper was going on.

What was it? Southern evangelicals had been angry about the federal government telling them to desegregate their schools and allow interracial dating in their colleges. But instead of defending segregation outright, they shifted that anger to something with stronger moral force: abortion. “The government can’t make me accept Black children at my private school” became “The government can’t make me accept abortion.” It was the same defiance -- repackaged around a more righteous cause.

While southern evangelicals had first been ambivalent even supportive of Roe v. Wade, it now became the sure sign that God was totally aligned with the Republican Party. Democrats were sheer evil.

Reagan welcomed the rise of a new force in politics: the Religious Right. Evangelicals, once wary of politics, got organized. They saw a country slipping away -- too secular, too sexual, too progressive -- and they made a deal. Vote Republican, and we’ll fight your culture wars. “Family values” became their brand. They didn’t just want to save souls. They wanted to shape policy.

And Reagan delivered. Not just with rhetoric, but with judges. Policies. A whole new political theology.

In the meantime, other biblical values were gutted. Reaganomics gutted public programs. The mentally ill were turned out into the streets as government funded facilities were closed. The war on drugs targeted Black and Brown communities. The AIDS crisis was ignored as thousands died. Many thought that gay people were being punished by God and getting what they deserved. It took the possibility that "normal" people would get AIDS to see any action.

But the story America told itself was that the country was back on track. Prosperous. Traditional. Strong. Becoming great again.

Reagan had changed the playing field. Now, freedom meant tax cuts. Patriotism meant military strength. The government could control people's moral values (but never corporate power). The backlash had become the blueprint.

Just like that, the gospel got a party platform. And the party got God's vote.

21. In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. The red star dimmed. The Cold War was over.

Reagan gets a lot of the credit. The Soviet Union just couldn't keep up with his spending on defense. Communism is a failed economic system, and they finally gave up.

The Berlin Wall cracked open like an eggshell. East Germans streamed west. The Iron Curtain rusted into memory. Within two years, the Soviet Union was gone, collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions, corruption, and economic stagnation. For nearly fifty years, America had shaped its foreign policy, its budget, its fears, its identity around this one opponent. And now the opponent was gone.

It was called the "end of history." Capitalism had won. Democracy had won. America had won. There would be no more ideological battles, no more existential threats. The world would now become a free market shopping mall. And the United States owned the mall.

But history doesn’t end. It just changes costume.

With the Cold War over, the military budget didn’t shrink that much. But the mood changed. America relaxed. It seemed like we had earned our happy ending.

Still, the West squandered a rare opportunity. After communism collapsed, Russia stood at a crossroads. The hope was that it might join the democratic world. But instead of helping it build the institutions of a healthy republic -- courts, transparency, a free press -- we sent over economists with a Hoover-era playbook: unleash the free market and let it sort itself out. "Shock therapy." Let the "Unseen Hand" take care of it.

What followed wasn’t democracy. It was chaos. A handful of insiders seized everything: factories, oil, media. The state was gutted, and oligarchy filled the vacuum. Instead of freedom, Russia got a fire sale. Now there was a new ruling class wearing suits instead of party pins. 

And soon a new approach to war with the West.

22. Enter Bill Clinton.

He didn’t campaign on moral crusades. He wasn’t Reagan with a smile. He was Elvis with a saxophone. He was a Southern Democrat who talked like one of the guys but governed like a centrist economist. He promised to modernize liberalism. Make it leaner, smarter, more market-friendly. He called it “Third Way” politics -- not left, not right, just whatever works.

In practice, it meant welfare reform. It meant deregulating banks. It meant free trade agreements like NAFTA that promised more jobs but hollowed out whole regions. Clinton balanced the budget. He charmed Wall Street. In some ways he was a Republican in Democrat's clothing. He turned the Democratic Party into something that could win national elections again -- but only by sounding more like Republicans on economics. 

He had out-Republicaned the Republicans. A Democrat had turned his back on the unions and sent jobs sprinting to Mexico. Ironically, the budget balanced more than under any Republican president and abortion rates declined more too.

In the 90s, some of the biggest changes in human history in hundreds of years were rising. Technology boomed. The internet was born. Cell phones shrank. Cable TV exploded. For some, the 90s were prosperity and promise. 

But the other America -- the one that didn’t go to college, didn’t get stock options, didn’t get heard -- it began to simmer. And while the culture wars subsided, they weren't dead. They just put on different clothes.

Clinton’s presidency became a proxy battle over sex, morality, and the role of character in public life. His affair with an intern, and his bald-faced lie about it, became the stuff of impeachment. The outrage seemed real. Although it's easy to act with moral outrage when it's the other party. We're more apt to overlook moral failure from our own team. 

Outrage over Clinton was good political theater. The same party that had aligned with televangelists in the 1980s now used moral outrage as a sword.

Still, Clinton survived. His approval ratings soared. The economy roared. At the same time, cynicism deepened. The right had weaponized scandal. The left had compromised itself into confusion. There was money, there was power, but there wasn’t much meaning.

By 2000, a new millennium was beginning. But the fault lines hadn’t gone away. They’d just been covered over by Nasdaq stocks and cable news.

23. The year 2000 ended in confusion. Florida ballots. Hanging chads. A Supreme Court decision. It wasn't quite as dramatic as 1877, but the outcome remains questionable to this day. For sure, George W. Bush entered the presidency without winning the popular vote. Yet even in the Electoral College, the Supreme Court halted a recount in Florida with him ahead by just 537 votes. 

But he was a good guy. A good old boy. Someone you would enjoy having a beer with. How much damage could a president do? 

Then came September 11, 2001.

Terrorists flew planes into the Twin Towers. Smoke choked the New York skyline. The Pentagon was hit. A fourth plane crashed in a Pennsylvania field. Nearly 3,000 people died that day. Everything changed in a morning. The American psyche had dramatically changed.

The country united around grief. But that unity was quickly channeled into war. First Afghanistan. Then Iraq.

Afghanistan made some sense. After all, that's where the perpetrator was hiding, Osama bin Laden. We had worldwide support. The Arab world was more sympathetic to us than ever. It was a tremendous opportunity to end our long term differences.

Iraq was different. It had nothing to do with 9-11. The Arab world wasn't buying it. An opportunity for reconciliation turned into heightened alienation. Some holdovers from the Reagan era -- neoconservatives -- saw this as a chance to reshape the Middle East. It was probably well intentioned if culturally ignorant. Bush naively called "Mission Accomplished" 

We said it was about fighting terrorism. We said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. It didn’t. But the war happened anyway. The military-industrial complex got its blank check. The media played along. The public, stunned and scared, mostly nodded. In my little town of 20,000, the mayor barricaded the courthouse in case of jihadists in Indiana.

America went from being the world's grieving friend to its unpredictable enforcer. Endless war became a business model. Fear became a political strategy. The Patriot Act. Wiretapping. Airport scanners. A surveillance state wrapped in a flag. Fear allowed all that.

At home, Bush tried Reaganomics 2.0. The economy soared -- and then crashed. Everyone loved deregulation until the housing bubble burst. Banks gambled and lost, but got bailed out. Homeowners didn’t. Ordinary Americans watched their savings disappear while Wall Street collected bonuses. It was 1929 with PowerPoint. Wall Street was rescued. The rest got a foreclosure notice.

And then came something no one expected.

24. Barack Obama.

A Black man (with a name that sounded a little too much like Osama) rose on a message of hope. He was calm, intellectual, composed. He spoke with clarity and conviction. He didn’t scream. He inspired. For a moment, it felt like the country might be ready to grow up.

Obama inherited a recession and two wars. He passed the Affordable Care Act -- a messy, compromised attempt at universal healthcare based on something Republicans had done in Massachusetts. He brought troops home. He stabilized the economy. He killed the real Osama. And in the process, he became both a symbol of progress and a trigger for backlash.

For millions, Obama was proof that the American Dream was still alive. That the words of 1776 still meant something. For others, he was the nightmare they’d always feared. Not because of what he did -- but because of what he represented.

They called him a socialist. They called him a Muslim. They said he was born in Kenya. Some didn’t even try to hide their racism. 

It was enough that gay marriage became legal during his presidency. No, he wasn't on the Supreme Court. He had nothing to do with making it happen. But for many it might as well have been him. 

The Tea Party rose, claiming to be about reducing the deficit -- a deficit that came back under Bush and was exacerbated by the bailouts of the recession. But mostly what the Tea Party did was grind Obama's movement to a halt. Attempts to fix immigration were stopped in their tracks, making the situation snowball into what we have today.

Every effort was made to sabotage the Affordable Care Act, as if there was something immoral about the government helping people get health care. Bring back Hoover and let the church do it. Better yet, make them get a job with good health care. In his last major act in Congress, John McCain stopped the repeal of the ACA by voting against his party, which was trying to kill it more out of vengeance than for a good reason.

Gun violence had dropped to historic lows during the Clinton years, thanks in part to the federal assault weapons ban. But under President Bush, the Republican-led Congress let the ban expire in 2004. The floodgates opened. Assault-style weapons returned to the shelves, and gun violence has climbed ever since, with school shootings especially rising in popularity. That lapse let a genie out that we may never get back in the bottle.

We say that people kill people, not guns. While that is true, the correlation lands the blame for our current crisis squarely on 2004 and a Republican Congress.

25. Conspiracies were increasingly America's favorite brew. The undercurrent of white grievance found a new fuel source. Facebook and Twitter rose to the challenge, and feeble minds were putty in the hands of foreign social media accounts.

Obama tried to lead from the center. His presidency was more careful than revolutionary. But just his presence in the White House felt like too much for some. Too much change too quickly.

He wore a tan suit. Scandal. He put Dijon mustard on a hamburger. Un-American. He cried after a school shooting. Weak.

Meanwhile, the Republican Party kept shifting. Reagan’s dog whistles had become bullhorns. Moderates were pushed out. The word “compromise” became a slur. More than any other single force, Fox reshaped America. Rupert Murdoch skillfully wielded it as a propaganda channel -- it was forced to admit in court that it was actually more entertainment than objective news. Meanwhile, innocent minds were manipulated into outrage at whatever Fox wanted them to be upset about.

Birtherism. Fake news. Online rage. The internet wasn’t just connecting people. It was radicalizing them. And cable news wasn’t informing people. It was inflaming them.

By the end of Obama’s presidency, America was breaking.

The backlash wasn’t just political. It was cultural, racial, psychological. The mere idea of a changing America -- less white, less Christian, more complex -- was enough to ignite a movement. One that would soon storm the stage in a red hat. 

Magog will attack Israel.

Because I want to get my current writing project done before the eclipse, I'm substituting this post for my weekly review.

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If we did a "heatmap" for the parts of the Bible that people read and talk about a lot in contrast to those that get very little attention, the book of Ezekiel would probably turn out to be one of those books that is read less often. At this point, some would begin to chastise us. It is all the word of God, and preachers should preach the whole council of God! This dynamic is why preachers are told in seminary to use the lectionary, which is a tool to make sure you cover all of Scripture in the course of three years.

However, before we get too hard on ourselves, there is a good reason why some parts of Scripture are read more often than others. The books of the Bible tell us they were written to people who have been dead for thousands of years. When you write something to an ancient audience, even though it is inspired, it is bound to have some parts that apply more directly and others that apply more indirectly. In other words, some parts will inevitably have more to do with "that time" than "all time." We can learn from all of it, but some of it is bound to be more directly relevant to them than to us.

Take the middle chapters of Isaiah, chapters 13-39. There is some very rich material in these chapters! At the same time, most of these chapters involves the condemnation of nations that no longer exist. For example, Isaiah 16 is a prophecy against Moab. Where is Moab again? It no longer exists. So it is no surprise that you don't hear a lot of sermons on Isaiah 16.

A good deal of Ezekiel feels that way too. There is some incredibly rich prophecy in there. Yet it also relates to a situation in the mid-500s BC. And there is some strange material in there too -- wheels within wheels, eating scrolls, laying on your side for months on end! The Holy Spirit makes certain parts of Scripture jump out at different people in different times, places, and situations. At other times, these passages may stand ready more in the background.

2. Ezekiel 38-39 is a passage somewhat like Isaiah 16. It talks about places like Magog and has puzzling names like Gog, Meshech, and Tubal. It is very difficult to align these names with any known historical figures or places. The battle that is pictured in these chapters similarly does not align with any known battles.

So it is no surprise that dispensationalists typically align these chapters with an end-times battle that has not yet happened. The Scofield Reference Bible in 1917 had this to say about Ezekiel 38:

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That the primary reference is to the northern (European) powers, headed up by Russia, all agree... The reference to Meshech and Tubal (Moscow and Tobolsk) is a clear mark of identification. Russia and the northern powers have been the latest persecutors of dispersed Israel, and it is congruous... that destruction should fall at the climax of the last mad attempt to exterminate the remnant of Israel in Jerusalem. The whole prophecy belongs to the yet future "day of Jehovah"... and to the battle of Armageddon... but includes also the final revolt of the nations at the close of the kingdom-age.

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During the days of the Soviet Union, it was easy to think that it would spearhead an attack of this sort, although many other enemies are mentioned: Persia, Cush, Put, Gomer, Beth-Togarmah. These names represent areas like Egypt and Europe. One could easily think that the picture is that of the whole world against Israel, much like Armageddon in Revelation 16 when the "kings of the whole world" come to battle against God's people. 

3. How do prophecy teachers integrate the attack of Magog into their understanding of the Tribulation and the end times? The answer is that there is no one agreed application. Some have seen this event as taking place before the rapture and the Great Tribulation. Others think it will happen soon after the rapture.

How might these scenarios go? 

The one I remember from Hal Lindsey years ago is that, because Ezekiel 39:9 says it will take seven years for them to use the (obviously wooden) weapons for firewood, it would have to take place before the Tribulation began. In fact, since Lindsey didn't think there would be much time for such things in the last 3.5 years of the Tribulation, he suggested that perhaps Magog would come up against Israel three and a half years before the Tribulation.

Perhaps for similar reasons, others suggest that this event will take place soon after the rapture but before the Tribulation begins. Then there are seven years to burn the weapons. This event might also then provide a mechanism for the Antichrist to arise.

Both of these scenarios have in common a military event where large portions of the world rise up against Israel. They throw everything they have at Israel but are defeated.

4. I often have told my Bible students over the years that we will know what the fulfillment of such things looks like after it happens. Frankly, I haven't found a "one-to-one" pattern of fulfillment between the Old and New Testaments. Often, it seems like the fulfillments are somewhat unexpected. In hindsight, we look back at a passage like Isaiah 53 and say, "Of course, the Messiah is going to suffer for the world." But as far as I can tell, not a single Jew had that thought prior to the death of Christ, including the disciples themselves.

The imagery of Ezekiel came to mind in 1948 when so many Arab countries rose up against Israel after it declared its independence in 1948 -- the "Arab-Israeli" war. But that was not the end of the world, no matter how clear it seemed at the time! That moment was not the specific fulfillment of Ezekiel 38-39. But this passage always comes to mind in prophecy circles whenever some force is in tension with Israel. And thus far, they have always been wrong. 100% failure rate.

In fact, a number of Arab nations have recognized Israel as a nation since then. Dispensationalists resisted Jimmy Carter for trying to bring peace between countries like Egypt and Israel. "You're wasting your time," they said (lifeboat). "You're coddling the enemy!" But there have now been over 50 years of peace between Egypt and Israel. Imagine if their "clarity" on prophecy had prevailed. They were just wrong. 100% failure rate.

Bottom line? 

It is alarming when the interpretations of passages like these run the risk of becoming self-fulfilling prophecies in modern politics. In a 1971 speech, Ronald Reagan as governor of California expressed the belief that the Soviet Union was Magog. When he then gave his "evil empire" speech as president in 1983, it is only natural to assume he had this imagery from Ezekiel 38-39 in the back of his mind. 

Thankfully, Reagan later collaborated when Gorbachev indicated he wanted to restructure the Soviet Union and move toward peace between the two countries. As it turned out, the Soviet Union of the twentieth century did not turn out to be Magog. But you can see how potentially dangerous it was for Reagan to have this equation in his head. By the grace of God, the notion did not lead him to assume that Russia could only be the enemy, because he was wrong. 100% failure rate on equations like these.

Today, we face similar danger when politicians with immense power assume that, say, Iran must always be the enemy or, for that matter, that the nation of Israel can never do anything wrong. The world is at great risk if our leaders do not make decisions based on the evidence and holding all nations to the standards of international law. Otherwise, we run the risk of losing opportunities for peace or looking the other way at injustice.

As mentioned in chapter 1, there have been many moments of good and bad times over the last 2000 years. We run the serious risk of unnecessarily making the times bad if we assume they must always be bad. We should work for the good of the world at all times and, when the bad presents itself, deal with it with wisdom and sound moral values. When we assume, it makes a mess out of you and me (or something like that).

5. So what is the right interpretation of Ezekiel...

The Butler

Went to see The Butler tonight. The movie is loosely based on the life of Eugene Allen, an African-American who served for some 34 years in the White House. Lest the cranky shut down and not listen, it is only loosely based on Allen's life.

Allen didn't grow up in Macon. His father wasn't killed as a child. He didn't have a son who was an activist, although he did have a son. He retired because it was time, not because he came to see his job as racially patronizing. Yes, yes, Reagan may have had geopolitical rather than racial reasons not to sanction South Africa over Apartheid.

What the movie does portray well is both the situation of black Americans in the middle part of the twentieth century and, implicitly, the benefits of white privilege in America. It portrays the powerlessness of blacks in the early part of the twentieth century in the face of injustice. It shows the ridiculous prejudice of the South and its stubborn insistence on segregation. It shows the obliviousness of whites who were in position not to worry about such things or who even got righteously indignant at "law breakers" like the activists who worked to make it impossible to be oblivious.

"White privilege" can be a difficult idea for a white person like me to grasp because it is not about something that seems "extra" to me as a white person. I may still struggle to pay my bills. I may still have all sorts of challenges of my own. White privilege has to do with how much harder it would be for me if I were black or of some other race in my same shoes.

When I walk into a store or down your average rural American street, I blend in. A Hispanic or a black might get a suspicious look in a similar store.  I might be watched, second guessed, profiled. Privilege is not so much about benefits I perceive as extra but about benefits I would definitely perceive if I were black or some other minority.

It is an amazing thing that even Christians can somehow convince themselves that they are standing up for right when "putting others in their place." No doubt many of those in the South thought they were justified in their anger toward troublemakers who refused to follow the rules and get to the back of the bus or use the right seats. It's not unlike the attitude today of some toward illegal immigrants who have broken the law in how they've entered this country. "We're right to tear their families apart because they're lawbreakers," as if Jesus and Paul were big on keeping the law.

The issues change, the attitudes don't.  A lot of state's rights talk today is the same old attitudes hiding behind different issues. Don't worry, our grandchildren will wag their heads at us too. The more localized the decision making, the more likely the exclusion and injustice.  The more people represented in the discussion, the more likely the fairness and evenhandedness.

I would have hoped that race would have disappeared as an issue by now.  In the year 2000 I might have said it was happening. But 9-11 and economic crisis have set us back.  People pull back into their cocoons when times are tough. Race seems as charged to me today as it has been since the 70s. I'm hoping it is just the last gasp before whites themselves become a racial minority.

I struggled not to cry as the movie ended.  It made me feel the pain of a good man in that era, in those situations. The specific characters in the movie were fictitious, but the people they represented were all too real.