The Song Remains the Same

Sam Rocha perceptively writes:

He is, of course, absolutely right. I am old enough to remember when “n***er lover” was spoken with exactly the same “We, of course, all agree this is funny satire of contemptible bleeding heart libs” tone that “woke” is spoken now by the right wing cult of racism. The words have changed, but the song remains the same.

It’s this sort of superficially-changing-but-internally-consistent-over time commitment to structures of sin that Jesus is denouncing when he complains to the Pharisees about to kill him:

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, saying, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ Thus you witness against yourselves, that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers. (Mt 23:29–32)

Any resemblance between that and MAGA cultists who give speeches on Martin Luther King Day while offering “thoughts and prayers” after a racist mass murders a bunch of black people at church or a grocery store or slaughters synagogues full of Jews (all while defending Tucker Carlson for egging on these terrorist nuts with “Great Replacement” idiocy) is purely uncoincidental.