The Glenn Beck-Bo Gritz Continuum

I really thought I could stay away from the whole Glenn Beck thing. I mean, I've laughed at him before, like most of the people who share my political beliefs and/or my professional class have probably laughed at him, but I never got upset or outraged by any of his conspiratorial mud-slinging, because I just dismissed it. It was out there, on the corner of my consciousness, but not much more than that. I mean, he's just an entertainer, right? I don't pay attention to Rush Limbaugh either. Yes, I realize that entertainers like Limbaugh and Beck have become hugely important to the ideological structuring of what passes for "conservatism" in the United States, but honestly, I just thought I could spend whatever awareness I bother to devote to the mass media on something more worthwhile.

And, of course, that's still true. But over the past week, Beck's stupid comments about "social justice" exploded all across the internet--and, perhaps inevitably, elicited comments from numerous of my fellow Mormon bloggers, since Beck is himself a member of the Mormon church...and for him to, however unintentionally, distinguish himself, with his emotionally overwrought patriotic Mormon Christianity, from the rest of the Christian world which foolishly talks about "social justice" was just a little too much. But I didn't blog about it. It's not as though I don't understand what he presumably thinks he's saying, trying to strike back against the "collectivism" which he apparently thinks has somehow sneaked its way into Christian thought; and it's not as though I like Beck being served up as a fat, easy target for much of the religious left, who for the most part really need to do some serious soul-searching themselves. I just didn't know what I could add to the flood of commentary.

Then my old friend Matt Stannard pointed out another bit of Beckian weirdness: he has this convoluted, confused argument which equates state and federal affirmative action programs with the enslavement of human beings, and as a consequence is urging his listeners not to fill out the U.S. Census, which the Constitution requires be conducted every ten years. And all of sudden it came to me: Bo Gritz!

For those of you who don't know, or don't care, James Gordon "Bo" Gritz (rhymes with "rights") as a US Army Special Forces officer who, sometime in the 1980s, discovered countless drug-money-fueled, internationally-coordinated conspiracies working to undermine America's strength and security, its Christian heritage, its moral values, etc., etc. Your typical right-wing extremist, right? Well, actually, Gritz managed a tad more than most of them have ever dreamed. By the 1990s he'd written multiple books, successfully inserted himself into the FBI's (often, it must be admitted, incompetent) engagements with various Freemen and Christian Patriot militias and survivalist groups which proliferated during the glory years of the "New World Order" (and, not coincidentally, became a hero to many of them; he probably saved Randy Weaver's life during the botched stand-off at Ruby Ridge), and had run for president under the slogan, "God, Guns, and Gritz." And here's where it gets interesting: just about everywhere else in America, Gritz was down at the bottom of the ballot, with various other marginalized candidates...but in my Mormon homeland of Utah and Idaho, he was big news. You see, Gritz himself was, for a time anyway, a member of the Mormon church, and thus was able to plug into a lot of deeply subterranean, arch-conservative, anti-government, John-Bircher, "the Constitution-hanging-by-a-thread-and-the-elders-of-Zion-must-save-it" stuff (for contrasting approaches to that venerable bit of Mormon folklore, see here and here) which has echoed around western American Mormon culture for more than a half-century. The result was, perhaps, predictable.

I was an undergraduate at BYU at the time, working for the campus newspaper, and when the election season of 1992 rolled around we student journalists found ourselves surrounded by sometimes-amusing, sometimes-intimidating, zealous, slightly paranoid, deeply moralistic, Christian Mormon patriots. (I can remember a couple of earnest old fellows who visited the newsroom, insisted on speaking to me, and took up an hour of my time explaining how the Federal Reserve had been complicit in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.) Such folks weren't in the majority, not by any means; the great bulk of Utah voters were solid, respectable, socially conservative Republicans, and rolled their eyes at talk about the Illuminati along with the rest of us. But still: there were huge banners and billboard for Bo Gritz to be found all over the countryside. I attended a political rally/religious revival with Gritz which filled an arena up in Salt Lake City; there were thousands of people there, from all over the Intermountain West. Gritz came to a stage set with empty chairs, representing the spirits of the founding fathers, was introduced as another "Captain Moroni" (a widely admired--amongst some Mormons, anyway--military hero from the Book of Mormon), and proceeded to lecture and fulminate to great acclaim about the threats posed to America by Godless Others, the rally concluding with a frankly ritualistic burning of the United Nation's flag.

Well, Gritz earned a respectable 4% of Utah's total votes in 1992 (hey, four percent is more than Ralph Nader ever managed), and in some counties won up to 10%. Then he went off to Idaho to form his own survivalist training compound, and the Mormon church leadership eventually got around to inveighing heavily against that particular style of fundamentalist Mormon who rejects the U.S. court system as apostate and stockpiles eight years worth of wheat in their basement in preparation for Armageddon, and life went on? What does this all this have to do with Glenn Beck? I'm not suggesting there's any direct connection between the two; I'm only observing a pattern. A man finds a faith that includes elements, should he choose to look for them, of patriotic extremism, of warnings about "secret combinations" and historical conspiracies, all in the midst of a broader church culture that is strongly "conservative" (in the Republican sense, mostly) but otherwise, except in the eyes of assorted anti-cult zealots, basically a thoroughly Americanized, modernized, ordinary Christian church. (Which, not surprisingly, has reminded all its American members to be responsible citizens and fill out their census forms completely.) This means, of course, that the community must be enlightened. They must be warned. Glenn Beck, telling his listeners to beware the wolf-in-sheep's-clothing that is "social justice"? Makes perfect sense. He's proselyting, doing missionary work amongst the deluded, sharing the important information that he has discovered (or has been revealed to him? perhaps he thinks so...) with an America that has had the wool pulled over its eyes. Twenty years ago, it was the United Nations, the Council on Foreign Relations, and Bill Clinton who had put the wool there; today, it's Barack Obama, health care reform, and, apparently, the U.S. Census. Any paranoid fantasy will do, because any one of them can be connected to the larger moral struggle which, for reasons both good and bad, much of my own Mormon culture and many of the Mormon teachings I accept make not just theoretically possible, but on some readings, downright credible.

I don't feel too bad about this--most of American Christianity makes possible its own fringes as well, so in a way I suppose it's comforting to know what we Mormons, just like the rest of you, have our clowns and kooks too. And hey, given that the line between fringe kookiness and thoughtful criticism is sometimes thin, I'm actually kind of grateful that we can call a nut like Beck our own: after all, someone has to keep outlandish arguments alive, just in case they someday turn out to be true. But I do feel bad for Beck himself. My friend Matt, in a different post, suggests that he's already almost entirely burned through his 15 minutes of fame--and that, in having invested so heavily in a fearful, suspicious mindset that has so little to do with the heart of the faith he has chosen, may find that after his star has been eclipsed that he won't have enough ordinary connection and commitment to the unfortunately mostly ordinary folks who fill Mormon congregations to get the kind of support from his ward that he may need. Which would be a loss--and I say that not just as a believer myself, but also as someone who, in watching clips of the show, keeps feeling that Beck himself, probably like Gritz, seriously needs a hug.