I
Kelly Loeffler is trying to win election to the Senate seat she was appointed to earlier this year. Besides being at present the junior senator from Georgia, she is also co-owner of a women’s basketball team, the Atlanta Dream. The members of the team are campaigning hard for a candidate in the senatorial race—but it’s not for Loeffler. Indeed, they even refuse to mention her name.(1) The players are supporting the candidacy of Democrat Raphael Warnock.
A third person in the race, a Republican like Loeffler, is Doug Collins.
Despite Loeffler’s disingenuousness and/or obliviousness (she has just denied knowing anything about Trump’s Access Hollywood tape), which is ripe for contemptuous comment, it is Collins that we focus on today.
According to Business Insider,
At least a dozen images and videos of Collins wearing different Air Force uniforms have appeared on his Senate campaign's social media accounts.(2)
It is strictly against military regulations if the advertisements do not make note of the candidate’s retired or reserved status and that the candidate in uniform cannot appear "as the primary graphic representation in any campaign media.” Michael Weinstein, a former US Air Force judge advocate general, stated that
Collins should have known better as a long-time military officer. . . .
What's particularly appalling is that we court-martial young soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines for stuff that is 1% as bad.
Collins is a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force Reserves and has served in Iraq as a chaplain.
Interestingly, our clergyman claims in an ad that he “will fight for you.” Is he going to heave Bibles at the enemy?
In response to Weinstein and his organization, Military Religious Freedom Foundation, the Collins campaign has claimed that the attack on his ads are an attack on “religious liberty.”
According to this Christian, then, it appears that the definition of “religious liberty” is the right to violate the norms, standards, and regulations of the United States Armed Forces.
II
Is there anyone more hickish (is that a word?) than Mike Huckabee. Described on Wikipedia as “an American politician, Christian minister and political commentator,” Huckabee, who thinks he should be president, was once governor of Arkansas and is the sire of the notorious liar Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
The other day, MarketWatch reported that Reverend Huckabee gleefully confessed to a felony—ballot fraud:
Stood in rain for hour to early vote today. When I got home I filled in my stack of mail-in ballots and then voted the ballots of my deceased parents and grandparents. They vote just like me!(3)
Only kidding, said Huckabee afterwards.
Guess that’s what passes for Christian humor in the Ozarks these days.
III
Gen. J.H. Binford Peay III has just resigned as superintendent of the Virginia Military Academy. He had served in that post since 2003. An independent investigation into allegations of systemic racism at the state-supported military college has been ordered by Virginia’s governor, who said,
Diversity is a fundamental commitment. Without this recognition, V.M.I. cannot properly educate future citizen-soldiers nor live up to its values of honor, character and service.(4)
The Institute’s history has been filled with veneration of Confederate leaders and slave owners:
Buildings on campus are named for them, and freshmen have been required to salute a statue of Stonewall Jackson, the Confederate general, who taught at the school before the Civil War.
Although General Peay announced efforts “to update some of the school’s traditions,” he refused to sanction efforts to rename buildings which honor Confederates. And he refused to remove the statue of Stonewall Jackson. Jackson, claimed Peay, besides being “a military genius,” was “a staunch Christian.”
Well, that probably excuses being a slave owner and a traitor to your country.
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(1) https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/05/sports/basketball/wnba-loeffler-warnock-blm.html
(4) https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/26/us/vmi-systemic-racism.html
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