Sunday, July 29, 2018

For at least one Trump voter, heaven is about new appliances

The Washington Post has a really great in-depth profile of evangelical Christian Trump voters in one small Alabama town, and Daily Kos did a terrific analysis.    There's not much I can add, except to say that I think both pieces are worth reading in their entirety, especially the original Post piece.

The part of that piece that really struck me was this:
She rubbed her sore knee, which was caked with an analgesic. 
“In heaven, I won’t have any pain,” Sheila said. 
“No tears,” said Linda. 
“I think it’ll be beautiful — I love plants, and I think it’ll be like walking in a beautiful garden,” said Sheila.  ... “I’m going to be in my kitchen,” Sheila said, imagining heaven would have one. “I think it’s going to be beautiful to see all the appliances.”
I find it soul-crushingly sad to see a human being whose world is so small that the greatest thing she can think of to aspire to even in the afterlife is new kitchen appliances.  I don't really want to judge a person's desires, but I have a hard time believing that Sheila's yearning for a new Frigidaire comes entirely of her own free will.

[UPDATE] Maybe there is a God after all, and he has a dark sense of humor.  We have a range hood which we hardly ever use.  The control panel consists of half a dozen membrane type-buttons all in one monolithic unit mounted inside a slot cut into the hood's a stainless steel housing.  This evening I was making dinner and the lights in the range hood started to flutter on, like a scene out of a B-horror movie.  I went to push the button on the panel to try to turn the lights off (they were already off, at least as far as I knew) and the whole panel popped off and vanished inside the unit (it was apparently attached with epoxy) with the lights now on full bright.  I had to pop the circuit breaker to turn the lights off.  So maybe heaven is a kitchen full of new appliances with life-time warranties.  In an eternal afterlife, that would be a helluva deal.

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