DESCRIBING THE STATE OF THE UNION RESPONSE FROM GOVERNOR SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS BY ANOTHER WORD

 

©Wendell Griffen, 2023

 

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines “defining moment” as the time that shows very clearly what something is really about. If that definition is taken seriously, the response by Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders (Republican, Arkansas) to the State of the Union Address by US President Joe Biden was a defining moment. Governor Sanders appears to think so, at least, judging by the words she spoke that night and the things she spoke about.

Governor Sanders correctly spoke of herself as the youngest governor in the United States, and contrasted her youth with President Biden, who at eighty is the oldest president in US history. In doing so, Sanders spoke of herself as part of a new generation of Republican leaders.

But Sanders showed Americans and the rest of the world that her “new generation” perspective is not new. There is nothing “new” about political censorship of public education. There is nothing “new” about maligning public health initiatives that protect the spread of a deadly pandemic. There is nothing “new” about using bigotry, prejudice, and religious nationalism for political advantage. And there is nothing “new” about a politician (not to mention a generation of politicians) who lies about other people and what those other people believe in order to score political points.

Governor Sanders signed Executive Order 23-05 the day she took office. It is true that Executive Order 23-05 is titled: “EXECUTIVE ORDER TO PROHIBIT INDOCRINATION AND CRITICAL RACE THEORY IN SCHOOLS.” But it is untrue, meaning a lie, to declare that “Critical Race Theory (CRT) is antithetical to the traditional American values of neutrality, equality, and fairness.” It is a lie to declare that CRT “emphasizes skin color as a person’s primary characteristic, thereby resurrecting segregationist values, which America has fought so hard to reject.”

As a lawyer, retired jurist, former law professor, pastor, and public theologian, I know that those quoted words in Executive Order 23-05 to describe critical race theory are not only inaccurate. I know that Sanders’ description of critical race theory is categorically untrue, meaning a bold-faced lie.

I also know that Sanders' categorically untrue characterization of critical race theory is straight out of the Southern (I prefer to term it "Slaveholder") Baptist Convention playbook that I denounced after the presidents of the six SBC-affiliated seminaries signed a joint statement opposing critical race theory and intersectionality based on the assertion that "any version of critical theory is incompatible with the Baptist Faith and Message" (https://baptistnews.com/article/why-are-sbc-seminary-presidents-rejecting-critical-race-theory-if-they-teach-about-jesus-and-the-prophets-who-denounced-injustice/). 

Critical Race Theory is based on the view that one cannot accurately interpret and understand issues of social justice and public policy without analyzing how white supremacy and racism affect law, commerce, education, crime and punishment, public health, and community well-being. 

Intersectionality is a theoretical framework first advanced by Kimberle Crenshaw, a law professor at the UCLA and Columbia University Schools of law, that examines how multiple kinds of identity (i.e., race, gender, sex, class, ability, nationality/immigration status, sexual orientation) combine (intersect) to affect public policies and social justice.   Crenshaw explains intersectionality in a TED talk that can be viewed at this link:  https://www.ted.com/talks/kimberle_crenshaw_the_urgency_of_intersectionality. 

There is nothing “new” when a politician utters a bold faced lie about racial injustice. Orval Faubus did so in Arkansas, George Wallace did so in Alabama, Ross Barnett did so in Mississippi, and other white politicians uttered bold faced lies about efforts to remedy racial injustice long before Governor Sanders falsely maligned critical race theory as “indoctrination”  the first day she took office.

Sanders graduated from Little Rock Central High School and SBC-affiliated Ouachita Baptist University (B.A., Political Science, 2004). She is young, but by no means a political novice, having campaigned for her father, former Arkansas Governor (and former SBC pastor) Mike Huckabee, as a field coordinator for the George W. Bush re-election campaign in 2004, as national political director for Mike Huckabee’s unsuccessful presidential campaign in 2008, and on the campaign staffs of several other politicians, including her father’s second unsuccessful presidential campaign that ended February 1, 2016. Later that month, Sanders joined the communications staff of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

In July 2017, Sanders became the White House press secretary. She held that post until June 2019. The quoted language from Executive Order 23-05 that falsely describes critical race theory as “antithetical to the traditional American values of neutrality, equality, and fairness” is ironic coming from Sanders, Donald Trump’s press secretary on January 11, 2018, when Trump loudly referred to Haiti and African nations as “shithole countries” during a White House meeting with a bipartisan group of U.S. Senators (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-referred-haiti-african-countries-shithole-nations-n836946).

Although Sanders’ response to Joe Biden’s State of the Union address has been described as “scathing” (https://nypost.com/2023/02/07/sarah-huckabee-sanders-rips-bidens-woke-fantasies-in-gop-state-of-the-union-rebuttal/) and “surly” (https://arktimes.com/arkansas-blog/2023/02/08/gov-sanders-combative-sotu-rebuttal-not-quite-a-national-embarrassment-but-close), there is a different and more morally appropriate word to describe it: “sinister.”

The Oxford American dictionary definition of sinister is “suggestive of evil.” Roget’s Thesaurus defines sinister as “strongly suggestive of great harm, menace, or evil.” There is a huge moral and ethical difference between political rhetoric that is “scathing” or “surly” and rhetoric that is “sinister.”

Sinister rhetoric is what one reads about at Isaiah 59:3, in these words: “… your lips have spoken lies, your tongue mutters wickedness.”

Isaiah 59:4-5 makes the point unmistakably plain. … they rely on empty pleas, they speak lies, conceiving mischief and begetting iniquity. They hatch adders’ eggs, and weave the spider’s web; whoever eats their eggs dies, and the crushed egg hatches out a viper.

Later, at verses 9 and 10, the prophet “made it plain” – as Dr. J. Alfred Smith (Pastor emeritus of Allen Temple Baptist Church, Oakland, California) would say.

Therefore, justice is far from us, and righteousness does not reach us; we wait for light, and lo! There is darkness; and for brightness, but we walk in gloom. We grope like the blind along a wall, groping like those who have no eyes; we stumble at noon as in the twilight, among the vigorous as though we were dead.

That plight results from political rhetoric that is “sinister.” We should not trivialize its ominous forecast by describing what Sarah Sanders said in response to the State of the Union as merely “scathing” or “surly.”

What Sanders said in response to Biden’s State of the Union address was evil, sinister, and wicked. There is nothing “new” about it. That rhetoric and the societal harm it has produced across history, and in the present age, is old and ominous for America, Arkansas, and the world. The political term for it is fascism.

Therefore…we wait for light, and lo! There is darkness; and for brightness, but we walk in gloom.

Welcome, to our “defining moment.”