Have you encountered this saying lately?
Normal isn’t coming back, Jesus is!
I’ve seen this pithiness silkscreened on T-shirts. Even on the website where I play a knockoff version of Boggle (an awesome and free site; not quite Boggle, but near enough), one of the players regularly uses the phrase as a handle.
Normal isn’t coming back, Jesus is!
I see this statement as an acknowledgment that we’re not living in normal times. I agree! We passed normal—well, the whole 21st century in the United States began under a cloud of unnormality, so I’m not sure if I can truly pinpoint it. In my lifetime, though, there really have been two turning points, presidentially: Reagan and Trump. I love the Democrats in this timespan—both Clinton and Obama did fine things in office. But’s that’s just it. They maintained the office, even improved some things, but they did not transform their eras. Reagan made American politics take a departure. Trump was something else.
So, we’re not in the vicinity of normal. That’s what that T-shirt says to me.
But the phrase is also unapologetic! They don’t care! The people mouthing this sentiment are actually kind of haughty about it. I can easily picture someone with their arms crossed and a smug look of satisfaction saying this. I can hear a little petulant melody to their declaration, too.
As a wrap to the sentence as a whole, “Jesus is!” operates either as a threat or as a matter of holding one over somebody. Like the person has witnessed someone break a rule and can’t wait to tattle on them to whichever parent comes home first. There’s an excitement here, a jubilation predicated on someone else receiving a punishment. In this instance, it’s almost an identification with the aggressor. The claimaint is sharing power with the one coming in triumphant return.
So the person making this claim, letting these words dance on the tongue, is really, when you decode it, cheering on the apocalypse. That person cannot wait for catastrophe and misery to descend upon the land. Can’t wait! This idea of cataclysm and chaos fills them with glee and an irrepressible, delicious sense of self-righteousness. Can’t wait for Jesus to smite the lot of you.
Thankfully, some individuals are coming forward and speaking out against this, warning of the dangers of Christian nationalism. While the T-shirt doesn’t explicitly speak to Christian nationalism, that’s the fervor that is driving this apocalypse-themed cottage industry.
I’m looking forward to when normal comes back. You know? The themes swirling now were present at the turn of the millennium (extremists, conspiracy theorists, terrorism, school shootings and other mass killings, polarized politics), but things felt more normal then because the right wing was nowhere near accomplishing their goals for a societal terraforming.
I’m looking forward to a time when people aren’t happy to justify their desires for widespread mayhem and desolation.