Theocracy’s baby voice for all America to hear

The question on many minds following the Republican response to Joe Biden’s State of the Union address was “Where does the GOP find these people?”

In a kitchen straight out of the “Twilight Zone,” Katie Britt, heavily breathing each syllable of a 17-minute rejoinder, went full Bobby Jindal, creeping out everyone within earshot in the most bipartisan moments of the evening, earning a resounding “WTF was that?” 

A conservative rising star right up to the moment she was zombified by the glare, Britt’s ... one ... word ... at ... a ... time ... cadence sounded like a first-grade teacher whose Xanax kicked just as the current events lesson was getting off the ground. As though auditioning for her first speaking part, Britt plowed steadily ahead until suddenly pinging into the lurid narrative of a woman trafficked into sexual slavery at the age of 12, an indictment of Biden’s immigration policies as horrific as it was compelling, particularly for fact checkers.

Turns out it was a manufactured talking point delivered in a wounded voice, coupled with a hundred-yard stare, insinuating this woman’s experiences were perpetrated by drug cartels operating somewhere in the United States on the president’s watch: “We wouldn’t be OK with this happening in a third world country. This is the United States of America, and it is past time, in my opinion, we start acting like it. President Biden’s border policies are a disgrace.”

Except in this case, they were Republican policies.

While the incident did actually happen, it took place over 20 years ago in a Mexican brothel without cartel involvement. If Britt was looking for someone to blame, she could have chosen George Bush. Or if clarification was her aim, it was readily available in the woman’s recorded testimony, offered nine years ago to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.  

But it wasn’t the clarification Republicans sought so they simply embellished the story with the kind of alternative facts they’ve come to rely on since the Trump presidency so unequivocally demonstrated lying had no political consequence in MAGA World. Lying was, in fact, the very foundation of MAGA World, so Britt’s repackaging reality came as no surprise. 

Her delivery though was another matter entirely, offering the nation a glimpse of the revolting bless-your-heart demeanor often employed by evangelical women in what’s called the Fundie Baby Voice, which in Britt’s response was clearly a dog whistle, a coded GOP message to Christian nationalists intent on turning America into a theocracy: “We’ve got your back.”

Weirder still, Alabama’s first female senator’s actual voice is quite clear, articulate and normal by any measure.  

What we heard last week, however, was just one part of a carefully orchestrated theatrical production that included the kitchen itself — a woman’s implied place; the dangling cross; the whole “I’m just a mom” shtick; and assuring other Christian women that she understands her — and their — role in the culture. Even Britt’s green dress, servant’s attire in “The Handmaid’s Tale,” had the internet losing its mind.

Jess Piper, a former progressive political candidate in Missouri, recalled on Substack having grown up in a conservative Christian household where the baby voice was a familiar “cadence of condescension” as she called it, that ever so sweetly said “I am better than you and here are the ways ... I have children. They are perfect. I have a marriage. It is perfect. I am pretty and well educated. I am Christian — I am God fearing and I prove it by holding hands with my family and praying for the rest of you.”

Although it’s easy to dismiss Britt’s concocted vulnerability at the kitchen counter, the evangelical bent of judging everyone else’s morality, especially coupled with Christian nationalism and the quest for dominion, directly threatens democracy and clearly points to why the founders adamantly insisted on church and state separation. Despite evangelical fabrications to the contrary, John Adams was unequivocal: “The government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.”

While Britt’s venture into the spotlight had more heavy breathing than Tommy Tuberville trying to name the three branches of government, it was also the latest incursion of Alabama politics into the national spotlight, perhaps offering a small glimpse of a future with Christian nationalism holding sway. The Heart of Dixie State provided rationale for building tiny playgrounds in petri dishes through a ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court that frozen embryos were “children,” going well beyond any constitutional or legal precedent to reach their decision.

The court’s chief justice, Tom Parker, explained: “Human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God,” in a concurring opinion that invoked the Book of Genesis and the prophet Jeremiah, quoting from 16th- and 17th-century theologians.

“Even before birth,” Parker added, “all human beings have the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory.” 

As sanctimonious as Parker’s ideology might be, he is a near mythical figure in fundamentalist circles, credited with having laid out the legal roadmap Mississippi used to initiate the Supreme Court of the United States’ decision overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022, a tear-down-the-goalposts moment for anti-abortion Christians. At least briefly.

SCOTUS’ unprecedented decision sparked a fierce backlash, upending Republican dreams of a red wave in the 2022 midterm elections with Ohio and Kansas, both considered conservative states, voting overwhelmingly to reinforce reproductive freedom, including abortion. Fearing these results a harbinger of a disastrous general election with women abandoning the party in droves, the GOP sought to stanch the hemorrhage with Britt, which prompted a backlash of its own. 

Apparently, grown women babbling like frightened toddlers isn’t all that appealing. While we’re on the topic, Republicans might consider the implications of having a self-professed, serial sexual predator at the top of the ticket in November.

Walt Amses lives in North Calais.