In Part I, I explained that the code talker Congressman Chris Stewart (UT-2) knows who his audience is. But he is still, in my view, a Republican shill and a religious ideologue who, by definition, does not believe in anything but the end game. And the end game to the Congressman is making sure that truth prevails. What that “Truth” with a capital “T” is, is the subject of this blog post.
Here in Part II, I continue to call him out–partly through a rhetorical analysis of his fiction, and partly through, admittedly, bald screed. To share with the reader the character and modus operandi of Stewart as well the orbit in which he inhabits, I have chosen to intersperse herein summaries (prepared by his publisher) of the six volumes of Stewart’s magnum opus, The Great and Terrible.
The Brothers (Vol. I): In the time before Creation, before so many of the children of God turned away from their Father and walked knowingly into the dark, there was a choosing, a sifting, a contest of ideas and a battle for souls. In that great premortal war, each of us learned the first lessons of life: The great ones may fall. The wicked can change. The weak and the foolish can become the strongest of all. And the battle between good and evil is the same regardless of the time or place.
Congressman Chris “Stewart has been perhaps the most outspoken Republican — save President Donald Trump, himself — in opposition to the idea that Russia tampered with the 2016 election in an attempt to undermine Hillary Clinton’s campaign and, accordingly, help Trump.”
This is columnist Paul Rolly, writing in the Salt Lake Tribuneback before the mid-term elections in November of last year. Rolly goes on to quote former CIA Director John O. Brennan: “It is a one-sided and partisan effort to short-circuit appropriate investigative measures … . There will be a reckoning for those who protect the president. And that will be at the ballot box.”
There was no reckoning for the incumbent Chris Stewart. This in spite of a respectable campaign run by his opponent and first-time campaigner Shireen Ghorbani, who has since scored a seat on the Salt Lake County Council and continues to face-down Stewart (politely but pointedly) in public.
This even while the rest of the House of Representatives impressively flipped to the Dems.
Where Angels Fall (Vol II): The war that began before we entered mortality is escalating into the final battle for freedom, liberty, and the hearts and souls of all men. Into this world filled with turmoil, our Father will send some of his most valiant servants. A child is born who may have the power to change the course of history. But will Elizabeth remember the covenants she made in the premortal world? Will she and her brothers have the strength to withstand the terrible forces of evil that reign in the Last Days? Against the backdrop of Middle Eastern conflict, the story of war and intrigue will have you riveted!
A Lost Letter to a Politician
After the election of 2012, precipitated by Stewart’s winning a place in the US House of Representatives, I wrote a letter to him. After all, he was my new representative in Congress. I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. While I had not voted for him, I felt it was my duty as an American voter to claim the public servant that I’m given through fair elections–yes, “fair,” despite the savage gerrymandering of the Utah State Legislature which propelled him into office by its secular version of the “laying on of hands.”
Stewart didn’t write me back. Not even a form letter. I’m sure he was busy–on-boarding into the House, getting his committee assignments, a seat on various sub-committees, including, eventually, that of the Interior and State and Foreign Operations. He was probably finishing up writing the Elizabeth Smart memoir about her abduction and repeated raping by other religious ideologues who, unlike Stewart, were certifiably unhinged (not to mention criminal).
What I didn’t know was that Stewart’s silence to my carefully-written letter was right out of the playbook of the Mormon priesthood to which he literally belongs and from which stems his new “calling”: to save the U.S. Constitution which, it was prophesied in the latter days, would “hang by a thread.”
That playbook includes ignoring one’s naysayers–even, perhaps especially if they are your constituents. After all, you are operating with your anointment with “the power to act in God’s name.”
But enough about the convolutions of the Latter-day Saint priesthood, a power structure subject to its own version of exquisitely unaccountable gerrymandering. What needs to be said here is that Stewart has demonstrated through his lack of engagement with his constituents, including his shameful lack of live town halls, until very recently, that he has a mandate to do what he wants … more accurately, what his political party wants. And as the country has entered into its latest cycle of super-heated political combat, that means in the Beehive State that you close ranks.
I would argue that with Stewart in office the fusion between righteous Mormon living and the Republican Party in Utah is now complete.
This is a problem for me as a self-described left-leaning moderate in Utah. I argue here that virtually everything he has done in his life, from his illustrious fighter pilot career in the US Air Force, to his foray into fantasy and historical fiction, and finally to his work in the House of Representatives has been animated, and most importantly, justified by his fanatical view of what he perceives as the culminating chapters of the apocalyptic Mormon narrative.
The Second Sun (Vol. III): A world poised at the brink of a disastrous war is unaware of the evil forces that will stop at nothing to achieve their aims. But in the midst of turmoil and impending doom, some of the Father’s [God’s] most valiant servants are in place–sons and daughters who may have the power to change the course of history.
The Great and Terrible, fiction by Chris Stewart
These days my wife, a fellow compatriot in “The Resistance,” has to remind me that “people will die for their public image and kill for their self image.” Stewart’s self image appears to be determined primarily by ideology, not by his own life experience, and surely not the life experience of others. Experience, after all, is designed to illicit learning that is supposed to go with it (both knowledge and, potentially, wisdom).
But for an ideologue experience is at best the dross from which he cherry-picks evidence to support (and justify) his totalizing idée fixe. And what is that fixed idea for Stewart? Truth with a capital “T.” (That is, absolute “Truth” as he narrowly sees it.)
That’s why the fusion of Stewart’s orthodox Mormonism to a political party is so sinister. Not only my congressman but his meandering district filled to the brim with true believers fall on a familiar continuum that starts with the Kingdom of God … and also ends there. It is a “Zion” (to use a biblical term) constructed in their minds so deftly that it becomes both the center of life as well as its distant horizon.
Fury & Light (Vol. IV): The world waits in suspense as America struggles to survive following the attack on Washington, D.C., but who remains to run the government? Who will make the world-changing decisions that must be made? As King Abdullah prepares for the final attack that will bring America to its knees, the characters are trapped in a desperate fight for their lives. … The end is near now.
This is how this sort of thing works as detailed in Stewart’s six volume end-times narrative The Great and Terrible. Sam is an adopted young-adult son to our hero, Neil Brighton, a true-believer himself and not, inconsequentially, the military liaison to the national security advisor of the US. No surprise then that Sam has joined the special forces during the Iraq War. But Sam is not a believer in the one true faith, and dad, a convert himself, is not okay with that.
So how does Brother Brighton bring his son in line with what Mormons call the “Gospel”?
One word: savagely.
When Samuel bolts from the house, angry and confused, his parents are worried:
“They knew the dangers [of living on the streets]. They knew the sins,” we are told. “They recognized his uncertainty and left him alone, confident he would eventually figure it out.” [read: decide that his parents were right].
Back in conversation, Brother Brighton allegedly hears out Sam, but Dad clearly believes in a scorched earth approach:
“No, Sam,” his father answered, his voice more firm now. “That isn’t true and you know it. You know it inside. You have received answers many times in your life. You have felt the Spirit–I know you have–but that is not what you are looking for now. You aren’t looking for answers; you are looking for reasons not to believe. You think you are asking God. But you’re not asking, you’re telling. You’re demanding to know. You’re looking up and saying, ‘You must answer me, and you must answer me now! What you have told me before wasn’t good enough and I demand to have more!’”
“You’re putting yourself above God, Sam. You want to be in charge, rather than submit to his will. But he is the God of the universe. He doesn’t answer to you. ”
“Neil paused. They were harsh words and he knew it, but they also were true. Sam looked away, his eyes lost. “He didn’t answer…” he muttered, his voice trailing off.
“He will answer you, Samuel, but he will test you first. He is testing you now, because he wants to know. Are you willing to trust him? Are you willing to remember the times he has told you before? Are you willing to take that lonely step into the dark, not knowing, not even believing, but still trusting somehow?”
The message is clear. It’s one thing to wend your way to the truth, but how dare you accept or even acknowledge your own experience which might lead you away from the Truth? The irony is that an active Latter-day Saint would read this exchange, this paternal and paternalistic lecture, and not even blink. I know I wouldn’t have when in my twenties I had faithfully fulfilled a mission, returning “with honor,” married a woman in a Mormon temple, and was living the Mo-life on the east bench of Salt Lake City. What Stewart practices is what Lesly Butterfield recently termed “spiritual extortion,” in a wrenching commentary published in the Salt Lake Tribune.
There may be multiple ways of getting there, Stewart’s hero is saying to his son, but there is only one destination: Truth with a capital “T.” (And in the author’s universe, that’s truth with a capital Mormon “T.”)
To compound this message, the above dressing down is prefaced, as is everything in this tale, by life in the pre-mortal state. In the mix of Mormon doctrine and urban legend, we all lived with God the Father in spirit form as his children and along with our two oldest spirit siblings Jesus (Jehovah) and Satan (Lucifer). Using the setting of the pre-mortal life, Stewart has constructed a storyline, complete with imaginary characters who are soon to be dispatched to earth with a veil of forgetfulness drawn over their minds, to be tested. Even in this preamble to life, according to Stewart and his ilk, there are “wars and rumors of war,” as Lucifer and his minions (one-third of the spirit children) attempt to persuade the faithful to reject God and his eternal plan for them.
From the End of Heaven (Vol. V): The battle of good against evil intensifies in the darkness of an EMP [electro-magnetic pulse]-devastated America. For Sara Brighton, the time is fast approaching when she must face the frightening realities her husband, Neil, warned her about before his death. Sam’s problem is more immediate: How can he get his family to a safe place? … . Meanwhile, the followers of Satan plot to take over the government of the United States and remake it to fulfill their own greed and lust for power.
Back to the earthbound story.
So rebellious Sam, now embodied on Earth and having fielded his Father’s shame, goes into the army. Two years later, after a stint in Afghanistan fighting the remnants of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, he is invited to join The Delta Force. “His unit had only one mission:,” the narrator intones, portentously, “to hunt down and kill the enemies of the United States.”
This is a pretty fierce glue ball Stewart has constructed. But he knows to whom he is writing. His mission is not only to keep the fusion of institutional church, the cult of the “forever family” and the individual in one seamless, roiling glob in which there are no constituent parts, or boundaries, but to bake nationalism in with the congealed gumbo as well.
It is the evil that Sam experiences with “the enemies of the United States,” the enemies whom he must “hunt down and kill,” that will propel him not only into the bosom of nationalism but back to his family and faith.
Mission accomplished.
Stewart is smart enough to include both bad Muslims, and good Muslims in his tale. There are bad Saudi Arabians and good Saudi Arabians, though curiously, there are no bad Israelis to leaven the good ones, and the Palestinians are all, in my reading, cynical and self-immolating. As for Americans, there are indeed references to wayward, foolish Americans who criticize the president of the United States (George W. Bush) and who otherwise can’t get their patriotic shit together. It’s all here in a tale which really is as woodenly written as it sounds–all 1,300-plus pages of it.
But the author is very clear who is the ultimate enemy of God, America, and all things good in it: that being is Lucifer, the Son of the Morning, Satan, the Devil. His name is “Legion,” and the running description of this very personified evil throughout will make you first draw a blank, then squirm with embarrassment (for the author), then snicker in disbelief, followed by a bending over in laughter. Finally, you will stretch out, stiff as a board, etherized by the prose, a numbed state which Stewart and his followers would of course quickly seize upon as your acquiescence to their lunacy.
Such are the delusions of ideologues.
Reading Chris Stewart’s The Great and the Terrible is not something I would recommend, at least not all of it, and at least not from one lumbering volume to another with publisher Deseret Book’s folderol of back cover blurbs. What has struck me as I’ve gone for repeated swims in this expansive story for the past several months, is the irony of it all. This is especially true as one reflects on where The Republic has descended through the rise of Donald Trump and the fall of the Republican Party. Stewart’s wooden prose will not only give you splinters from reading it, but it will hit you over the head like a two-by-four with shifting optics of who are the evil ones, and who are the righteous.
Always, for Chris Stewart, and his characters (virtually all male), it is intolerable that there might not be a black/white scenario to which one can react heroically.
Chris Stewart’s little-boy infatuation with big muscles
When you live in a cosmology (or in this case the dream-like state of a created world through fiction) that is this pedestrian, it’s very easy for our hero to turn into a stick-in-the-mud military dude with a little-boy infatuation with big muscles if not a latent homosexual orientation.
Furthermore, it’s hard not to see Lucifer’s pre-mortal rallies of the unrighteous as an analogue to Trump’s, complete with his paranoia about the mainstream press as spies.
To wit:
“The Destroyer smiled bitterly…He drew large and strong, his neck taunt [sic], his chest tight.” (139)
“And as long as they were willing to follow, as long as they were willing to cry and scream and pledge their undying support, as long as they were willing to believe him, even knowing in their hearts, somewhere deep in their souls, that he was lying to them, as long as they were willing to listen, and follow, and do what he said, then he would grow strong, drawing more power from them. …As Lucifer looked out upon them, his followers, his servants, those who brought him such power, he shivered with excitement. he couldn’t help smile.”
Double biceps pose: ‘nuff said
“It was like watching some magic, something he could not understand, the way Lucifer manipulated their emotions, like they were an empty bag, waiting for them to fill them with whatever he desired–hate, anger, jealousy , fear, lust ambition, or irrational rage. They were pliable, like soft putty, wanting to be molded by his hand. And it was clear, as he watched, that these people had surrendered their will.” … But Lucifer would save them! Oh, and they loved him so. He would save them from the suffering. He would save every one! …His chest constricted suddenly. How he thrilled at the crowd!
… “Did you see them?” he demanded…Traitors. They were out there. The Father has sent out his spies!”
Aside from this thing with tight chests, surrounded, I might add, by multiple references to “Deep black eyes, broad shoulders, thin waist, and strong arms…tall and masculine, with huge hands and large feet,” the ironies of Stewart’s magic land proliferate like MAGA hats at a Texas rally.
Lucifer and his direct minions are not the only evil characters in The Great & Terrible series. So are you. If you’re anything other than a true believing patriot in a facsimile of Chris Stewart, you are just a cancer in his home:
“Evil people, hiding behind the right of expression, had joined forces and plotted to bring their freedoms to an end. And those people walked in their midst, smiling and plotting and hating their friends, while waiting for the day when they could fight in the open instead of slink in the dark, their jealousy and hate quietly boiling inside. For them it was no longer a question of what was right or what was wrong, only of which feelings had control of their hearts: the love they had felt for each other and their God, or the hate that now stewed because of their jealous pride.
“Yes, war was coming. It [sic] fact, it was already here.”
For the record, mainstream media also gets dinged here, including what Trump likes to call the “Failing New York Times.” Once the author has linked the battle lines in his tale with what’s morally and cosmically of God and what’s that of the devil, there isn’t anywhere for the story to go, and no way for the characters to grow, change, or evolve. What’s more, there’s no place for a breathing, thinking, and feeling reader to enter the text. It becomes a run-away train that you either stay on into the ether of accelerating delusion, or jump off to your death.
Come to think of it, that’s not a bad metaphor for any kind of religious fanaticism or its political corollary of fascism: a runaway train. Tragically, we have a congressman right now who actually believes this stuff, and he’s shoehorning it all into his legacy as statesman during the greatest political emergency of our lifetimes. This American moment is a singular time when the very Republic Stewart and his stick drawings of characters are ostensibly determined to fight for in The Great and Terrible has never been, in our lifetimes, more existentially threatened.
And the fate of The Republic, seemingly hanging by a thread, is not because of what Stewart relentlessly barks about in virtually all of his books, but because of what he has promoted and continues to promote to this day: the nationalism of Trump and Trumpism where the repeating of word “freedom,” the warrant for all his arguments, his world vision, is opaque and utterly meaningless.
Clear As the Moon (Vol. VI): The nuclear explosion over Washington D.C. and the subsequent EMP attack have left a decapitated government and 300 million helpless citizens. In the ensuing chaos, a dark and powerful cartel steps forward to claim power. The Constitution of the United States hangs in the balance as the eternal struggle between good and evil spreads through the government. …Struggling against overwhelming odds, [the survivors] realize the most important lesson of their time: Faith is the only thing that matters as the final day draws near.
At least the notorious end-times writer for Mormons got one thing right: these are perilous times for America. But ironically it’s because of the fulfillment of the Congressman’s own freedom-loving, constitutionalist program, not in spite of it. That program is indistinguishable for Stewart from his own hackneyed version of what Mormons call “The Plan of Salvation” (read: our church is the only true and living church on the face of the whole earth).
Jesus is Coming: Look BusyStewart, however, is not beyond denying this, gunning instead for the code-talking and whistle calls to the faithful. At six-foot-three the powerfully-built, tight-chested Neil Brighton “knew this wasn’t a battle between Christianity and Islam.”
It wasn’t a contest of religions. At its core, it wasn’t even a battle between cultures or nation-states. It was a battle for freedom. It was as simple as that. This was good against evil, black against white. … But his faith in America’s ability to prevail was growing fragile; there was no doubt about that. The battle had torn him, and he was growing scared.”
Not as scared, however, as the reader grows with each ensuing The Great and Terrible volume. And not as scared as Congressman Stewart will be when this entire souffle of Trump and the GOPutin collapses in on him, his fans and, sadly, his family. For what it’s worth, here is my prophecy as a former (now self-defrocked) priesthood holder, knighted to “act in God’s name” beginning at the age of twelve (but without the 22-inch arms and “tight chest” of my selected avatar):
Congressman Chris Stewart will reap bitter disappointment by-and-by for and deeply regret his current shill behaviors in the House of Representatives, serving Utah’s District 2. This is actually saying something complimentary of my congressman: it means that he’s not so delusional, as the squatting president, to not know better.
[UPDATE, April 18, 2019] Stewart further embarrassed himself after the 400-plus page redacted Mueller report was released: close ranks with the skankiest of his brethren–slumming with the likes of the deplorable Laura Ingraham of Fox News–to announce as he did on Facebook that “Mr. Mueller conducted a detailed and thorough investigation that mirrors what we found in the House Intelligence investigation—no collusion or conspiracy between the Trump Campaign and Russia.” He then had the gall to invite us to his post-Mueller tent meeting: “Now that the American people know the truth, I look forward to moving beyond the political theatrics and coming together to work on behalf of the American people.”
In short, Stewart has continued to return like a dog to its vomit, back to the only thing he seems to be able to do with his eyes closed, other than set an air speed record, and that is to talk code to his constituents while doing the shill two-step with his party as Trump’s Little Boy Fauntleroy, to quote Paul Rolly of the Salt Lake Tribune.
SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECY
I don’t believe in the end times. I don’t believe that Jesus is going to come hoofing out of the sky to save all of us in these “the latter days.” But Chris Stewart clearly does. No, it’s not a metaphor: it’s a choreographed, live music outing with klieg lights and a stage manager with angel wings and a clipboard. But before this outdoor, atmospheric pageant commences, certain things have to happen according to biblical prophesy, and Stewart and orthodox Latter-day Saints are not the only ones who are waiting impatiently for these “signs of the times” of Christ’s second coming:
There will be wars and rumors of wars: check
The constitution of the United States will hang by a thread: not checked yet, but thanks to Trump and the Republican leadership we are close.
The moon will turn to blood: check(just last month: red, super moon)
Economies will collapse: on-going; Brexit, the Great Recession, austerity in Eastern Europe…
Satan will “reign in blood and horror upon the earth”: check, depending on what you think “Satan” is
The Jews will “gather”: check, the sovereign state of Israel
The Enemy will attempt to destroy the Jews: pending
As with other Christians (or the “real” Christians: evangelicals (decidedly NOT Mormons, they remind us repeatedly) … there is a sick sense of hastening the coming of Christ by gaming the “signs of the times.”
The Washington Post is on to this video game and they could have just as easily referenced Chris Stewart and his ultra-orthodox Mormon followers as they do Vice President Mike Pence: “Pence’s religious views matter here, because he holds an evangelical notion of Judaism, one that sees Jews as nothing more than instruments in an apocalyptic narrative that seeks the return of Christ. What at first appears to be a well-intentioned, if bungling, message turns out to have an insidious intent: to signal to his base that accommodating gestures made toward Jews are being made in the service of Christian aims.”
Even Trump has been corralled into the biblical narrative as a modern-day Cyrus the Great, the Persian “gentile,” but friend to God’s chosen and who promises to precipitate the mother of all final days scenario right out of a James Cameron Hollywood blockbuster.
At the risk of sounding like Glenn Beck or his conspiratorial brethren, are these signs of the end-times being gleefully orchestrated for nefarious (the Glory of God) purposes? Is Chris Stewart and other religious fanatics, now in power, engaged in a self-fulfilling prophecy?
Cyrus the Great
Another Trump First: an American Flag asks to be burned.
The Take Away
I write this commentary while cutting and pasting these summaries from The Great and Terrible series for those of you who find Congressman Chris Stewart and his fancifully lurid, and didactic world view incomprehensible, and therefore his representation of us in Congress inscrutable.
Hopefully this exercise of vicariously hanging out with my congressman (something I probably would not have chosen to do, normally), who is only a few months older than I am, serves a worthwhile purpose.
I hope it will benefit my Mormon (and post-Mormon) brethren and sisters who will see, as if in a glass darkly, how the narrative our tribe ostensibly believes in and sacrifices so much for has been hijacked for devious and manipulative purposes by Congressman Stewart.
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Part III (forthcoming) will be about Stewart’s two (to date) historical fictions (or fictional histories) written with his brother, Ted Stewart, a now-retired federal judge. The books, especially the second one, rail against what they believe to be the vile revisionist history of contemporary scholars. In place of this sullied revision of history, the authors posit another revision (or what they would call a “restoration” back to the “True” history) that aggressively fronts what has come to be known as “American exceptionalism.” These books, one of which was elevated by Glenn Beck’s endorsement onto the New York Times bestseller list, demonstrates how God’s miracles created America (The only true and living country on the face of the whole earth) and its “freedom-loving denizens” (that’s you, unless you’re “one of them”). The Stewart brothers further imply what the final chapter might just be of this true, miraculous history: the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, the one-thousand years of Christ’s reign on this “paradisiacal” earth and the casting into outer darkness of Satan and his minions (and you, if you happen to be “one of them”) for eternity.
Thanks for reading.
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Author: David G. Pace
David G. Pace is a journalist, fiction and narrative nonfiction writer and fundraiser who lives in the Mountain West, USA. His debut novel was published in 2015.
