Tuesday, December 3, 2024

Lilith encounters Christian nationalism

At the back of Valley of the Temples cemetery, up against the Ko`olau, the Wang monument features images of Lincoln and Washington tucked beneath a cross. On the other side of a nearly closed stone rectangle are large reliefs of the American capitol building and the white house. Inside the rectangle there are many niches behind black stone. No one seems to be buried there. Lilith and I found one of our worker friends there out front with a hose, watering grass (the pigs keep turning it up, he explained). The guy who bought the monument is 20 years old, he told me. He's married to one of the bosses, so he should know. He wanted it to be bigger than the monument for the Chinese general down the hill. The general, our friend explained, was a freedom fighter in China, anti-communist; he is beloved in his community here. Ah, see, he actually did something, I said. And he's even dead. Christian nationalism has its own rules.

 

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