CREEDE HINSHAW: Enduring Category 5 craziness

She was a self-appointed prophet in an all-you-can eat restaurant in a south Georgia county seat town, the kind of place where you might see friends and where you often overeat. It was not the kind of place where you expect to be verbally strafed by a frantic stranger.

Maybe John the Baptist would have been proud of this strident woman, but I think not. I believe he would have hung his head in shame over the bad name she gave to the role of a godly truthteller.

Depending on your political persuasion, this woman, making her stand near the fried chicken, pickled beets and banana pudding was an effective guided missile … or just plain bananas.

It all began (Who knows how these things really begin?) when a woman with a broken foot bone entered the restaurant on one of those four-wheeled contraptions that offer mobility. The evening promised to be a welcome escape from the relative isolation of her convalescence and an opportunity for a square meal in a place with electricity.

Everything was just fine until the convalescing woman was confronted by the frenetic stranger. Normally a person might just turn and walk away from such ugliness, but it is not easy to beat a diplomatic retreat when you are on one of those scooters. Furthermore, the sneak attack was so swift that retreat wasn’t possible.

The outraged partisan confronted the unsuspecting victim, whose crime was that she had displayed a “Harris for President” sticker on her scooter. In a loud staccato voice, the aggressor leveled three accusations and one extremely inappropriate question to the surprised target:

“She’s a communist! She’s a killer! She hates God!”

And then, with all the righteousness of the true believer, came the prosecutorial inquisition:

“Do you hate God, too?”

Really? Has political discourse come to this? “Are you a God-hater?” The question was never intended to be answered; the woman had already concluded that a Harris voter was an infidel who was going straight to hell.

This interrogator’s attack transgressed much of what it means to be Christian and broke all the rules for what it means to engage in civil discourse. Debate, even heated debate, is to be expected during an election. But verbal uppercuts, out of line in a private conversation, are even more so in a public place where startled customers are forced to hear the ranting.

Every presidential campaign dredges up a fair share of nut cases, and inappropriate behavior is not limited to one political party. Just this week the Wall Street Journal cited a retirement community where two persons supporting opposite candidates engaged in a hair-pulling spat during a pickleball game. I doubt if there was a follow-up handshake.

What happened at the buffet line in that family restaurant confirmed something I’ve long known: There is political craziness and there is religious craziness. When those two pathologies merge in the same person, the result is Category Five Craziness.