With Jim Inhofe's days as a US Senator officially numbered, James Lankford is making sure that Oklahomans know they still have someone in the Senate they can count on to make foolish statements involving weather and climate.
Last Friday, Oklahoma's devil-red Senator attended a summit for the Christian Nationalist group the Family Research Council to chum it up with his right-wing buddies and pals.
While talking with some dude about how God will bless those Christ-like judgemental folks who are pro-life (and also anti-immigrant and anti-poor), Lankford claimed that God blessed our state with rain earlier this summer simply because our controlling, authoritarian lawmakers banned abortion.
Check out this video:
Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford says that God rewarded his state for passing an extreme abortion ban by... making it rain.
— Hemant Mehta (@hemantmehta) September 20, 2022
(He didn't mention that the state actually got flooded in major cities. Lankford, of course, is a climate denier.)
More here: https://t.co/YBFdLuNnIk pic.twitter.com/ofqZR3HhV1
Jesus F*cking Christ.
Listen, I try to be respectful of sane people's religious beliefs, but in the case of James Lankford, that's virtually impossible.
First of all, let's assume that every other religion in human history is wrong, the Christian God is the real God, and he wasn't created by primitive people thousands of years ago to justify certain moral beliefs, give hope of an eternal afterlife, and explain the then unexplained. Do we really think he gives a flip about arbitrary boundaries within a country called states??? Is that where he draws the geographic line??? Like, why did God not take things further and give rain to only pro-life counties, cities or neighborhoods? If any right-wing Christian scholar wants to explain that for me, feel free.
Also, by rewarding Oklahoma with rain, couldn't you argue God is actually trying to throw a wet bone to the majority of Oklahomans who think abortion should be a legal medical procedure and are not in favor of a total abortion ban?
"Hey God."
"Yes, Micheal?"
"Did you see those authoritarian nuts in Oklahoma have trampled on women's rights and totally banned abortion?"
"Those fools! Let's manipulate global weather patterns to give rain to the poor souls who still live there. Also, make a note to send some F5 tornados to Moore this spring to punish the state leaders for this authoritarian overreach."
"Roger that."
As Only Sky notes, there are other fallacies with James Lankford's logic and thinking:
Just for background, in mid-May, Oklahoma’s Republican-dominated legislature passed a bill that effectively banned the procedure throughout the state passed a bill banning nearly all abortions from fertilization onward, except to save the life of the mother or in cases of (officially reported) rape or incest. It also allowed individuals to sue anyone involved in the procedure. Gov. Kevin Stitt signed it into law on May 25.
And a couple of weeks after that, there was rain across Oklahoma. Heavy rain, actually. Calling it an “overwhelming rainstorm” is an understatement. God apparently made it rain so hard, it flooded several major cities and destroyed crops that farmers were relying on.
So the rain may have come after the drought—which is how chronological time works—but it wasn’t the kind of pleasant rain that people were clamoring for. The weather went from one extreme to the other, and Lankford, a climate denier, treated it as a religious gift.
Anyway, I guess this concludes this edition of "Holy shit, stupid Oklahoma voters sure do elect stupid people to represent us in Washington DC."
Stay with The Lost Ogle. We'll keep you advised.
