Issue #9 The American Game
Consequences of the Christian right
I wrote the song “American Game” in 2022 in the wake of Roe v Wade’s reversal, feeling the impending doom of what could happen next. If they could overturn 50 years of precedent what else could they do? A glimpse of what a future dictated by the Christian right might look like.
I knew their agenda well, I was raised by it.
The lyrics came with both a startling specificity and a cryptic ambiguity. One dominating and visceral sentiment rose to the surface: I’m really fucking tired of being gaslit.
Take Project 2025, for example.
I, along with author
, who describes herself as a survivor of Evangelical patriarchy, felt a sense of relief when the mainstream media finally started reporting on Project 2025 after Taraji P Henson called it out on the BET awards on June 30.I had been worried about it for months, but hesitated to sound an alarm. While sitting in a Q&A with NPR reporter and author of “The Exvanglicals”
in April, I almost raised my hand to ask her what she knew about it but stopped myself. I didn’t want to sound crazy.Although misdirected, it was a trauma-response and a premonition. My gut whispered, “When this comes out, you’ll be gaslit.”
Low and behold, when reporters like Sarah began reporting on it, the gaslighting from both Trump and the project’s architects and supporters quickly ensued.
“Almost immediately, Trump and his cohort began distancing themselves from it,” writes Tia. “Even though over 80% of his administration was involved in organizing it—and the organizers required the ability to choose his administration to endorse him. Even though he’s been photographed, recorded, applauded, and participated in events supporting Project 2025 and the organizing foundations: The Heritage Foundation, Liberty University, the IBLP, Focus on the Family, Moms of Liberty, and over a hundred more. Even though it’s Trump’s Project 2025. Even though he’s their boy. Even though his tweet said he had no idea what it was or who was behind it…but disagrees with it, used no caps, and used big words like “abysmal.” He wishes them luck. God, I get sick of being gaslit and lied to,” (American Horror Story: Project 2025).
While Trump took to outright denial, The Heritage Foundation tried to convince people the plans policies weren’t as radical as people were asserting.
I’ve seen this bait and switch before.
I don’t need Trump or The Heritage Foundation to tell me what the Christian right wants to do – it’s already happening. And it’s been in the works for decades.
Since the reversal of Roe, abortion has been banned outright in 14 states and is restricted in 21 (Chng). Meanwhile, conservative lawmakers in Louisiana, Oklahoma, Nebraska, and Texas are pushing for an end to no-fault divorce (The Guardian). In Missouri pregnant women cannot get a divorce even if their husband is emotionally or physically abusive and in Texas a man recently sued his former partner, who had an out of state abortion, filing an investigation into her access to healthcare.
The ACLU is currently tracking 523 anti-LGBTQ bills in the US. Louisiana public schools are now required by law to display the Ten Commandments in every classroom (VOX). In Oklahoma, the state superintendent recently mandated that the state’s public schools “teach the Bible” (Washington Post).
Such laws being passed is not coincidence. It is the methodical result of the Christian right’s agenda to ideologically convince enough people to want such regressive policy.
Take Chiefs’ kicker Harrison Butker’s viral commencement speech, for example. Instead of offering graduates sound wisdom as they embark on the next chapter of their lives and career, he used his platform to “denounced abortion rights, Pride Month, COVID-19 lockdowns, "the tyranny of diversity, equity and inclusion" … and told women in the audience to embrace the "vocation" of homemaker,” (NPR).
Though many were shocked by Butker’s remarks — and roasted him accordingly online — the ugly truth is that he was just brazen enough to say the quiet parts out loud.
What’s oddly helpful is how overt the gaslighting is, making it easier to spot. Telling female graduates they should embrace a vocation as homemakers during the ceremony in which they are receiving their hard earned diplomas is laughable, yes, but more so it is a chilling reminder of the gaslighting women and girls experience in most Christian communities.
“I can tell you that my beautiful wife, Isabelle, would be the first to say that her life truly started when she began living her vocation as a wife and as a mother. I’m on the stage today and able to be the man I am because I have a wife who leans into her vocation,” Butker says. “I’m beyond blessed with the many talents God has given me, but it cannot be overstated that all of my success is made possible because a girl I met in band class back in middle school would convert to the faith, become my wife, and embrace one of the most important titles of all: homemaker.”
It’s a familiar message: Christian men telling women that the honor and purpose of their life is to be a wife and a mother (enter subtext) in order to support the man so that he might achieve his highest self. A reminder that whether subconsciously or consciously, many Christian men believe women exist to serve and support them. Patronizing women by selling them the idea that their identity and responsibility is to prop up the men in their life. And furthermore, sold the lie that it will be a rewarding experience.
I’ve been told I am being hyperbolic when I refer to the rise of Christian Nationalism as a defining source for fueling such beliefs that in turn lead to policy that threaten fundamental freedoms such as reproductive rights and abortion access.
When I am gaslit or feel invalidated, I turn to research. In doing so, I found the documentary “Bad Faith: Christian Nationalism’s Unholy War on Democracy” to outline a pretty convincing case for backing this thesis.
Tracking the history of the movement, the documentary asserts that conservative religious activist Paul Weyrich architected a plan to fuse Christianity and right-wing politics by recruiting Evangelical preachers like Jerry Falwell to build a Christian political machine of 72,000 preachers who pledged to use their pulpits to push right-wing political agendas in the 80s.
Weyrick wrote a manifesto calling for the destruction of the government with any means necessary including Guerrilla warfare and stoked ideas of culture war, civil war and a battle cry to “bleed this culture dry.” He is quoted saying, “Make no mistake about it: We are talking about Christianizing America”... “We will weaken and destroy the existing institutions.”
In his review of the film for Variety, writer Owen Glieberman writes, “15 years ago, all of that sounded like crackpot raving. It’s now the cutting edge of the mainstream Republican Party.”
The Heritage Foundation’s president Kevin Roberts alluded to such when he said, “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be,” during a recent interview with conservative media outlet Real America’s Voice.
For the Christian right, overturning Roe was just the beginning. It’s honestly a smart move: gaslight people by purporting the initiative is to protect the “sanctity of life” as a trojan horse for white Christian patriarchy.
Oh, and use the Bible as a self-righteous weapon to assert dominance. (I believe we’ve seen this one before).
In my deconstruction journey, my stance on abortion was the last of my conservative beliefs I let go of. My position changed as I began to embark on antiracist work — a correlation I’ve since learned is not by coincidence.
Ivy League historian Randall Balmer, who wrote the book “Bad Faith,” of which the documentary is based, asserts that the Christian Right was not started in 1973 in response to Roe v. Wade but rather was first galvanized in 1971 after lower-courts ruled that institutions engaging in racial discrimination or segregation would lose their tax-exempt status as a charitable institution.
“Jerry Falwell didn’t deliver his first anti-abortion sermon until 1978,” Glieberman writes. “Churches like Jerry Falwell’s were not integrated and didn’t want to be; yet they also wanted their tax-exempt status. It was this law that touched off the anti-government underpinnings of the Christian Right, much as the sieges of Ruby Ridge and Waco became the seeds of the alt-right. And it sealed the notion that Christian Nationalism and White Nationalism were joined at the hip, a union that went back to the historical fusion of the two in the Ku Klux Klan’s brand of Christian terrorism,” (Variety).
White racist Christian men demonizing abortion in the name of being “pro-life” in order to shield their blatant racism all in service of getting a tax break to pocket more of their congregants’ money – it’s really no wonder 50 years later they find a friend in a man like Donald J Trump.
The Christian right claiming moral high ground – sexual “purity,” “family values,” “patriotism” – has always been gaslighting at its finest to cover up both its covert and overt racism, misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia.
Butker’s referral to abortion as “the murder of innocent babies,” a prime example of such manipulation tactics.
The anti-abortion movement isn’t about preserving the sanctity of life — if it were they would actually do something about gun violence (the number one killer of children in this country) or show some sort of moral objection to the US backed, indiscriminate bombing of Palestinian children (a bipartisan moral failure) — it’s about maintaining control and power. And it’s been quite successful in gaslighting white women into helping them do it.
Over the past few years, I’ve gotten plenty of pushback from Christian conservatives in my life for my political stances, but none that jolted me quite like my mother’s response to my public support of abortion access.
After it was insinuated that I supported killing babies, (again, makes sense when you’ve been told by Christian men in positions of power for years that abortion is the “murder of innocent babies,” a lie they know is hanging on by a thread, so much so they have resorted to effectively inventing the non-medical concept of “post-birth" abortion), I tried to communicate concerns that might be palatable and reasonable to even the most anti-abortion conservative.
I told her I worried that miscarriage could be criminalized, that doctor’s might be forced to wait until the mother’s life was in danger before being able to make medical exceptions, that terminating non-viable pregnancies like ectopic pregnancies could become inaccessible and endanger the life of the mother, that access to birth control could go under fire, and that many of the trigger bans did not make exceptions in the case of rape or incest.
I thought the message might cut through – hoping maybe she’d see herself, or her daughter, in some of the scenarios and reconsider.
Unfortunately instead, I got a counter argument that involved the opinion that “sex is not a right” and the story of how when she was pregnant with me she wasn’t ready for another baby, was overwhelmed with two toddlers and afraid, but God’s Will prevailed, and I should be grateful.
Her intention, I think, was to convey her own gratitude for my existence. Effectively, how glad she was that she, personally, didn’t choose to have an abortion.
And I am, of course, grateful she gave birth to me, and grateful for the love and resources she poured into raising me (my reverence for motherhood and carrying a baby to term are reasons why I am pro-choice and anti-forced birth). But it doesn’t change the fact I believe she deserved a choice in the matter.
It felt as though my own birth story was being used against me, to try and convince me that people, such as myself, shouldn’t have a choice. Because if they did, they might make the wrong one.
The youngest of three, it was revealed to me at some point in my childhood (maybe around 10) that I was a “surprise.” There was a certain emotion attached to the conversation that left me internalizing a sense I may have not been a good one. Or at the least the news of me had brought more anxiety than joy.
There were also some complications in the days following my birth resulting in a life threatening emergency medical situation for my mother.
I think somewhere along the way I probably blamed myself, picking up on how traumatic the experience must have been for her.
In a rather healing conversation with my dad a few years back, he told me that when the doctor’s wheeled my mom into emergency surgery, she refused to let go of me. He had to pry me out of her arms at the last second because the minute I arrived she was completely in love with me, deeply attached, and holding on tight.
It’s what has confused me for so many years and brought me grief in more recent ones. The dissonance between the love I feel my parents have for me and the ways I have felt either suffocated or rejected.
It’s why I take politics so personally. My parents’ commitment to their Christian beliefs and in turn its alignment with the Christian right has made it impossible for them to fully accept me or trust my judgment. And as a wise friend recently told me, “You can’t therapize yourself out of craving your parents’ approval.”
After I told my dad I had been sexually assaulted, he hugged me, told me he was sorry, and said something to the effect of, “I’m sorry I wasn’t there to protect you.”
I’m not angry that he wasn’t there to protect me. I was a grown woman by then living 3,000 miles away from him. But I am angry that he hasn’t chosen to fight to protect my safety and my freedom where he does have power.
The Christian right’s framework protects and celebrates cis white men. As JD Vance made quite clear, not childless cat ladies like me. As a non-religious person with a uterus who identifies as bi-sexual; as a survivor of sexual assault, and as someone socialized as a girl raised in the church … my body knows even better than my mind how the Christian right’s agenda actively puts me in danger.
And if I, a college-educated, straight-passing, cis, white US citizen with proximity to generational wealth feels this way, it paints a pretty scary landscape for many whose identities are afforded far less privilege.
On an episode of the podcast “We Can Do Hard Things,” author Glennon Doyle discusses her initial attraction to Christianity on the basis of her interpretation that Jesus asked two questions: “Who is religion forgetting and who is power oppressing?”
Unfortunately, it didn’t take long before she discovered quite a different theology being taught. “So often these churches put up a modern progressive front and then you look at what they’re teaching and it’s stone throwing,” she says. “If we are not standing between those people – immigrants, queer and trans kids, disabled folks, BIPOC – and the lawmakers and the stone throwers, then we don’t have a church, we have a country club, we have a voting block.”
I used to think the saying “there’s no hate like Christian love,” was a misrepresentation. My resistance likely another result of gaslighting. We were taught to expect “persecution” from “the world” on account of our “Godly,” albeit unpopular politics. We were brave to have a “controversial” (aka problematic) opinion.
Butker demonstrates this in his speech when he says, “These are the sorts of things we are told in polite society to not bring up. You know, the difficult and unpleasant things. But if we are going to be men and women for this time in history, we need to stop pretending that the 'church of nice' is a winning proposition. We must always speak and act in charity, but never mistake charity for cowardice. It is safe to say that over the past few years, I have gained quite the reputation for speaking my mind. I never envisioned myself, nor wanted, to have this sort of a platform, but God has given it to me, so I have no other choice but to embrace it and preach more hard truths about accepting your lane and staying in it.”
In this dichotomy, the accusations of promoting rejection instead of love are seen as confirmation of doing God’s work.
This type of gaslighting discourages critical thought and demonizes curiosity. I think for many, like me, watching MAGA’s hate-fueled rhetoric bore witness to the less in-your-face, but still insidious, reality. It was a wake call that maybe hate had always lived right below the surface waiting to boil.
In some ways, I think the more passive-aggressive approach cuts just as deep, and maybe even more jagged. The manipulation of receiving rejection gently fundamentally impacts your ability to ever really trust enough in order to receive love fully.
Glennon Doyle, for example, talks about being attracted to join a church by coffee, free daycare, and built-in community only to find out the very community who asserted to care for her as a mother and her son as a baby in the nursery would be the very same people to reject both of them when years later they each came out as gay.
Some of the rejection was overt, while some was more “love the sinner not the sin,” or “I don’t agree with your lifestyle but still love you” coded.
Glennon addresses the Christian classic poignantly. “You do not get to disagree with someone’s identity… you’re not disagreeing with me, you’re rejecting me. You're making it sound soft but it’s not soft, it’s violent. Can I reject you and still love you? And what I would say to you is NO. You either love me or you reject me, one or the other, you need to choose.”
I recently got into an argument with my dad regarding his political affiliations with groups working towards overturning the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges ruling that legalized same-sex marriage. I asked “why” about five times until I got an answer that offered some sort of tangible explanation beyond “because the Bible says so.”
He told me that after he became a Born Again Christian – leaving the Episcopalian church to adopt the Evangelical beliefs my mom’s side of the family practiced – he started listening to Dr. James Dobson. He was a young dad of three kids looking for mentorship and guidance. Dobson’s Focus on the Family offered what they advertise as “practical and research-based parenting advice from a Christian worldview covering every age and stage for your family.” Becoming an avid listener of Dobson’s radio show on his daily commute, he answered the call when Dobson spoke about the importance of Christians getting involved in the political realm in order to prioritize “family values” for the purpose of “protecting children” and “protecting the family.”
According to Dobson, the way to do that was to work towards implementing conservative policy, specifically focused on banning abortion, barring gay marriage, and preventing trans folks from accessing gender-affirming care.
The many times I’ve pressed my dad on the underlying misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and racism tied to promoting these policies, he has vehemently denied the accusations and asserted that it is a matter of protecting the family. He also asserts that challenging federal rulings such as Roe v Wade or Obergefell v. Hodges is a matter of returning power to the states. I can’t help but draw the connection to the Civil War and the South's infamous gaslighting tactic of claiming to fight for state’s rights when history knows the true intention was to uphold slavery for the purpose of White Supremacy and financial gain.
There is also an important connection to be made between Dr. Dobson and eugenics. In her essay “The Eugenics Roots of Evangelical Family Values” author Audrey Clare Farley details the ugly history of eugenics and Dobson’s affiliations. Prior to starting Focus on the Family, Dobson worked for Paul Popenoe, who was “one of the most prolific advocates for the segregation and forced sterilization of people whom he deemed to be “waste humanity” before eventually rebranding “as a defender of patriarchal, procreative marriage.” Dobson assisted Popenoe, an atheist, at the American Institute of Family Relations (AIFR) where for decades Popenoe “counseled white couples on the importance of strict gender-norms and same-race marriage, training psychologists, clergymen (many Baptist and Mormon), and youth group leaders — his new allies in the racial betterment project — to do the same. According to Hilde Løvdal Stephens, author of Family Matters: James Dobson and Focus on the Family’s Crusade for the Christian Home, he instructed counselors to use “heredity” and “interpersonal compatibility” as codes for race, especially when his views on race began to go out of vogue.”
During his time working with Popenoe, Dobson “authored numerous publications on male/female differences and the dangers of feminism. Like his mentor Popenoe, who wrote the forward to his first book, Dobson viewed homosexuality and feminism as grave threats to the family, seeming to rank crises like domestic abuse much lower. (In his 1983 Love Must Be Tough, he even questioned the innocence of abuse victims, recalling a woman at his church who supposedly baited her husband to hit her so she’d have a bruise to show off to the congregation).”
Dobson, and eugenics like Popenoe, have been wildly successful in gaslighting people into buying racism, misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia by packaging it as Godly parenting and marital advice.
Knowing that my dad was a young, and likely overwhelmed dad of three young children seeking answers as to how best to raise his kids, I try to have compassion. I don’t doubt he himself has been gaslit into rejecting the dark truths behind Dobson and the Christian right.
I think, and hope, that it is that compassion that drives my desire to change his political beliefs.
I believe in him and his ability to think critically and course correct. And I feel the same about my mom. They are both incredibly smart, kind, and loving people. Both of them have showcased a willingness to change and grow in both small and significant ways relationally as parents. Unfortunately, on most matters of faith – and by association politics – they tend to double down. This is the twisted brilliance and tyranny of the Christian right’s agenda: it exploits people’s genuine faith in God in order to push its power-hungry agenda forward.
And despite many, many examples of failed attempts to change their minds, I find myself still trying. My therapist and Matt have both recently had to gently remind me of this, and the cost it usually comes at for me. Regardless, there’s something deep in my gut that just won’t stop trying.
Glennon Doyle says, “If you are part of an organization, a conversation, a family, a friendship, a church that is letting homophobia live you have three choices: you can stay and be quiet and that means that you agree, that means that you also are antiqueer, that means that is what you are passing down to your children, that is a decision. There’s no silently, quietly disagreeing, it’s not a thing. Number two you can fight like hell within the institution, within the conversation, within the family to change it, and fight loudly and let your dissent be known, you can choose that path. Or number three you can leave. You can say, not my family, not here. Those are your only three choices.” I agree and would insert all forms of discrimination.
I’ve chosen the path of staying in relationship with my family and letting my dissent be known. I believe that their intentions are good, and think that they have been misguided.
But as far as the church goes – and its political entanglements – the choice to leave was clear.
When I told my Evangelical grandmother that I no longer attended church and furthermore did not claim to be a Christian, I tried explaining to her that I felt I had to leave because of the church’s treatment of the LGBTQ+ community. She reacted in a way that minimized the concern to which I began detailing the higher rate of suicide, suicidal ideation, depression and anxiety among LGBTQ+ youth raised in the church. She claimed it 'wasn't true,' yet offered no sound evidence to the contrary.
On another occasion, I got into a fight with a relative regarding trans rights. At one point I started crying. Angrily she said something to the effect of, “Why are you getting so upset about this?”
I wanted to scream at her, “WHY AREN’T YOU?”
Instead I felt a need to over explain myself as if I should have a personal reason in order for my emotional reaction to make sense.
I don’t want to have to be the person in said scenario in order for my family to care. I want them to care because of their humanity. Love thy neighbor as thyself. Wasn’t that the whole damn point of this religion in the first place?
“When you fight for someone’s humanity early you are fighting for your family’s humanity, you are fighting for your own.” – Glennon Doyle
There’s a tumbler at my parents house that says “Leftist Tears,” merch I assume my dad got at some conservative conference. Every time I see it, I wince. I don’t even think they use it, but the fact they haven’t thrown it out still makes me feel a little crazy, probably because the sentiment sums up the gaslighting I’ve spent so long trying to unpack.
Dr. Dobson, Fox News, Trump, and conservative pundits have convinced people like my parents that people like me are crying over spilt milk; that my concerns are just the result of the “Deep State” and the “liberal media” creating false hysterics.
But I think it’s starting to backfire.
Trump is trying to convince people that he has nothing to do with the Christian right and is not beholden to their ultra conservative policies. While the Christian right is trying to convince people that they don’t support Trump as a person, just his conservative policies.
Groups like Evangelicals for Harris have had enough. Preacher Billy Graham’s granddaughter, Jerushah Duford publicly denounced Trump and called on Evangelicals to pledge their support for Harris.
The fall out from Roe’s reversal continues to make headlines, as the grave realities of restricting access to abortion come to light.
In Texas, 20 women filed a lawsuit claiming their lives were put in danger during medically complicated pregnancies due to Texas abortion bans and the vagueness of its exceptions. (ABC). Miscarriages have been investigated as potential felonies and there is substantiated rising concern of it happening increasingly (The Guardian, AP News). In my home state of Tennessee the law does not exempt cases of rape or incest.
At the DNC, multiple women shared stories including Hadley Duvall, who was impregnated at age 12 after having been raped by her stepfather. If she had been in that position after Roe v Wade was overturned and lived in her home state of Kentucky, she would have been forced to carry and birth her parent’s child.
Another woman, Kaitlyn Joshua from Louisiana, spoke of being turned away from multiple emergency rooms while miscarrying.
Amanda Zurawski, one of the women who sued in Texas, shared traumatic details of being denied abortion access until she developed sepsis and almost died (Vanity Fair).
The hypothetical situations people like me made a fuss about in 2022, unfortunately, are playing out in real time.
And still many Christians to cling to the idea of being “pro-life” as their reasoning for continuing to support an abuser and convicted felon for President. Trump knows this, and it is of course why he proudly takes credit for overturning Roe.
And although his motives are for personal gain and not for Christianizing America, he is the chosen vessel of those who want to see Weyrich’s manifesto, manifest.
Not all Christians who are “pro-life” are Christian Nationalists, but they’ve sure been hoodwinked into participating in the Christian Nationalist agenda. And it is quite sinister.
The overturning of Roe was just one chess move in the culture war Weyrick outlined. The next phase targets trans folks and immigrants as seen by the “mass deportation now” signs at the RNC and their weird obsession with defining a woman and attacking trans folk’s right to exist while claiming that school shootings are just a “fact of life (Vance).”
The rhetoric, and vibe, has increasingly become more unhinged, more angry, and more violent: the insurrection and the shooting at the Trump rally, startling examples.
This plays into the spiritual battle narrative that underpins many Evangelical churches, creating a dangerous cocktail of confirmation bias.
Via a Christian anti-human trafficking non-profit newsletter I was forwarded on a family group chain, I was horrified to come across Shoot Move Communicate – a group recruiting Christian men to sign up for combat pistol/rifle tactical training for the purpose of “restoring biblical masculinity to the church by raising up modern day minute-men.”
Minute-men, American Revolution, Kevin Robert’s words echoing in my head, “Will remain bloodless if the left allow it to be.” The SMC website and the alleged “normalcy” of it all in Christian circles scares the shit out of me.
Because the truth is, Project 2025 is as bad as we think. Hell, it’s probably worse. And furthermore, Trump’s Agenda 47 (listed in plain site for all the see on his campaign website) is full of dangerous policies.
And of course Trump supports Project 2025 and conservative groups support Trump. They’re in bed together, and they always have been. And they’re both a threat to our freedoms.
Project 2025 co-author Russell Vought was recently recorded via hidden camera saying Trump is running against the brand of Project 2025 but supports its agenda. “He’s been at our organization, he’s raised money for our organization, he’s blessed it … he’s supportive of what we do.” Vought says the plan involves blocking funding to Planned Parenthood and a mass deportation saying Trump and Project 2025 could “save the country” by the “largest deportation in history.” He goes on to say, “If we’re going to have legal immigration, can we get people who actually believe in christianity? I want to make sure that we can say, we’re a Christian nation. And my viewpoint is mostly that I would probably be “Christian nation-ism. That’s pretty close to Christian nationalism but I also believe in nationalism.” (CNN)
Conservative initiatives operate behind closed doors and on their own platforms for the very purposes of maintaining the ability to deny, minimize, skirt, or gaslight when the extremism of their agenda is exposed.
But their attempts to convince people that the threat of Christian Nationalism is a liberal fairytale is failing. Why? Because “the truth is, lies have consequence.”
Waking up to the oppressive realities inherent in Evangelical beliefs and politics, as I’ve written about before, has been a deeply painful and disorienting experience.
It has also been a liberating one.
I wrote “American Game” as a way to cope with the grief and the fear – grappling with feelings of having been manipulated, minimized, gaslit, or trapped. But in doing so, the words and melodies took me elsewhere. What I was really writing about was how to take back my power.
“I can’t stay, so I’ll walk away. You took my choice, and I made my play. Pull me in, I’m not taking the bait. Call me crazy, but I’m feeling pretty sane for the American Game.”