Pelosi's sacrificial jam

Poor Nancy is becoming a bit gaffe-prone in her old age, but was suggesting George Floyd sacrificed himself a blunder too far?

The Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, has suggested that George Floyd sacrificed himself for the sake of race relations in America. What a preposterously patrician patronising and insensitive thing to say. It must be time for this female Skeletor to become a skeleton in the Democratic cupboard. In other words, to retire.

But wait a moment — let's dig a little deeper. The California congresswoman is a practising Catholic, despite disagreeing with the church on some matters, particularly abortion. She grew up steeped in the faith, so it's unlikely she'd use a word such as "sacrifice" lightly. And most true sacrifices involve an unwilling victim, be it a sheep or Isaac (the latter, though, escaped by the skin of his teeth).

Perhaps Pelosi, the first woman to be House Speaker, was making a subtle or even subconscious point about religion in America. Christianity has become utterly corrupted by money in the US. The revolting spectacle of richly clad televangelists bollocking on and feigning Pentecost-style possession could not be further from the religion's roots. The uneasy truce between Donald Trump and the absurd, calculating charlatan Paula White is one of the most sickening phenomena to see the light of day in recent times.

Jesus would not have even given her a kick up the arse. He'd have simply smashed up her church and left. Jesus wanted to help the marginalised because he knew that inequality was almost the worst thing humanity has come up with. As then, so now. Fentanyl and crystal meth hadn't been synthesised in Jesus's time, but if they had, he'd have seen addicts for what they are: troubled people in desperate need of help. He'd have been right behind people such as George Floyd. He might well have hung out with him. Whether of not you believe he existed, the character Jesus as passed down to us would have been a friend to the homeless, the addicted, those existing on the peripheries.

I'm not saying George Floyd was Jesus, and I don't think Pelosi was saying that either. That would make Derek Chauvin Pontius Pilate, and we're not having that. But her "sacrifice" comment, which at first seemed so facile and inappropriate, was perhaps rather thought-provoking.