Senator Hurpkins walks into his office. He looks unhurried, self-assured. All of his secretaries, even the male ones, are huddled around Janet’s desk. Janet looks at him urgently. “Bill, you got to see this.” Hurpkins takes the document she’s holding and looks at it closely. “No,” he says. “That’s not possible.” Janet explains what he’s seeing because movie audiences don’t read good. “They want to delete God’s name from the Constitution. The Constitution.” (The film takes some liberties.) Hurpkins is visibly upset: “NOT THE FUCKING CONSTITUTION. Not on my watch. NOT ON MY WATCH.”

Quick shots of the Declaration of Independence with black highlighter over “Nature’s God” and coins dropping on a counter which read “In Nothing We Trust.” Elementary students recite the pledge of allegiance, skipping “under God.” Scenes of Senator Hurpkins filibustering in front of Congress with an earnest Mr. Smith Goes to Washington desperation. A narrator voiceover: “When the United States of America decides it wants to erase every mention of God from the country, Senator Hurpkins is the only politician willing to fight back. But at the end of the day, Hurpkins has to ask himself, in WHO does HE trust?” Cue the same shot of coins dropping on the counter. Narrator: “The stakes have never been higher.” A fancy dinner party, people are eating steaks. The pun is unnatural, forced. Narrator, again: “He will have to defend God in front of every enemy imaginable. Democrats. The Liberal Media. Planned Parenthood. And… himself?” Hurpkins, kneeling in the street, holds the dead body of Janet. She’s been hit by a drunk driver. He takes a swig of a bottle of Scotch and shakes his fist at the sky. Onscreen, cue the words: “God’s Not Dead 9.” Narrator: “This holiday break, you’ll have to SEE IT to BELIEVE IT.”

A funeral. A procession of grim-faced men bearing a casket on their shoulders. A circle of mourners as the casket’s lowered into the ground. A shovelful of dirt lands on the lid, now placed in its grave. An onlooking celebrity, maybe Tom Hiddleston, holds an umbrella over a crying widow and says, “I can’t believe he’s gone.” His companion, hopefully John C. Reilly, not because he’s perfect for the part, but because I really like John C. Reilly, he’s just a great guy, he’s funny, plus when you see John C. Reilly in a movie you know that at least it’ll have some excellent comic relief, looks around curiously, “What’s that sound?”

The sediments on the casket are vibrating like at the end of Superman v. Batman. Whatever’s inside is alive and powerful. Cut to black. Onscreen, cue the words: “God’s Not Dead 27.” Tom Hiddleston says the arc words, “He has not abandoned us,” which have a haunting, poetic effect.

Little girls jump-rope. Some teenagers jump into a cherry-red Lamborghini Aventador (careful product placement which should pay for half of the movie). Dads mow their lawns and wave impotently at each other. The mediocre tranquility of the Suburbs. Narrator: “The kids of Sugar Creek don’t know it yet, but something is coming to get them.” An actress in her late twenties who’s playing a freshman in high school wakes up coated in fear-sweat. Sexy fear-sweat. The actress, Jennifer Lawrence or maybe new talent, runs downstairs. “Mom! MOM!” she shouts. Mom grabs her by the shoulders: “What, what is it, my little hushpuppy?” The actress has no time for cute names: “I saw him! I saw him!” “Who?” The girl sobs into Mom’s wool cardigan: “I saw God.” The Mom stares enigmatically into the distance as if struck by old but traumatic memories. “Dear Lord,” she says. “He’s back.”

A montage of scenes with teenagers in the grips of terrible, divine events. A teenaged boy, screaming. There are holes in his hands. A girl being dragged up the wall, her arms splayed, her body forming the shape of a tee. Fresh blood on a wall which reads: “Repent.” Then a celebrity, undoubtedly Nicholas Cage, in fact it can’t be anyone else, it has to be Nicholas Cage, drives down a freeway at high speeds, a pistol in each hand pressed against the steering wheel. Nicholas Cage has a face that means business. Cut to Paul Giamatti in an orange prison suit, speaking to Cage from behind a pane of glass. Giamatti: “He’s coming for them!” Nicholas Cage hangs up a phone and walks away decisively. Giammati keeps shouting: “He’s coming for them all! The Lambs of God! Lambs for the slaughter!” Narrator: “No one knows where it came from, or who it will visit next.” The police dredge a body from the river as a dove lands beside red-and-blue flashing lights and watches menacingly. A teenager opens a drawer, sees a Bible, screams, shuts the drawer. Narrator: “God is Not Dead 59: Die Harder.” We see the actress from before crawling down a hall. The shadow of a robed, bearded man falls over her. A powerful voice, maybe Liam Neeson, maybe Benedict Cumberbatch, says, “You are all my children now!” The trailer cuts to black and dark laughter.

“When Moria sends its goblins, they’re not sending their best. They’re bringing arrows. They’re bringing a nameless terror-demon from beneath the deeps. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good goblins.”

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[To those who believe racism is dead, I present an essay that I discovered at school. Riddled with poor thinking and writing, the paper represents (to me) the clouded judgment of xenophobia. It is only too bad the student forgot to write their name at the top.]

[I found the essay wedged into a scantron machine. Why remains a mystery, although I suspect the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree of knowledge.]

[On top is an A+.]

[I do not think the grader read too closely.]

[The title is: “Mark Twang.” This could have been clever if the paper discussed his use of regional accents. The paper does not.]

Mark Twain creates the Americana in his book Huckleberry Finn is a Harsh Mistress. Americana is the word America with a Mexican “na” added to make it sound fancy-like, which is what those Mexicans is doing, trying to make America into a lady.

[The paper’s blatant racism begins here. It never ends.]

Humanities sounds like Humanish which is what other races are. Human and ish. Mama says they’s brains are bad. Mama says my brain is not bad. Mama says brains are like gum in our heads; the less we use them the less they get chewed up.

[The student finally returns to the subject.]

Mark Twain was born Hannibal Missouri but he changed his name to Mark Twain after he chopped an apple tree “in twain.” Mark Twain was a cat in disguise which he admits when he says: “No one knew I was a cat in disguise.”

[Oddly, this student has learned the proper use of direct quotes, quote marks, brackets, etc.]

Mark was so poor he could only afford one suit, and he bleached it white so it wouldn’t look dirty. What surprised me the most about Mark Twain was that photographs existed in the Middle Ages. Sometimes black and white people were friends, other times they were slaves, and other times they were just pictures.

Now Mister Mark was committed to treating other races equally as inferiors, as can be seen by Jim. (My teacher won’t let me use his real name because it’s too controversial. One of our daily grades was to color it throughout the book with expo markers.) But Mark calls him the n-word over and over again, no matter how many times Jim makes good decisions. That’s because Twain treats all races equally as inferiors.

[What?]

In conclusion, finally, suddenly, conclusively, Twain said there’s nothing wrong with racism when he says “I had no aversion to slavery” and that he is “not aware that there [is] anything wrong about it.” Plus “God approved it.”

[This is missing context. Mark admits this was his thought process as a child, but he greatly improved his understanding by adulthood.]

I try to hate everybody the same, except I don’t hate Mama, only when she’s pooping in the garbage disposal.

And that’s my biografy.

[This marks the student’s one and only spelling error.]

[The paper ends with a couple doodles of the sink.]