"Imagine not only believing the world
is coming to an end, but wanting it to happen.
Eagerly. Then, take it a step further and imagine people with such a mentality
engineering American politics and foreign policy to bring about the very thing
they seek — the apocalypse. It may sound
outlandish, but there are many well organized fundamentalist Christian leaders
and their followers working hard to make this doomsday scenario of Armageddon a
reality, an alarming movement explored in the documentary Praying for Armageddon." Jeff Sharlet, '
NY Times columnist David French in his hair-raising latest piece exposes the extent of the Xtian Evangelicals being co-opted by Donald 'Traitor' Trump, writing:
"I just finished reading Tim Alberta’s masterly new book, “The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism.” It’s a powerful and emotionally resonant account of the transformation in evangelical politics that has brought us to the current moment: A godless man, Donald Trump, may now possess more devoted support from white evangelical Christians than any other president in the history of the United States. And most worrisome of all, that support is now disproportionately concentrated among the most churchgoing segment of the Republican electorate.
One of the troubling aspects of the Trump era for me, as a churchgoing evangelical, has been watching the evolution of his support among white evangelicals. During the 2016 primaries, I took some solace in the fact that Trump’s support seemed to decline the more a voter went to church. According to the 2016 American National Election Studies Pilot Study, he received majority support from white evangelicals who seldom or never attended church, but he received barely over a third of the votes of white evangelicals who attended weekly.
As we headed into the general election, a self-justifying narrative emerged. Countless churchgoing evangelicals told friends and neighbors that Trump had been their last choice among Republicans but that they had to vote for him against Hillary Clinton as the only pro-life option remaining.
Then adding the 'uppercut':
"Soon enough, however, the churchgoing dynamic flipped. I noticed the change among people I knew before I saw it in the data. After Trump won, folks in the pews warmed up to him considerably, especially those who were most firmly ensconced in evangelical America. Most home-schooling families I knew became militantly pro-Trump. I watched many segments of Christian media become militantly pro-Trump. And I always noticed the same trend: the more fundamentalist the Christians, the more likely they were to be all in."
As gob smacking nuts as that was, we already had multiple clues that the evangelical lot - most- were 52 cards sort of a full deck. A first clue arrived in a June, 2018 NY Times' piece which quotes perennial fundie wacko Ralph Reed spouting this gibberish:
"God must have quite a sense of humor to have brought evangelicals and Donald Trump together. Sometimes the most unlikely people become our staunchest defenders and he certainly has!"
This almost wins the prize for the most psychotic statement ever using God and Trump in the same phrase. And one had to wonder what species of magic mushroom Reed was on. But then in the run up to the 2020 election, we beheld the screwball "pastor" Paula White bellowing to a crowd of yahoos at Trump's Orlando 2020 campaign launch:
"Right now, let every demonic network who has aligned itself against the purpose, against the calling of Mr. Trump, let it be broken. Let it be torn down in the name of Jesus! And I now declare that President Trump will overcome every strategy from Hell and every strategy from the enemy!"
Blissfully unaware that Trump himself is the ruler of his own "demonic network" called 'MAGA'. Why not recognized? French wrote in a July 8, 2019 TIME essay that these forlorn and misbegotten fools actually believed Hillary was the greater demonic threat, writing:
"They responded with raw fear at the very idea of a Hillary presidency. They believed she was going to place the church in mortal danger."Little realizing the person that would really place their church - as well as their entire moral credibility in mortal danger - would be the No.1 Pussy grabber Trump. And as French put it (ibid.):
"That wasn't faith speaking. They were the words of fearful men grasping at failing influence by clinging to a man whose daily life mocks the very values that Christians look to advance."
In his more recent NY Times piece French got to the nitty gritty noting:
"When you recognize the
psychology of fundamentalism, fundamentalist Christian enthusiasm for Trump
makes considerably more sense. His fundamentalist supporters are certain that
he is fulfilling a divine purpose. They are ferocious in their response to opponents,
especially those Christians they believe to be weak or squishes. And they
experience great joy in their motivated, activist solidarity.
Why do so many fundamentalists love Trump? Because in his certainty, ferocity and demands of loyalty, he’s a far more culturally familiar figure than a person of restraint and rectitude such as the departing senator Mitt Romney, who has the piety of a true believer but does not possess the ferocity of the fundamentalist. Thus Romney was culturally out of step with the millions of Christians who wanted, in the words of Jeffress, “the meanest, toughest son of a gun” they could find."
But as French notes that’s why Trumpism, too, is ultimately doomed to fail. Because it is the furthest thing from being Christ-like. Theologian and author John Dominic -Crossan in his superb text The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant, wrote that Jesus way of life: "embodied a humble life-style and mindset in opposition to the cultural heart of Mediterranean civilization, a way of looking and dressing, of eating and living and relating to all others."
Something Trump and his Trumpsters are constitutionally incapable of. That includes the 'whited sepulchres' (Yeshua's term) of today's evangelicals who follow Trump. They have no remote inkling - or memory - evidently, that they are honoring a false god. A wretch with whom they seek alliance and hence earthly power.
This is why Mr. French described today's Trump following, church going evangelicals as harboring a false religion engineered to destroy, not to build. Adding:
"The very characteristics that give it life also plant the seeds of its destruction. And so as we watch the continued marriage between Trumpism and fundamentalism dominate the right, the proper question isn’t whether fundamentalism will permanently remake American culture in its own image. Rather, it’s how much damage it will do before it collapses under the weight of its own rage and sin."
Which kind of hearkens back to French's 2019 TIME essay in which he wrote:
This kind of debased, disconnected thinking is what gives license to Trump’s authoritarian impulses and his own certitude that he is beyond the reach of human norms, justice and accountability.
See Also:
Jeff Sharlet's Article: "Trump The Chosen One To Run America" - Yeah, From Hell
And:
Why Do White Christian Evangelicals Worship A Pervert Prez Who Loves Spankings and Golden Showers?..
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