This is a logical development, Captain, and a fascinating one as well. Ever since Donald Trump came down the escalator in 2015, there has existed the strangest contradiction ever seen in American politics. To wit, a bloc of so-called Christians simply love the man. They think it’s fine that he’s a philanderer, a cheat, doesn’t pay his income taxes. In short, the kind of behavior that would never be tolerated for five minutes in a junior pastor, nay in a church custodian, for that matter, is somehow fine when done by a candidate for president of the United States.
You’ve seen them everyday if you monitor right-wing media at all. They claim to be prophets and receiving communiques directly from God to the effect that Donald Trump is the chosen one. So, without further ado, here is the Lincoln Project’s rebuttal to God Made Trump, the video which Team Trump released early Friday morning.
This is straight out of Jim Jones and Jonestown and that observation isn’t a new one either. Rick Wilson wrote about this on his Substack page:
Eric Hoffer’s 1951 book “The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements,” remains the go-to study of the psychological and sociological dynamics behind mass movements and the just who becomes the true believers in these movements.
Hoffer’s study of mass movements maps over many of the elements of the American evangelical transformation; individuals who feel alienated, discontented, or dissatisfied with their current circumstances — real or imagined — are drawn to cohesive, charismatic movements and leaders.
Magical thinking, alternate realities, ahistorical nonsense, and a craving for an imaginary past makes American evangelicals even more susceptible to the appeals of a charismatic leader or a compelling cause, particularly when he’s got the showbiz quality of a preacher.
That’s the gospel truth. Trump gets up and preaches the old time religion, patriarchy, male dominance, subjugation of the female, Blacks and POCs knowing their place, gays being creatures of the Devil, all of the anti-progressive and un American drivel that we’ve come to associate with a blind adherence to Biblical fundamentalism.
Trump has had his share of “prayer warriors” on board in the churches for quite some time and now, in 2024, it’s all starting to ramp up.
Hoffer talks about the powerful sense of devotion and self-sacrifice exhibited by true believers. For some evangelicals who supported Trump, their devotion was marked by a willingness to overlook or excuse his execrable behavior and policies obviously inconsistent with traditional Christian values.
Trump’s ability to connect with certain segments of the evangelical community through rallies, speeches, and promising them the Kingdom here and now was and is unrivaled.
Like all mass movements, the MAGA Church requires a high degree of conformity and discourage dissent or critical thinking. In the context of MAGA evangelicals, conforming to a pro-Trump narrative is easy; the from megachurch pastors on down, they just cut to the chase and call him their Savior.
Trump is looking to save one thing in this life and that’s his own ass. Meanwhile, expect a farcical faux religious spin this election year. The actual churchgoer, devout Catholic Joe Biden, is being depicted as a bad man, while the scandal mongering Trump is being depicted as a good one. You can’t get anymore topsy turvey Through the Looking Glass than this.
Bring it the f*ck on xtian ass hats. Do these morons think they are the only ones armed in the U.S.?
“You can’t get anymore topsy turvey Through the Looking Glass than this.”
Even Lewis Carroll would be dumbfounded at the very existence of Trump’s being a real person. The man created some of the most incredibly bizarre characters to ever exist in the field of literature and I know he would marvel at how even his imagination would fail to create something as outrageously fantastic (in the original sense of the word) as Donald Trump.
What we really need is for Cthulhu to wake from his slumbers in R’lyeh and put us all out of our misery–either by destroying the world or just destroying Trump. (I think he’d have an easier time destroying the world.)
No, Joseph, destroying Trump’s easy: all it takes is ridicule. That’s Trump’s kryptonite. No part of his fucked-up psychological being can withstand laughter. Way down deep within his lizard brain, he knows full well he’s absurd and a phony. Thus far, the only audience I know of with the intelligence, balls and daring to laugh at him publicly was the UN.
Desperate lives look towards desperate solutions.
Vacant, hollow, emptiness screams fill the void
Short and on point
if you go to church, and the leader of that church
cast stones
I’m pretty sure it’s not good
I do volunteer food services
and sometimes counseling
though I usually come away learning
something.
life is short,
bread crumbs on the ocean
caring efforts lives
Red State movie…Cooper and his inbred congregation are so deranged that even neo-Nazi groups won’t associate with them for fear of being tainted.