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Obstinance and Sand-Filled Orifices



I can’t imagine any rational American watching the January 6th subcommittee hearings not being shocked and appalled. But then, I can’t imagine any Trumpist American watching the January 6th subcommittee hearings. Period.


Trumpists’ uninformed reactions to the hearings? Fake news. Mainstream media propaganda. Libs re-writing history to make Trump and his followers look bad. It’s just the dems persecuting Trump. No one had guns, so it wasn’t an insurrection.


The upside of the January 6th hearings Trumpists are ignoring and misrepresenting, we’re reminded, is that they will preserve for history the frightening events of that day which will live in infamy. The downside, as most of us know, is that the hearings likely will fail to move the proverbial public-opinion needle in this nation’s deeply polarized political climate.

57 percent of Republicans said they would not watch or listen to any of the hearings.

The Odd Couple’s Ravenous Offspring

According to a Rassmussen poll, 57 percent of Republicans said they would not watch or listen to any of the hearings. And, while the poll apparently didn’t distinguish between moderate Republicans and hard-core Trump supporters, I think it’s logical to conclude that most of that 57 percent is made up of the latter group.


This latter group is in turn composed primarily of two subgroups. The first subgroup is populated by secularists who ignorantly confuse and conflate Christianity with a pugnacious form of extreme nationalism—which they perceive as patriotism, for them, the greatest virtue. The second subgroup is populated by white evangelicals from many levels of commitment and biblical literacy. These folks consciously and proudly commingle their faith with their politics. And because the two subgroups have worked side-by-side in Republican politics for so long, their disparate beliefs have merged and, in many ways, become indistinguishable.


Nationalism’s Enticement

Nationalism—in a weird, tainted form—has wedded these two seemingly mismatched factions. Nationalism pulled secular conservatives toward the religious faction’s romanticized view of the nation’s Christian heritage. At the opposite end, nationalism has drawn the religious faction toward the secularist faction’s brawny, ends-justify-the-means approach to political affairs. In the middle, where the two cohabitate, resides a bastard offspring driven by an unbridled thirst for power and devoid of any enduring principles. Donald Trump is the flesh-and-blood representation of that metaphorical offspring.


Because of that unbridled and unprincipled thirst for power, facts are unlikely to influence the beliefs and consequent goals of these folks, secular or religious. Because of that ravenous desire for power, those at the top levels of the movement continue to remorselessly lie, and those who follow them continue to unquestioningly accept those lies—and refuse to listen to obvious, objective truth.


For the movement’s leaders, the motives for continuing the lies are 1. fear of losing their luxurious and lucrative lifestyles as members of Congress and 2. fear of losing their freedom while being locked up for their crimes.


For the movement’s followers, the motives for believing the lies are 1. having to admit they were wrong and 2. (for the religious faction) having to admit that the “spiritual discernment” many of them believe God gave them was a farce.


The Evolution of Trumpism

Having to admit that a key tenet of their faith—that “spiritual discernment”—has somehow failed them would be earth-shattering; it would likely lead to a metaphysical dilemma. Would they be capable of continuing to follow a belief system that had utterly failed them?


Based on my nearly 50 years within the movement, here’s a rundown of what brought white evangelicalism to this inflection point:

1. Like most human beings, white evangelicals tend to be at least somewhat competitive. So, Believer 1 receives a “revelation” from God and, as a result, gets admiring attention. Then, as is also common among humans, other believers become envious of the attention and admiration heaped upon Believer 1. So, a) Some of them then also receive “revelations” from God. b) The competition for divine revelations cycles into acceptance of eccentric signs and wonders. c) Outlandish notions become commonplace.

2. With relatively few exceptions, when the figurative false cleric asked them if they’d take the GOP “to be their wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do you part?” white evangelicals zealously declared, “I do.”

3. White evangelicals’ zealous devotion to their biblical messiah gradually began to transfer over to their new husband, the Republican Party.

4. When Donald Trump began campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination in 2015, white evangelicals faced a conundrum. Most of them disapproved of his playboy lifestyle and his brash, often vulgar speech and mannerisms. But they liked his no-holds-barred attacks on Democrats in general and Hillary Clinton specifically. They needed a way to dismiss the former while embracing the latter.

5. They found the answer to their conundrum in equating Trump first to the ancient Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar whom God humbled and who treated his Israelite captives fairly. Later, they also likened Trump to Persia’s King Cyrus, who defeated Nebuchadnezzar and allowed the Israelites to return to their Promised Land. Somehow, white evangelicals reasoned, if they could present Trump as a flawed savior-like figure such as the two aforementioned kings, then they could justify their support for his presidency.

6. Having concocted and sold that absurd analogy, it was just one more step to promote Trump to the chief representative of the movement, and then just one final step to crown him as the core of the movement, the reason for its existence. Although one would have a hard time finding a Trumpist evangelical with sufficient self-awareness and integrity to admit it, Donald Trump had replaced Jesus of Nazareth as the movement’s messiah. To verify this claim, one need only examine the situations in which Trump forced his followers to choose between his policies and Jesus’ directives.


Blissful Ignorance

So, it’s too late now for the cult’s zealous followers to abandon or turn on their messiah. They must remain firm in their convictions. And if that means burying their heads in the sand as almost daily new revelations emerge of their messiah’s turpitudes, particularly from the January 6th Subcommittee, then so be it. Sand-filled facial orifices are, apparently, a small price to pay for being able to blissfully ignore the step-by-step dismantling of our constitutionally protected form of government.

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