I have friends who are Trump backers. They mystify and frustrate me.
Many times in the past three years I have thought, “Finally he has gone too far. Finally, you will have to admit that he has no business being in the White House,” only to be shocked that they still love him.
How can you continue to back someone who is of such low character, intelligence, and competence?
How can you keep inventing excuses for this clown’s abhorrent behavior?
What do you love? Is it his tax cut for the rich? His backing of Israel? His position on abortion? His appointing of conservative judges? His bigotry?
Yes, to all of those “assets” perhaps, though in my humble opinion they are far outweighed by his massive flaws.
I now have found an article in the Economist that explains the illogic roaming far beyond rational thought.
Excerpts shed a bit of light on the mysteries of Trump’s appeal.
Hate thy neighbour
When American evangelicals fall out
A twitter-spat over Donald Trump’s immigration policy reveals a deep cleavage in America’s religious right. Erasmus, Jul 5th 2019(There is a) widening ideological and personal schism within the very group of citizens who should be a conservative president’s most natural supporters.
That group is the white evangelical Christians, of whom 80% are thought to have voted for Mr. Trump.
Evangelicals argue perpetually about many things: for example over whether the fate of a human soul is predetermined, or how exactly a believer can be redeemed from the “total depravity” which is, in the view of John Calvin, the natural state of humanity.
When people energetically argue about things that cannot be determined you know that reason has lost the battle and departed.
According to a new book, “Believe Me”, by John Fea, a history professor at Messiah College in Pennsylvania, all these theological disagreements are being transcended by a more salient issue: whether or not to support Mr. Trump wholeheartedly and therefore overlook his character flaws.
These days, by far the most important distinction is between what Mr. Fea calls “court evangelicals”, who stridently support the president and are rewarded with access to him, and every other kind of evangelical.
And now we come to the part that really gets weird, at least in the eyes of someone who is not an evangelical:
Among those who inhabit the court, Mr Fea discerns three main groups: first, a section of the mainstream religious right whose origins go back to the 1980s; second, a cohort of independent “charismatics” who claim the gifts of the Pentecostal tradition (visions, miracles and direct revelations from God) but do not belong to any established Pentecostal group; and third, advocates of the “prosperity gospel” who resemble the second category but put emphasis on the material rewards which following their particular version of Christianity will bring.
What defines all these “courtiers” is an insistence that loyalty to Mr. Trump must be unconditional.
In their world, the president is presented not just as the least-worst political option whose merits outweigh his flaws, but as a man assigned by God to restore America to its divinely set course, and therefore almost above human criticism.
In short, there are groups of evangelicals who have elevated Trump to a god-like status.
If Trump is above criticism, all conversation is closed. You must march like little robots. Do and believe whatever Trump tells you. He has been anointed by God.
To get around the problems posed by Mr. Trump’s ruthless business career, messy personal life, and scatological language, they use several arguments, of which one is a comparison with Persia’s King Cyrus, who liberated the Jews from captivity in Babylon and allowed them to return to Israel.
From the Jewish or Christian point of view, Cyrus was a pagan, not a worshipper of the one God, but he was still an instrument of God’s purpose.
Likewise, Mr. Trump can be regarded as a divinely ordained ruler, regardless of any personal flaws.
In essence, Trump and God are interchangeable. Think: Jesus.
But amazingly (If anything wholly illogical can further amaze), it goes even beyond that.
Another popular view holds that Mr Trump’s rude and rumbustious character is really a merit in a time of great geopolitical and spiritual danger.
As Robert Jefress, a megachurch builder and Trump favourite, told a newspaper in his native Texas: “When I’m looking for a leader who’s gonna sit across the table from a nuclear Iran, or who’s gonna be intent on destroying [the jihadists of] ISIS, I couldn’t care less about that leader’s temperament or his tone or his vocabulary. I want the meanest, toughest son of a gun I can find.”
At its purest, Mr Fea adds, pro-Trump sentiment among evangelicals exudes a kind of fascination with political power as an end in itself.
Thus, the worse, meaner, less intelligent, less moral, more bigoted Trump is, the more he is to be loved.
Even torturing children at the border is seen as a sign of toughness — an admirable thing. His bigotry against browns, blacks, gays, Muslims, et al is welcomed by bigots, who hate those same people.
Trump is loved by bigots because he hates the same people they do.
If you ever foolishly have attempted to argue religion, then you understand the impossibility of arguing Trump. He is God or appointed by God.
Trump is perfect in every way. To the “courtier” evangelicals, Trump is above the law and above criticism. He is Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Kim, and Pharoah, all rolled into one.
You also understand why nothing seems to affect his followers. Trump caught cheating with porn stars? Who cares?
He lies compulsively? So what?
Takes from the poor and gives to the rich? Why worry?
As he himself said, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters.”
Now you know why despite his repeated demonstrations of unfitness (claimed the Continental Army “took over the airports” from the British during the American Revolutionary War in the 1770s) his followers never will leave him.
Note to Democrats: Demonstrating that Trump is unfit to hold office, will not change his followers’ minds. An unfit god is exactly what they want blindly to follow.
Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty
Twitter: @rodgermitchell
Search #monetarysovereigntyFacebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
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The most important problems in economics involve the excessive income/wealth/power Gaps between the richer and the poorer.
Wide Gaps negatively affect poverty, health and longevity, education, housing, law and crime, war, leadership, ownership, bigotry, supply and demand, taxation, GDP, international relations, scientific advancement, the environment, human motivation and well-being, and virtually every other issue in economics.
Implementation of The Ten Steps To Prosperity can narrow the Gaps:
Ten Steps To Prosperity:
2. Federally funded Medicare — parts a, b & d, plus long-term care — for everyone
3. Provide a monthly economic bonus to every man, woman and child in America (similar to social security for all)
4. Free education (including post-grad) for everyone
5. Salary for attending school
6. Eliminate federal taxes on business
7. Increase the standard income tax deduction, annually.
8. Tax the very rich (the “.1%”) more, with higher progressive tax rates on all forms of income.
9. Federal ownership of all banks
10. Increase federal spending on the myriad initiatives that benefit America’s 99.9%
The Ten Steps will grow the economy, and narrow the income/wealth/power Gap between the rich and you.
MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY
#Monetary Sovereignty - Mitchell 