Via the Washington Post, a lot of evangelicals are just fine with supporting an adulterous misogynistic homophobic narcissistic con man: they’re in the same racket.
Trump enjoyed overwhelming support from white evangelicals in 2016, winning a higher percentage than George W. Bush, John McCain or Mitt Romney. That enthusiasm has scarcely dimmed. Almost 70 percent of white evangelicals approve of Trump’s performance in office, according to a 2019 Pew Research Center poll.
Interviews with 50 evangelical Christians in three battleground states — Florida, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — help explain why. In conversation, evangelical voters paint the portrait of the Trump they see: a president who acts like a bully but is fighting for them. A president who sees America like they do, a menacing place where white Christians feel mocked and threatened for their beliefs. A president who’s against abortion and gay rights and who has the economy humming to boot.
I’ve always known that those evangelical Christian preachers were less about spreading their mythology and more about controlling other people’s lives and picking the pockets of their flock, and they’ve been peeing on the campfire of mainline Christians ever since they realized they could get away with it.
Their hypocrisy is legion: they hate abortions but won’t support a child once it’s born (or gladly pay for their mistress’s abortion with a credit card to get travel points). They bemoan marriage equality and rights for the LGBTQ community because it threatens “traditional values,” but are proud to destroy their own family when it turns out they have a gay son or lesbian daughter or brother or sister or mom or dad by throwing them out. Or better yet, check their Grindr profile and hook up with “HotDiscreteMusclBoy” at the Courtyard by Marriott over by the interstate.
They’re all too happy to tell other people how to live their lives but do nothing to help their own community struggling with poverty and opiod addiction or domestic violence or mass shootings because “thoughts and prayers” are good enough.
They detest immigrants from other countries, especially the brown ones who don’t speak their language, which is ironic in the supreme because the messenger they believe is the son of their god was basically an anchor baby born out of wedlock to an immigrant woman who was most likely a person of color and couldn’t come up with enough money to afford decent health insurance.
And they’re happy to support and vote to re-elect a charlatan who embodies everything they purport to deplore because he’s conned them into thinking they’re gonna get rich. Isn’t there a passage somewhere in their book of fables about the love of money being the root of all evil? It’s just another lesson they completely forgot, along with the ones about love thy neighbor as thyself, feed and clothe the stranger, and judge not lest ye be judged.
I get it that they feel mocked and threatened for their beliefs. That’s because their beliefs are hateful, anti-democratic, and authoritarian. It’s not surprising that they’re mocked and threatened: they brought it on themselves. Martyrdom only works if you’re willing to sacrifice for the greater good of humanity. But if all you’re suffering for is being a controlling and vacuous gasbag, go ahead and drop dead for all anyone cares.
But, Karma, thou art a heartless bitch. It is a concept that transcends religious boundaries. It’s Newtonian: what goes around, comes around. At some point, sooner hopefully rather than later, both Trump and these sniveling Jesus-shouting bigots and hate-mongers will get their comeuppance. The sad part is that the lesson will be lost on them and they’ll come weeping and wailing about how they were so blind to be taken in by Trump and the preachers that went along with him and were in on it. It will be hard to refrain from mocking them. Maybe we should offer them “thoughts and prayers.”
I offer those people nothing! I figured them out by the time I was 15. Religion, it is about money, power and subjugating women. Take away the money, and they got nothing.
We get periodic visits from local evangelicals. I’ve found that a stack of “How to Come Out” brochures is a handy way to counter the literature they try to give you.