Josh Marshall does some socio-political art criticism of Jon McNaughton, producer of godawful agitprop art. He notes that McNaughton taps directly into the alternative universe of white, conservative grievance and produces shitty painting of that universe.
The important note is at the end: These paintings sell. And now that he is painting Trump, even more so. As Marshall notes, the paintings of Trump are so far from any even moderately accurate portrayal of Trump as to be laughable. McNaughton's beliefs are clearly Christianist. Dude's from Utah, y'all. He is not so interested in the idea of separating church and state.
So, he took a flamboyantly immoral con artist who has never been seen being genuinely affectionate with another human being, and turns him into a quiet teacher of young people. What the everliving hell?
I was reading some reactions to the Joy Reid controversy, and some neuroscientists were saying that it is quite probable that she remembers her own past falsely. Our brains don't accumulate facts, they tells us a story about ourselves that we can live with. (Depression is when that story get unnecessarily dark.) The key is that we create a narrative about ourselves that we are comfortable with.
These paintings are emblematic of how evangelicals are telling a story about themselves that is fundamentally false. For everyone who wonders why evangelicals can support a thrice married man who routintely cheats on his wife with porn stars and then pays them hush money out of an illegal slush fund...here's your answer. They have concocted a parallel narrative of Trump that is far out of line with everyone else' reality, buttressed by nonsense like the McNaughton kitch.
Hell of a world view you got there.
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