Two Republicans

 The Atlantic has a first person account of a CIA briefer to the White House. She's transgender, and yet she agreed to be Mike Pence's briefer during the first Trump Administration. Obviously, Pence represents the evangelical beliefs of the party, even if Trump seems perversely to be the one who the evangelicals love.

There is this passage:

When my tour finally ended, Pence invited my family to the White House. In his office, he took my mother’s hand and smiled: “You must be very proud of your daughter.”
Years before, my mother had told me that in her grief, she’d felt that—­somehow—I’d killed her son. Now I’d done the impossible: lived both dreams, becoming an intelligence officer and a woman. Now the vice president was holding my mother’s hand.
No one has affirmed my gender identity quite like Mike Pence. On my last day, I gave him a letter. I wrote: “I’m a trans­gender CIA officer, a wife and mother—­and I served the Vice President. Anything is possible in America.” I told him many people at the CIA hadn’t believed that a trans officer like me could serve someone like him.
“Well,” he said, “I’m glad I passed the test.”
In that moment, it felt like the battle had been won.

Now, Mike Pence believes some appalling things. Mike Pence worked to put some appalling things into policy. Mike Pence is not, I believe, a terribly smart guy.

Mike Pence, however, is someone who really does try to be a good person. A good person accepts the people who come into their lives as people, and recognizes their innate dignity as human beings. Yes, his retrograde beliefs are bad for America in the broadest of senses, but he seems like someone who "gets" that certain things are bigger than him and his beliefs. That was proven most on January 6th.

The second Republican is, of course, Donald Trump. A man of no known convictions - besides the felony convictions - beyond "What is good for me is what is good." 

There's a big kerfuffle because Jon Ossoff implied in a stump speech that Donald Trump is having an affair with Natalie Karp - the latest in a string of blonde aides who look eerily like his daughter Ivanka. Of course, we know that Donald Trump sexually assaulted E. Jean Carroll. We know he had sex with Stormy Daniels while Melania was at home with newborn Barron. Melania herself is his third wife. 

It's odd to me that Republicans are freaking out about this - perhaps they understand that Ossoff is a real threat to win the White House in 2028 and want to damage him. We KNOW Trump is a sexual degenerate, and that's even without the Epstein stuff. 

I do think that in 2028, character might just matter again. After the orgy of corruption we are seeing right now, personal probity might just matter again. That's mostly what Biden offered in 2020: he's just a fundamentally decent guy. 

Hopefully that matters again. Hopefully, Republicans who embrace the nastiness of Donald Trump go down like dry grass in a brushfire this November and we go back to disagreeing on policy, rather than fundamental morality.

The Cost Of Incompetence

 I've argued repeatedly that an underrated peril of Trump and the general Republican Party being able to control government is the long slow (and now accelerating) erosion of governing competence. Martin Longman makes the case that Lindsay Graham - despite his myriad flaws and failings - was one of the final pillars of the GOP that had at least some vague desire to keep the lights on.

Now cometh the pestilence. Typical GOP stupidity looks at basic health and food safety measures as communism or something, so we gut the agencies responsible for preventing screwworm or hamstring the ability of the relevant agencies to track foodborne illness. Trump has always governed like a Facebook rant from your crazy uncle but now he's doing shit like opening up drilling and mining in endangered habitats, which is just venomous, but also likely really stupid.  Same goes with the various cuts to public health measures: Who exactly is asking for this shit?

You can be "pro-business" and still assume that government regulation is possible and necessary. One of the ideas about regulation that the Progressive Movement argued for was that it would create a level playing field where everyone would follow the same rules. Now there are no rules and no reason not for some businesses to engage in a mass rush to the bottom.

So, if you're keeping track, under Trump we have had three of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. We have had the Pale Horse of death under Covid; the Red Horse of war in Iran, Venezuela and elsewhere, and now the Black Horse of famine is saddling up. 

The White Horse, is the Anti-Christ, a charismatic figure who will corrupt the world, so maybe we've had all Four. 

There Is No Base

 Josh Marshall makes an interesting argument that the Democratic Party does not actually have a "base."  Plausible groups that make up a substantial part of the party are Black voters - especially Black women - women in general, college-educated liberals and the Left.

Of course, the Left isn't really a PART of the Democratic Party. Their shriveled avatar is Bernie Sanders, who isn't even a Democrat. They prefer to slam Democrats more than Republicans. They tend to be overwhelmingly young men who are processing their own psychodramas through their own form of identity politics. The final boss of this form of leftist politics is Graham Platner. If you want a succinct synopsis of this argument, check out Jamelle Bouie's video at this post, and you can skip to the 4 minute mark.

Marshall also notes that the two most important voting blocs - Blacks and college educated liberals - are VERY different culturally. Blacks are among the most regular church goers and white liberals are the least. 

Marshall also notes that the while the Republican Party has factions, they are overwhelmingly white, conservative Christians. That gives one group a stranglehold on the party, and conservatism - as a psychological expression - is already hierarchical, so Republicans can fall in line pretty easily, once its evangelical base makes its preferences known.

Trump was able to become the unlikely leader of this faction because he channeled their grievances, not because he was Christian (Jesus wept, he is not) or because of policy, but because he hated all the right people. Once in charge, his positions became the evangelical's positions, because they tend not to be wildly independent in their thinking to begin with. Oh, sure, "I wish he didn't tweet so much" but c'mon. They abandoned their decision making to him once he mocked those they wished to be mocked.

Ideally, the factionalism of the Democratic Party would make it more robust with internal debates that force groups to defend their positions and policies. However, the Terminally Online nature of, well, everything means that factional disputes harden and become permanent wedges. There are people who have made the specific naming of Israeli actions in Gaza "genocide" not just a deeply felt policy position, but their whole personality. If you are a Democrat who is insufficiently in tune with this, you are simply part of a "corrupt" system.

Republicans, meanwhile, just eat Trump's shit and ask for more.

Still - and this is REALLY important - Democrats won more votes than Republicans in 2008, 2012, 2016, 2018, 2020 and 2022. Then 2024 happened, which was kind of the fracturing along these lines combined with anger over nominal prices and Covid policy. 

Republicans combine structural advantages based on the House of Representatives and thus the Electoral College that work hand in hand with the servile fealty of their evangelical base. Democrats spend far too much of their ammunition on the circular firing squads. 

Gordon Wood

 Gordon Wood died yesterday at the age of 92, amazingly struck down by a car and not his advanced age. Wood was one of the finest living historians of US History and certainly the Dean of Historians when it came to the American Revolution. Himself a student of Bernard Bailyn, Wood argued for the essential revolutionary nature of the American Revolution. He stood against some - and I occasionally include myself - that argued that it was more a War of Independence than a true "revolution," especially if compared against the French or Russian Revolutions. In this telling, the Civil War and Reconstruction Era is much more of a revolution than replacing the monarchy with a representative government.

But of course, establishing a Republic - over so large an area no less - was a revolutionary act. It was fraught with pitfalls and dangers that the generation that framed the Constitutions was very much aware of. 

None more so than James Madison.

It was Madison who spent years thinking about how to preserve liberty and self-government. Today, we think of them as being reinforcing, but it was understood at the time that self-government tended to degenerate to anarchy, which led to the rise of a dictator. As Madison wrote in the Federalist: 

Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

This framework is at the heart of our long practice in representative government, of combining democracy and republicanism to create something truly new over 235 years ago when the Constitution was written. 

As Richardson notes at the link above, Madison was also the author of the Bill of Rights. Initially reluctant, he came to see how writing down fundamental rights was part of the needed constraints on those who governed, especially the desire of those who - once in power - might wish to restrict the freedom of the press to blunt criticism of themselves, or perhaps ban public assemblies and petitions to the same purpose. 

It also extended to the free practice of religion, which had been pioneered by Roger Williams of Rhode Island in the 17th century, but then picked up by Virginians like Madison and Thomas Jefferson. If a government could dictate religious belief and practice, what couldn't they dictate? The free exercise of conscience preceded all other rights.

As we begin to mark the commemoration of the Declaration of Independence, we can see these "inalienable rights" under assault from a cabal of wicked people who surround a fundamentally ignorant and weak bully who would destroy those very rights that the Revolution was fought over. Pete Hegseth wants to tell servicemember how to worship. Various creatures wish to destroy the free press and outlaw protests. This is not hyperbole. 

Wood's death - just a few weeks before the 250th anniversary of the declaration of universal, inalienable rights - should help us reflect on how those rights which were so revolutionary 250 years ago are not self-enforcing. Wood reminded us that we are heirs to a revolutionary tradition, and at the heart of the revolution was the belief that government must belong to the governed. 

Finally Too Far?

 Whiskey Pete Hegseth has been a national embarrassment since he was plucked from Faux News to lead the biggest, most important bureaucracy in the country. (Technically, he was an embarrassment before that, but only to his friends and family.)

Recently, his remarks at the D-Day commemoration seemed to suggest that he's a Nazi. Or that he would have, at least, been manning a pillbox overlooking Omaha Beach (O-MAGA beach?). The sad thing is that this is not, by any stretch of the imagination a disqualifying statement in the Trump Administration.

No, what might finally rid us of this bothersome pest is his decision to strip Mormonism from the approved list of Christian religions serviced by Christian chaplains in the military. This is a BIG deal for Mormons. Mormons have always been unusually skeptical of Trump for a deeply conservative group of people. Despite - or perhaps because of - their pious religiosity that have resisted MAGA. They still largely vote for him, but with deep misgivings.

If the Mountain West had a competent Democratic Party, they would be flooding the airwaves with this. Not just Utah, but Idaho, Wyoming and Arizona, where there are a lot of Mormons. Again, maybe you just get them to stay home in November, but this is not a brick that Republicans can let slip from the coalition.

Or maybe Trump (or the people telling him what to do) will finally fire this foolish asshole. 

An Evangelical Christianity Problem

 Richardson lays out the case against presuming America is a "Christian Nation." This is - ironically - against the backdrop of another one of Trump's grifts, this one surrounding the 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Trump and his creatures are trying to hijack the celebration of America articulating the idea of limited, representative government to create a cult of personality around Trump and elevate the ahistorical idea that America was founded for White Christian Men. (Ok, yes, men, but still.)

When thinking about "conservatism" in general, we should understand that conservatism has a preference for established hierarchies. That's not always bad, but it obviously can stand in the way of human progress, which is the essential tension in most democratic politics.

Trumpism and the modern GOP is not even "conservative" in that sense. They are not trying to protect established hierarchies, they are trying to revivify old ones - ones that previous generations disassembled. An obvious example is the effective ending of the Voting Rights Act, in order to re-establish White Supremacist government in the South. 

This twisted form of Christian Nationalism that Trump and his cadre of institutional arsonists are trying to create is a deference to a hierarchy that Americans have never really cottoned to: one that deifies the sitting president. Trump routinely calls members of the press who challenge him on anything - even questions of fact - "traitors" because in this mindset, questioning the president is treason to the country, because l'Etat c'est moi.  

This blinkered, chauvinistic version of Christianity is a fringe sect, but it still constitutes millions of Americans and the very bedrock of Trump's support. If you believe that a literal angel sits on your shoulder and protects you from the temptations of demons, I guess you can believe that Trump is a savvy businessman sent by God to redeem this nation. 

Max Weber referred to the period when America wrote its founding documents - the period known as the Enlightenment - as the "disenchanting of the world." The magical thinking Christians wish to re-enchant the world. This blind deference to authority is not only deeply un-American, it is a prime grifting opportunity, a tradition that goes back to the fictional Elmer Gantry and the very real Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart and however many youth pastors who raped children. 

Insanity

 Donald Trump has decided to wage rhetorical war on the Pope. 

He then posted a picture of himself as Christ. 

This is almost textbook behavior as the Antichrist. I'm sure many of his evangelical followers will swallow this whole, but some are struggling to. Obviously, quite a few Catholics are going to be upset with this. 

The combination of his failed Iran war, skyrocketing prices that simply aren't going to come back down and the failure of Orban to gerrymander his way to authoritarianism has to have him spooked. Like a cornered rat, he's snarling and snapping at everything.

The President's Easter Message

 Easter, for Christians, is a moment to reflect on the sacrifice of Jesus. According to the Christian faith, Jesus was the literal son of God who willingly let himself suffer execution on the cross - a fate reserved for pretty horrible criminals - in order to redeem the sins of man. 

Trump's Easter message was to threaten war crimes against Iran. Attacking civilian infrastructure is a war crime. I suppose he's stopped threatening water desalination plants, but that's likely because his Gulf allies depend on desalination more than Iran does. Josh Marshall feels that right now it is Saudi ruler Mohammad bin Salman who is perpetuating the war. If the US packs up and leaves, they will be left to handle the crisis in the Straits of Hormuz. I suppose even more cynically, high gas prices will help the Gulf states in the long run.

Trump has disappeared from the public eye and has not retreated to his safe space of Mar A Lago for the holiday weekend. He tends to do this around the start of every month. The assumption is that he is getting intravenous treatments, most likely for dementia. This is the source of the blotches on the back of his hand. Certainly, his address a few nights ago suggested a man in poor health.

Trump is facing a narcissistic decompression, as his manifest incompetence and stupidity (and the incompetence and stupidity of those around him) has created a situation that he cannot simply walk away from. 

So, Donald Trump - avatar of the White Christian Nationalist movement - threatens war crimes as his Easter message, further abasing the office of the President and the reputation of the nation that ostensibly he serves.

Yeah, That's Odd and Stupid and Dangerous

 Martin Longman notes something I noted when I heard it. Yesterday's strikes in Nigeria don't make a ton of sense geographically. Most of the ISIS/Boko Haram activity has been in northeast Nigeria, not the northwest. What's more, while we coordinated with the Nigerian government, that government does not want to make this a sectarian conflict. Nigeria works very hard but only somewhat successfully at keeping the idea of sectarian violence in the background. The Muslim/Christian divisions in the country are very strong and often violent, even without the psychopaths in Boko Haram making things worse.

It seems that if you want Trump to do something - as he did in this case - you just have to get it on Fox News. We heard this in his first administration; Trump doesn't (can't?) read, so he gets most of his "information" from the TeeVee. This is...suboptimal. This is why Hague-seth is Secretary of Defense and Tulsi Gabbard is DNI: they were on Fox.

This really is the stupidest timeline.

Genius Has A Plan, Stupidity Has A Cause

 This quote is so important to understanding Trumpism. Trump is not a bright guy, especially now that he's clearly in cognitive and physical decline. The people who are willing to do his bidding are often not very bright. Kristi Noem and Kash Patel were not picked for their brain power. Trump's handpicked lawyer tapped to indict James Comey is not a prosecutor. I would be surprised if the indictment isn't thrown out on summary judgment. 

The speed with which Trump and the Trumpets implemented Project 2025 has taken people aback. The venom that Trump routinely spits at his enemies is even worse than the first go 'round. The reason that Trump usually loses in the lower courts is that his plans are bad and stupid. The compliant Supreme Court notwithstanding, the Courts require evidence to prove your allegations, and evidence isn't a strong suit of an administration that blames autism on Tylenol and cancer on windmills.

This fundamental unreasoning does not mean that Trumpism isn't lethally dangerous, precisely because it has a cause. This is why Trump's most fervid supporters are usually evangelicals. They are already on the cause of overturning decades of social progress; Trump is just a conduit for that cause. True believers, by definition, are impervious to evidence and logic. That's what makes them true believers.

Interesting Read

 Paul Campos relates an argument about how hippies and evangelicals actually represent a sort of horseshoe theory when it comes to what the author calls "intuitionist" thinking. This is at the root of what passes for populism in 2025. Some people believe in science and reason and some people don't. 

As Campos notes, you can't argue with someone whose beliefs are based in spiritual belief. That means that the entire edifice of Madisonian governmental theory and practice are largely helpless to resolve these issues. 

I'll give an example.

I saw my cousin - deeply religious - post some MAGA shitbird complaining about the No Kings protests and the argument went something like "How dare they complain about 'kings' when they shut down schools and made me wear a mask. They are the real tyrants."

Look, Covid killed around 1,100,000 Americans. For about a year and a half, we had strong distancing measures in place that attempted to mitigate that, but even those measures struggled to work, because freedumb. The idea that public health measures are at all equivalent to ignoring the Constitution, ignoring court orders, militarizing police to attack American citizens...How do you even argue with that?

And if you tried, the retreat into faith and "what I know to be true" would deny you any ground to establish an argument on.

Both sides of the debate are relying on abstractions to order their world, but they are so fundamentally opposed to one another, that I don't see how you reconcile them.

Pope Bob

 Wow. Did not see that coming: an American Pope. 

There is a natural (and fallacious) instinct to squeeze the new Pontiff into the frame of American politics. He does, indeed, have opinions on issues that are roiling American politics. Some of those positions are what we might call liberal and others conservative. He is compassionate towards the poor, towards migrants, towards other faith traditions. He is less understanding of modern sexual mores, divorce and LGBTQ issues.

The result from both side (bothsides?) is to wedge him into one camp or the other. Because he called out JD Vance's poor understanding of Catholic theology, he's actual - as Laura Loomer screeched - a "WOKE MARXIST POPE." The problem is that he is neither and both. 

The fact that conservatives are freaking out more than liberals are gloating is indicative of the current dynamic of the American Right. There can be no distance between anyone and Trump if you want remain in good standing within the cult that is the contemporary GOP. Pope Bob/Leo is, in many ways, a conventional Catholic in his embrace of some aspects of economic justice and the dignity of all, while also being pretty retrograde on things pertaining to penises, vaginas and how they interact. They simply cannot tolerate heterodoxy.

There is a smaller concern that various left of central people who are currently embracing Bob/Leo will turn on him, when he inevitably behaves in a bog standard papal way. 

However, I think if we want to look at an important dynamic that I think will really define the next decade in American political life, we have to look at whether we - as in Democrats and the Democrat Adjacent - have to expand the tent. We especially have to expand the tent in places where it might be hard to win on the national "brand."  Embracing someone like Pope Leo makes sense, even though his position on abortion is awful. 

Trump and Republicans did have some success painting Democrats as a party that cared MORE about Trans Rights than they cared about "you" but that wasn't actually true. Fighting falsehoods can be tricky, especially with "vibes" against you. However, while I do think that Democrats will benefit from the absolute shitshow that is President TeeVee's maladministration, they do need to grow the party.

Embracing someone like Leo - rather than reject him like conservatives are doing - is one way to expand that tent.

The Homeless

 I only sometimes agree with Erik Loomis about stuff - he's sort of an old school labor lefty with some...strident takes - but he's oddly moderate on San Jose's homelessness program. The basic contours of  the program begins with "it is not OK to be voluntarily homeless." That means arrests and mandatory housing. His moderation on this is likely because he's lived in the Pacific Northwest with all of their homeless issues. 

It's striking that he posted this the same day Pope Francis died. Francis was not perfect, he had some of the oddball Catholic ideas surrounding families that are probably to be expected from a priesthood unable to marry. (As an aside, the concept of papal infallibility is really, really strange in the 21st century. The Pope is basically the last meaningful monarch.)

Francis was focused on re-centering the poor in the mission of the Catholic Church. We have a homeless problem in our country, and we have untaxed mega-churches who do almost nothing to contribute to solutions to this problem.

Death Threats In Trumpistan

 The combination of Trump's blanket pardons for everyone associated with January 6th, the control of almost all organs of government and the vile nature of Trump's personality will lead to a constant whiff of violence in the public square. First, apparently, is the Episcopal bishop, Marian Edgar Budde, who had the temerity to suggest that Trump be compassionate towards those that were afraid. In yet another iteration of "a hit dog will holler" the Trumpist cult lashed out against her for criticizing Trump from the pulpit. The criticism, again, was suggesting that he was NOT compassionate. Again, the deeply hateful nature of this new Christianist (they don't deserve to be called evangelicals) movement is on full display.

That Bishop Budde has received death threats is entirely unsurprising. That some of these death threats undoubtedly come from "Christians" should be entirely unsurprising. 

The question that events will answer sooner rather than later is whether these death threats constitute some form of hyper-aggressive trolling or actual intentions to commit violence. Obviously, you can get 1000 death threats and 999 of them could be trolling and that single instance of rageful hate is enough to end a human life. Certainly, too, Trump's release of the January 6th rioters suggests that violence carried out in Trump's name will not come with the same consequences.

In the end, it feels inevitable that there will be martyrs for American Democracy. In the coming weeks, months and years, people are going to die. Whether they can be counted on fingers or require wall inscribed with the many names is unknown. The fact that we don't know, that we aren't certain how many Americans will die as human sacrifices to this awful man is precisely what all we cringe bougie liberals were saying was the reason not to invest this man with power again. 

It would be nice if the "find out" part of FAFO was restricted to Trump voters. These are not nice times.

America Has A Christian Problem

 This is a good explanation of why those who consider themselves the most devout Christians have consistently backed a man of literally no morally redeeming qualities.

And, yes, it's terrifying.

Seriously?

 Yesterday, one of the two holiest days in the Christian calendar, the chosen vessel of evangelical American Christians barfed up this hairball on Truth Social:

Merry Christmas to all, including Crooked Joe Biden’s ONLY HOPE, Deranged Jack Smith, the out of control Lunatic who just hired outside attorneys, fresh from the SWAMP (unprecedented!), to help him with his poorly executed WITCH HUNT against ‘TRUMP’ and ‘MAGA,' Included also are World Leaders, both good and bad, but none of which are as evil and ‘sick’ as the THUGS we have inside our Country who, with their Open Borders, INFLATION, Afghanistan Surrender, Green New Scam, High Taxes, No Energy Independence, Woke Military, Russia/Ukraine, Israel/Iran, All Electric Car Lunacy, and so much more, are looking to destroy our once great USA.MAY THEY ROT IN HELL. AGAIN, MERRY CHRISTMAS!

The reason why Christmas has become almost a universal holiday is not just commercialism, but a lovely message of a humble birth in a quiet stable of a messenger of universal peace and love.

The degree to which evangelical Christianity debases itself for this monster is enough reason for an entire generation to look at all faith traditions as being bankrupt.

America Has A Christianist Problem

 Paul Campos looks at an interview with Tim Alberta and notes the following:

I believe a massive mistake that many liberals and leftists make is to fail to take into account that tens of millions of Americans support Trump not because they’re “bad people” in some generic psychological/ethical sense. This reduces the deepest structural forces in our society into a matter of defective individual character. Leftists ,of all people, should recognize the absurdity of such an analysis. Rather, a very large number of Trump supporters genuinely hold beliefs about the nature of the world that logically entail unwavering support for Donald Trump.

This is Trump’s white Protestant evangelical base, and these people aren’t going to magically disappear one day, despite their own belief that they actually will. How to co-exist with them is, shall we say, an increasingly complicated problem.

There you have it.

Is Trumpism Facism?

 Paul Campos looks at Umberto Eco's essay on what constitutes fascism and sees a lot of overlap, but not a perfect match. He revisited that today, too.

I've always been a little reticent to describe Trumpism as pure fascism, but the label - while somewhat inaccurate - felt much more appropriate after 1/6. 

Christo-fascism, White Christo-Nationalism...They don't exactly roll off the tongue. I think identifying the importance of a form of political evangelism is critical to understanding Trump. The obvious unreasoning nature of the movement has its same roots in much of evangelical belief, in fact it's a triumph of "belief" over reason and evidence.

There have obviously been fascist movements in America since fascism emerged as an ideology in the 1920s. However, the presence of White Nationalism is as old as the republic. I actually think that most instances of religion being used as a political organizing tool is actually not about religion as a doctrinal or dogmatic principle, but as a stand in for a form of ethnic conflict.

Anyway, Trump's assault on the Constitution is part of the unreasoned belief that America is a White Christian nation and while it has roots in America, it really needs to be rooted out next November.

Cults

 Paul Campos hits on an important idea here: we live in an Age of Cults. These are fundamentally irrational belief systems that rely on the idea that cult members have some special knowledge that non-cult members don't have. The various cults that Campos lists are overlapping niche areas of belief (I guess Trumpism can't be considered niche) that paint a picture of "savvy" inside knowledge. 

Take the Ur-Cult: QAnon. Adherents cling to a bonkers belief with no medical or criminal evidence to support it: the harvesting of hormones from children. The messianic return of JFK, Jr. is just the icing on the crazy cake, but the basic populist idea of elites killing children has no rational basis in anything. Actual events like Epstein can be folded into the belief system as needed. 

I know that I've had students who believe in the genius of Elon Musk and the appeal of crypto, which is a sort of techno-cult. Of course, the evangelical protestants and fundamentalist Catholics who make up the Republican base constitute a form of unreasoned belief in the divine mission of Donald Fucking Trump. Belief in a form of mystical Christianity can, I guess, lead you to believe that that odious ambulatory sack of selfishness was sent her by God.  Sure, Jan.

The question Campos doesn't address is why we live in an age of Cults. If I had to guess, I'd say it's precisely because we live in an increasingly secular world. The ancient religious texts are not especially relevant in language or literal meaning to millions of Americans. Religion, for all its many faults, provides a sense of purpose and belonging. Those are largely absent in modern life. 

People adrift will cling to anything that floats, I guess. There was a time when religious "awakenings" led to reforms, but these cults aren't really about that.  

Obey!

 Driving across the vast expanses of Ohio, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas and Missouri makes one sympathetic to the idea of "flyover" country. It's...a lot. One thing that's striking is the quantity of religious billboards. There's a LOT of anti-abortion stuff, but there's also a lot of how God wants you to obey His laws and commandments. It's not a touchy-feely Jesus out in Kansas.

In some ways, this looks like the common thread between Trump - a twice divorced, serial adulterer from NYC who's never made a sincere trip to church in his life - and evangelicals who believe God demands obedience. They are both explicitly authoritarian. Racist? Sure, but I think the racism is adjacent as much as motivational. Black and Brown people are scary because they represent the horde of democrats and Democrats who are going to deny them their rightful place at the top of the hierarchy.

The sick bastard in Jacksonville notwithstanding, most of them are not animated by their racism, they are animated by their demand for obedience: from their kids, from the culture, from their women. And they extend that obedience to the leader of their cult.

It's disturbingly un-American out there in the heartland.