America has two christianities. And not in the normal “Protestants and Catholics are on the verge of another 30 years war at each other” way. But regardless of denomination we have groups of Christian’s who see Christianity not as a set of beliefs and duties but as an in group and tool to persecute those they don’t like. Trump is the guy who tells them that the reason things are bad is those dirty non Christians (which many American Protestants include Catholics in for some gods forsaken reason). He offers them power in exchange for looking the other way from his sins
Yup. This goes back to the Southern strategy which was brought to the fore by the Nixon campaign (although it was in play since before then). From that era we also get this chilling warning from Barry Goldwater:
Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise. I know, I’ve tried to deal with them.
Yeah I don’t want to say it’s an inevitable result of the bizarre fusion of Calvinism and Baptists that permeates American Protestant culture, but it certainly feels like that fusion has a strong lean in this direction.
There have been a lot of good books in the last few years about how Christian came to be so culturally interchangable with Republican. One I read and got a lot out of was “Jesus & John Wayne”, and the author does a good job tracking the rightward shift from a lot of different organizations and how they were able to permeate through multiple denominations. Just sharing in case anyone wants to go look at some of these connections themselves.
As long time atheist and anti-theist, they love Trump because he’s fulfilling a role of messiah (lowercase), an anointed one. You probably already know this, but it basically means that Trump is a king to them, that’s what the anointed part is about. They’re traditionalists (monarchists).
Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit:
There must be in-groups whom the law protectes but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
There is nothing more or else to it, and there never has been, in any place or time.
For millenia, conservatism had no name, because no other model of polity had ever been proposed. “The king can do no wrong.” In practice, this immunity was always extended to the king’s friends, however fungible a group they might have been. Today, we still have the king’s friends even where there is no king (dictator, etc.). Another way to look at this is that the king is a faction, rather than an individual.
As the core proposition of conservatism is indefensible if stated baldly, it has always been surrounded by an elaborate backwash of pseudophilosophy, amounting over time to millions of pages. All such is axiomatically dishonest and undeserving of serious scrutiny. Today, the accelerating de-education of humanity has reached a point where the market for pseudophilosophy is vanishing; it is, as The Kids Say These Days, tl;dr . All that is left is the core proposition itself — backed up, no longer by misdirection and sophistry, but by violence.
So this tells us what anti-conservatism must be: the proposition that the law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone, and cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.
Then the appearance arises that the task is to map “liberalism”, or “progressivism”, or “socialism”, or whateverthefuckkindofstupidnoise-ism, onto the core proposition of anti-conservatism.
No, it a’n’t. The task is to throw all those things on the exact same burn pile as the collected works of all the apologists for conservatism, and start fresh. The core proposition of anti-conservatism requires no supplementation and no exegesis. It is as sufficient as it is necessary. What you see is what you get:
The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.
And the Catholics in the US are likely to get in on the action, as evidenced by the Supreme Court and the people who made that happen. There’s also a bunch of drama going on between them and the Pope.
Having been raised in a Catholic country and a fairly conservative parish, I truly don’t understand the Christian votes for Trump
America has two christianities. And not in the normal “Protestants and Catholics are on the verge of another 30 years war at each other” way. But regardless of denomination we have groups of Christian’s who see Christianity not as a set of beliefs and duties but as an in group and tool to persecute those they don’t like. Trump is the guy who tells them that the reason things are bad is those dirty non Christians (which many American Protestants include Catholics in for some gods forsaken reason). He offers them power in exchange for looking the other way from his sins
The scary thing is that he didn’t invent that concept. It has been raging since before the Satanic Panic. He just gave those people a platform.
Yup. This goes back to the Southern strategy which was brought to the fore by the Nixon campaign (although it was in play since before then). From that era we also get this chilling warning from Barry Goldwater:
Yeah I don’t want to say it’s an inevitable result of the bizarre fusion of Calvinism and Baptists that permeates American Protestant culture, but it certainly feels like that fusion has a strong lean in this direction.
There have been a lot of good books in the last few years about how Christian came to be so culturally interchangable with Republican. One I read and got a lot out of was “Jesus & John Wayne”, and the author does a good job tracking the rightward shift from a lot of different organizations and how they were able to permeate through multiple denominations. Just sharing in case anyone wants to go look at some of these connections themselves.
As long time atheist and anti-theist, they love Trump because he’s fulfilling a role of messiah (lowercase), an anointed one. You probably already know this, but it basically means that Trump is a king to them, that’s what the anointed part is about. They’re traditionalists (monarchists).
If you want to get how monarchism works in this context, try Wilhoit’s Law: https://slate.com/business/2022/06/wilhoits-law-conservatives-frank-wilhoit.html
And the Catholics in the US are likely to get in on the action, as evidenced by the Supreme Court and the people who made that happen. There’s also a bunch of drama going on between them and the Pope.