"You shall have no other gods before me. . .. You shall not bow yourself down to them, nor serve them, for I, Yahweh your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and on the fourth generation of those who hate me, and showing loving kindness to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments."
Exodus 20
"Dumb son of a bitch." "Stone cold loser."
Trump, regarding McConnell
At Mar-a-Lago yesterday Donald Trump ripped into Mitch McConnell for allowing the certification of votes for Biden to take place in the Senate. "If that were Schumer instead of this dumb son of a bitch Mitch McConnell, they would never allow it to happen. They would have fought it.” Trump had earlier called McConnell a “dour, sullen and unsmiling political hack.”
Yesterday Trump also criticized McConnell's wife Elaine Chau, his Secretary of Transportation, calling both her and her husband ungrateful. She resigned from the Cabinet promptly after the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol.
Trump said his Vice President Mike Pence lacked the courage to do the right thing by disallowing the count of electoral votes from states that voted for Biden. He mocked Dr. Andrew Fauci. “Have you ever seen somebody who is so full of crap?"
Trump was talking to Republican donors, but he was sending a bigger, clearer meta message. There is only one Republican Party, and it is the Party of Trump. Just Trump.
Republican readers of this blog have sent me advice to "get off of Trump. He is gone." No. He isn't gone. There is no place of political safe haven for Republican office-holders and partisans except under the grace of Trump. This is not because there are no Republican skeptics of Trump. They are keeping their mouths shut because Trump connects to a majority of Republican voters, and they believe in Trump in a way that allows no apostasy. Trump is is own enforcer, and an excellent one. Don't cross him. Or else they risk the McConnell treatment.
Republicans who voted to impeach or convict on impeachment are cast out. Republicans who spoke in opposition to Trump's effort to overthrow the vote are cast out. Republican election officials who dutifully followed the law are cast out..
Trump does what Clinton and Obama could not do: Get people to suspend belief. Trump engenders faith. If what Trump says seems not to be literally true, then it is at least true in a higher sense, spiritually true. Worldly "facts" from the media, from courts, from the temporal world are unreliable. Trump is inerrant. Franklin Graham said of his late father, "My father knew Donald Trump, he believed in Donald Trump, and he voted for Donald Trump. He believed that Donald J. Trump was the man for this hour in history for our nation.”
Franklin Graham wrote on Facebook, "House Democrats impeached him because they hate him and want to do as much damage as they can. And these 10 [Republicans who voted for impeachment] . . . joined in the feeding frenzy. It makes you wonder what the thirty pieces of silver were that Speaker Pelosi promised for this betrayal.” Trump, like Christ, betrayed.
The problem for McConnell, Liz Cheney, Mike Pence, and others who dared be critical of Trump or the January 6 insurrection, is not policy disagreement. It is that they refuse to believe in Trump and support him personally. They believe in a secular reality of laws, evidence, and work-a-day truth, and constitutional norms. In that world, Trump lost the election and the attempt to overthrow it was morally and legally wrong. They believed their eyes, not Trump.
There is no salvation by works in Trump's GOP. One is saved by faith alone. Believe in Trump or be cast out into the darkness.
6 comments:
Test comment.
In 2005 a new religion was born, Pastafarianism - the belief in the Flying Spaghetti Monster. This was a hoax perpetrated by atheists, but in fact the IRS had problems proving it wasn’t. It had a deity, rituals, prayers, a holy book.... they wanted 501c3 status.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Touched_by_His_Noodly_Appendage_HD.jpg
Perhaps this will be Trumpism’s next iteration?
In 2005 a new religion was born, Pastafarianism - the belief in the Flying Spaghetti Monster. This was a hoax perpetrated by atheists, but in fact the IRS had problems proving it wasn’t. It had a deity, rituals, prayers, a holy book.... they wanted 501c3 status.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Touched_by_His_Noodly_Appendage_HD.jpg
Perhaps this will be Trumpism’s next iteration?
I would observe that if a donor attended a Mar-a-Lago event they are a true believer and hence the vitriol. As we move forward we should probably be looking at who isn't still onboard. It's going to be a little difficult as polling pretty much stops after the term ends. My guess is it's going to distill down to a hardcore minority, let's hope.
Don't forget the whole schtick is about money. They don't need a huge following to still rake in the dough, and I would imagine it's going to mean even more cray cray.
Prediction: Indictments falling like leaves in the Fall...
I look to history of Europe to understand Trump’s power. The military defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo ended Napoleon power once he was exiled on a remote island Saint Helena in the Atlantic. But why was it so hard for France to rid itself of Napoleon? Napoleon rose to take advantage of the discontent and restore order from the chaos left in the wake of the Reign of Terror. He said things the French wanted to hear, as does Trump.
What concerns me about Trump is the similarity of Trumps defeat at the polls and the defeat of the insurrection on January 6th, 2021 to his self-imposed exile in Mara Lago, West Palm Beach, Florida; is it resembles, to me, Napoleon's supporters "rescuing" him from Elba and returning with forces to retake his place as the Emperor of France while I assume that to be similar to what Trump would like to do, reclaim the presidency by force. Fully one half of the electorate in the US is convinced that Trump WON! They are ready to march although they are not organized, yet. Also it’s not hard for me to see that the Republicans would love to bring on their own Reign of Terror to the non-white and social activates. That, in my opinion, is the glue that binds the GOP to Trump.
A bumper sticker I see around Gold Hill:
"Trump Won and you damn well know it!"
And we're supposed to "understand" those people ?
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