Thread by @thecoachkessler

When you grow up in a religious culture that convinces its members that everyone who believes and lives differently than them has been deceived and doesn’t know the Truth, it’s easy to see how half the country has been brainwashed to believe cold, hard facts are “fake news.”

Tr*mp’s America didn’t develop overnight.

His followers were primed by the evangelical church, which teaches that the world is against them and that it’s the sworn duty of its members to never waver in their certainty, even when they can’t explain their beliefs.

Blind faith that lacks critical thinking and biblical/historical scholarship has led to blind trust in untrustworthy leaders —

Leaders who claim to work in their best interest of their followers while brainwashing their followers to believe everyone else is against them.

When your entire worldview has been shaped by the ideas that the world is against you and you have the market cornered on truth, it’s easy to get swept up by a world leader who claims to be your present-day savior and reinforces your martyr complex.

While I often lack empathy for Tr*mp supporters and find it all too easy to let hatred swell in my heart rather than compassion or patience, understanding the underlying forces at play and the origins of their blind allegiance does help it make sense, at least.

When you’re isolated from diversity because of the homogenous, cult-like religion you’re born into, it’s easier to choose belonging to your people over curiosity about the “other.”

When you question or disagree, you no longer get to “belong,” so you insulate with fear.

I know this because before I self-identified as the “other” in my conservative, southern baptist sect or Christianity, I “belonged” to a group of people who thought they had the market cornered on truth. Who followed religious teachers with little or no hesitation.

Many of them voted for Tr*mp and will again. Because they believe the world is against them and that all of Christianity and Jesus Christ himself depend on them to preserve “biblical values,” and that Tr*mp is the only thing standing between them and New Testament persecution.

It’s easy for me to roll my eyes and decry their ignorance. I often have.

But there is something to be said about how deeply rooted their fear is. And how they have been manipulated, by biblical distortions, into disbelieving their physical senses, thus invalidating what’s real.

I can step back and acknowledge that half of the US has been brainwashed by religion and manipulated as unassuming pawns in a political power trip.

But I can also hold them accountable. Knowing that in doing so, I’m not just asking them to change their political opinions...

I’m also asking them to take a cold, hard look at their entire worldview & pull at a thread that might unravel the whole thing.

And while that may be the only thing that stops America’s bleeding, I forget — when I’d rather hate than understand them — how much work that entails.

Because I know all too well...when you decide to walk away and no longer live as a fear-filled martyr who is known primarily by what you stand against,

you have to do the hard work of discovering who you really are and choosing what you actually stand for.