Thread by @Nick_Carmody

@BulwarkOnline Very good article.

There's also a religious authoritarianism component to Evangelical support. Trump’s cult-like base has shown a highly concerning level of support, obedience, & willingness to suspend truth and reality in order to continue to defend and follow him. 1/

@BulwarkOnline Although many principled conservatives have abandoned Trump, those who remain identify as “conservative”. This is consistent w/research that shows that political conservatives score considerably high on personality tests that measure the trait of “authoritarian follower”,.... 2/

@BulwarkOnline .....on the role of personality (authoritarian submission) on obedience, and that people's level of obedience directly correlates to their personal level of religiosity....3/

@BulwarkOnline This may help explain why Trump has enjoyed record levels of evangelical support, with many claiming that Trump was chosen by God to lead them, and that Trump is a continuing biblical theme where God chooses flawed leaders....4/

@BulwarkOnline They see Trump as a martyr. They see him as a guy who gave up an extremely comfortable billionaire lifestyle, who willingly accepted all the hateful, vile attacks from the evil mainstream media and the evil political Left,.....5/

@BulwarkOnline ...... in order to save the world, to save the America, and to save/win the cultural civil war for the evangelicals. Basically, they believe that Trump sacrificed everything for them. 6/

@BulwarkOnline During the initial stages of the Trump phenomenon, the cliché justification explaining why he was getting so much traction was that the media took him “literally but not seriously”, while his supporters, many of whom were evangelicals, took him “seriously, but not literally”...7/

@BulwarkOnline Undoubtedly, there are a lot of religious zealots who take the bible literally. But many religious people, often in an attempt to pre-empt criticism from atheists who use literalistic rationality to highlight the absurdity of religion,...8/

@BulwarkOnline .....will often say that they don’t embrace the bible as the word of God, but more as a book of fables. Or put another way, that they take the Bible seriously, but not literally. Sound familiar?.....9/

@BulwarkOnline .....Basically, people have been conditioned to pledge unconditional obedience, devotion, and worship to an institution that they can’t take literally.......10/

@BulwarkOnline So it’s no coincidence that the cult of personality that exists with Trump’s base involves dysfunctional levels of obedience, devotion, and hero worship to a guy who not only can’t be taken literally, but whose dishonesty rises to a pathological level.... 11/

@BulwarkOnline .....Another thing that may play into this is that due to their unwavering faith in an all-knowing, all powerful, patriarchal figure who looks after and protects them, despite inexplicably allowing (if not causing) unspeakable cruelty and suffering to exist and occur…12/

@BulwarkOnline ....evangelicals seem to have a predisposition towards authoritarian strong men who claim be the smartest, know the best words, know more than the generals, who only "I alone" can fix things, have super health, etc, who also causes and exhibits unspeakable harm and cruelty....13/

@BulwarkOnline The fact there is a transactional relationship where he pays them off with Supreme Court Justices is icing on the cake, and only reinforces the, “strongman will take care of me/us”, thinking....14/

https://twitter.com/Nick_Carmody/status/1101822790317989888