"Time and again, I’ve had conversations with Trump supporters who believe the president is all that stands between them and cultural revolution," @Peter_Wehner writes: theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/… Peter Wehner dances all around the huge turd in the GOP punchbowl: the Christian Right.
2/ Since the 1960s, when Rousas Rushdoony launched the small but highly influential Christian Reconstructionist movement (read @FredClarkson @julieingersoll ) the conservative religious right has constructed an alternate universe of institutions, experts, science, & information
3/ based on existential fears and the hostility of the federal government, liberals, the Democratic Party, and Black people. They built cultish, abusive churches (read @dogemperor ) that forms the base of the GOP (read @CultExpert ), author of The Cult of Trump. Trump is the
4/ logical outcome of larger strategic calculations and operations, as well as larger social forces. The misnamed Trumpism is a mixture of Christian nationalism and white nationalism. And that mixture has been swirling, mixing, & re-forming over decades. Trump astutely brought
5/ them together. The commentariat simply cannot look at the Christian Right--from Billy Graham to Franklin Graham, from Jerry Falwell to Jerry Falwell Jr--and see the malignant social forces at work in America. How can they ignore a religious movement that casts political issues
6/ as part of a cosmic war of Good vs Evil, of those building God's Kingdom and those working for Satan? Isn't that the basis of tribalism & polarization? How can you ignore a religious movement that would replace evolution with creationism/ID? It is not a far leap from the
7/ latter to believing climate science is a hoax and QAnon is telling the truth. But sure, let's all blame Trump--a moron who can't comprehend a comic book, but who has the predatory savviness to see a path to power with movements that is as ruthless and dedicated to the pursuit
8/ of absolute power as he is. The political parties sorting themselves along an authoritarian dimension? Well, the Christian Right and its New Apostolic Reformation churches are built on blind obedience to authoritarian, abusive leaders. It is amazing how intellectuals and
9/ commentators blind themselves to what is right in front of them for decades.
