While it is an excellent and informative read and I thank you for it, it is all very sadly familiar to those of us who have been watching the rise of this “Trump, Country and God (in that order)” mindset, both across America and in our own families and communities. There is nothing in it that surprises me anymore.
When I was a teenager I read the Bible cover to cover (N.B. Numbers is boring. Definitely skip it.). One of the things that puzzled me at the time was how easily so many of the Israelites turned to worship of the Golden Calf. After the last six years, I no longer wonder, as I have seen it happen before my eyes.
I do love pointing out Romans 13:1-7 to Republicans:
(NIV)
I mean, that applies to Trump too, but still - the Bible saying “Obey the government even when you don’t like the person in charge because God put him there - oh, and pay your taxes” tends to annoy them.
To take this off the rails again (somewhat reluctantly – but somehow, how can I not when I read this), apparently a wealthy Oligarch has donated one and a half BILLION dollars to the founder of the Federalist Society so he will be enabled to influence our judges and justices for a long, long time.
(This is from the first of three e-mails I received from former classmates of mine from the Bible College. The three of us are the only known living non-Trump Republicans from the history of the school, so pretty much everyday we share some fresh outrage that the other alums are supporting. There may be more after I open the second e-mail!)
And back on target, here is an article my friend sent me apparently because he was thinking I might be able to sleep through the night without waking up with terrors. Again it contains references to Mastriano in Pennsylvania, but also to Toronto where full grown adults roll around on the floor and bark like dogs!
Cannot wait for these people to be in charge of our government!! I mean, what could POSSIBLY go wrong??
Every article about these people is more insane, over top, and more unhinged than the last one. They have these flags of Trump all buffed up with bulging muscles firing an AR-15 while scowling. They are crazy (and every day my former dorm mate sends me at least one of these articles).
The way their minds work is very scary. Watch them recite this prayer of theirs and see why we need to fear them and fight against them at every possible point.
I don’t recall all of the horrors it contains – but it was almost unbelievable to me. To understand what they are claiming is quite eye opening.
FWIW, in 2012, the priest of the Episcopal church I attended at the time said that during major election cycles, he couldn’t go out in public with his collar on and not have someone approach him and ask, “So, who does God want us to vote for?” He would always reply that they needed to examine the issues, and vote for the candidate they think is best.
On Election Day 2012, his wife took their 5-year-old daughter with her, and said daughter squealed, “Mommy, you voted for the one with the big [capital letter of candidate]!” Probably not the first OR last time anything like that has happened.
(And on a related note, there was an old “Family Circus” cartoon where one of the kids says, “Mommy, that’s not the lever Daddy pushed” and I just plain old didn’t get it until very recent years. In other words, Thel has a mind of her own.)
I just wanted to thank you (@Temporary_Name) for the article, although the heartburn, spikes in blood pressure, and lack of sleep due to in-bed fuming and nightmares may be a bit of a price to pay. I actually added it to my old Michael Flynn Pit thread when I (and others) went ballistic about his assertation that the US needed to be one nation, under his God.
We had been mostly looking at the specific speech in question, and it was enlightening to see the larger scope of the moment he is hand-in-hand with as well as some of his other dog whistles.