How could anyone believe former president Donald Trump's claim that he, of all people, was chosen by God to lead America? It's a logical question to ask of a man whose voluminous and multi-faceted criminal behavior is hard to keep up with. Many criminals specialize: think of white-collar criminals dedicated to insider trading or Ponzi schemes. Not Trump. His
But we nonetheless ought to make an effort to understand the people duped by a master manipulator/con man. To begin, the Christian Nationalist leadership is 'using' Trump for their own ends to destroy the democratic mode of government that has produced our 'decadent' society.
I'm always amazed by the phenomenon illustrated by Sarah Huckabee-Sanders here by how what we want affects how we experience the world. I don't know what's more frightening and impressive at the same time, our ability to take advantage or our ability to be taken advantage of.
"... how what we want affects how we experience the world."
This is what motivated reasoning and confirmation bias are all about. Those being affected by these, view reality through a distorted lens. Both of these cognitive biases are rampant now, since a large faction of society has accepted fascism.
There is such a strong comparison with Berlusconi but Professor Ben-Ghiat used the word kleptocrat which I learned back in the 1970s in political science. The rule of the "rip-off artist." It sounds "clever" but it is a very real thing, and the kind of comprehensive and indiscriminate vulgarity and corruption exhibited by Trump is truly all about himself, his self-indulgence and undisciplined venality. He is a kleptocrat. Trump has lived a life without rules, boundaries or empathy. The danger now is that Trump may morph from Silvio Berlusconi to someone more terrible such as Mussolini, or Papa Doc Duvalier or Anastasio Somoza. Trump could easily slip toward the kind of behavior we see in Putin and Mobutu. The Caligula Syndrome. The more we deify Trump the greater are the dangers to our culture, society and our lives. The rise of Trumpism--as with fascism--is surely a threat to democracy, but it is more. It is a threat to our culture, our society, our values and our happiness as people. Americans should imagine how an undemocratic social and political culture will look and feel.
Those who put their faith in a sociopath or psychopath to lead our country are so removed from reality that they are destroying our nation. Their degree of gullibility is a sickness.
Allowing fascist speech in the name of fair and balanced reporting only invites fascism. Our mistake was not criticizing fascism after WWII. We were so obsessed with communism that we ignored fascism. Fascism was not seen as a demon, only communism was.
Orange Jesus also has twelve disciples who follow in his footsteps. Follow their unholy actions with this infographic "Orange Jesus And His Twelve Disciples Are A Danger To Women"
If you take the quote you used as the last sentence in today’s blog, and substitute Trump for Hitler and the U.S. for Germany, as a devout, but certainly not evangelical, Christian, what’s taking place in the U.S. today, one could argue, is what Mary prophesied would happen to Trump and the Republican Party in her Magnificat over 2,000 years ago. See Luke 1:51-53, NRSV
Agreed. See also, Psalm 73. Evil people may discourage us down to their level, but Ghandi was right about the ultimate end of tyrants.
Everyone eventually dies. Best to do good.
“When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall... think of it, always.”
Thanks for that quote from Gandhi, Melody. He also said, "I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary. The evil it does is permanent."
A commitment to non-violent means of working through conflict is required now, because without a change of direction, we're likely to end up where we're headed.
Excellent, spot on! It’s bad enough that Trump says these things and even worse that there’s many who believe him! Some may not totally believe, but they say they do for power and control reasons!
Recalling my Catholic Catechism, Trump is an apostate. These so-called "Christians" are following the antichrist. This isn't original strategy, as Ruth pointed out. The Caligula comparison is spot on.
Thanks for this perspective, Ruth...next we'll see him on the cross, I'm sure! It would be funny if it weren't so dangerous.
I know there are people who need to idealize someone in order to feel safe in the world. We all have relative degrees of this idealizing need leftover from childhood. But I hope there are SOME previous Trump voters who will see that he has NO CONSCIENCE. A person with no conscience can "use and discard" people because he suffers no self-doubt, no regret, and no guilt about what he does and what he asks others to do for him. Suggesting that physically sick Iowans travel in below zero weather in order to caucus for him is a manifestation of this sociopathic trait. One doesn't need to be a psychiatrist to be trained to recognize that a person with no conscience has no morals or values guiding and limiting his behavior. A person with no internal limits will ultimately break all the rules until he's stopped by a society that sets the limit for him. Germans made a terrible mistake for the world and for themselves, when they set no limits on Hitler.
although i've long experienced Trump as a bloviating bombastic boring cringe-worthy disaster, i noticed that in past day or two, sneaky feelings such as, he likes Lays Potato Chips - like me, how bad could he be, oh that's just Uncle Donald and Anne Frank's, "In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart" have crept up in me - what's going on?? i've become subject to the wiles of the so-called strong [actually very weak] man who doesn't have a shred of self-restraint towards his appetites; he's gotten in though i'm fairly impervious - is it his relentless presence? - gotta go now to take a shower on the inside -
That last quote just might have some truth to it. Americans have long boasted that they are the light of the world. Then they chose Trump. That should be humbling, but it certainly is humiliating.
More voted against him in 2015 than for him, but that “best of all systems” put him in power anyway. Has it been fixed yet?
Encourage everyone to also follow and read Dr. Barbara Walter, Poly Sci professor at Univ. of San Diego. Orange Jesus had Russian help in 2016, much like in other countries. La Penne in France, Brexit, Berlusconi vacationed on the regular with Putin. Austria, Hungry, and so many other country's conservative party leaders are targets for conversion by the FSB. It is the "Kremlin Playbook" to weaken the west. So that Russia can gain some leverage and increase their sphere of influence ( grow the global network of kleptocracy by weakening institutions from within Democracies. DJT as a savior or as President Orange Jesus is how Russia weakens us from within. The Ukraine invasion wasn't some Putin whim. The invasion was planned since probably 2004-2007, Russian hardliners never got over losing their empire and have been plotting to get it back. By weakening western democracies before the invasion ( DTJ/Brexit/Orban)....they just expected us all to be weaker. Its not that hard to imagine the world right now if all these right wingers where in power together./at the same time. What would that mean globally? First, bye bye NATO.
IF you are not sure how this all came to be this bad, expand your knowledge base, "There is Nothing for You Here" Fiona Hill, "How Civil Wars Start" Dr. Barbara Walter, and "The Kremlin Playbook" -Heather Conley
Ted, I haven't read those books but I have long suspected what you've described above...the revenge of the tyrants. In this long stretch of patriarchy or the age of male grandiosity, domination through force has been a central organizing principle. It follows that brutish men will take the tribe, then the village, then the country, then the entire world.
Putin's vulnerability to feeling shame at being bested by other men goes back to his early childhood where he was alone on the streets and bullied by the bigger boys in the neighborhood. Shame, and the need to avenge one's powerless self are the drivers of much brutality in the world. So I'm not at all surprised that he and others like him are organized around trying to crush the leaders of the democratic world and collapse a system that collapsed them. They're trying to transfer the humiliation to someone else in this zero-sum game of dominance.
Putin seems to be a sociopath or psychopath, just like so many of our worst leaders ( Pinochet, Mussolini, Slobodan Milosevic, Hitler, Stalin, Erdogan, tRump etc.). The world just has not learned from past mistakes.
What a travesty that Trump is considered a modern day deity by so many fools who call themselves Christians. He is so profoundly corrupt and dirty and the antithesis of anything holy. We really have a mass psychosis happening right before our eyes
Some Christians worship tRump while others think he's a pig. This differing opinion of him has caused a schism in the Christian church. My wife and her brother are examples of this divide. My wife thinks tRump is a monster but her brother worships the guy..... and they go to the same church. They cannot even talk about politics due to the divide.
I want to know more about how the DJT followers are getting their messages! Is it Christian Radio? Salem? Sinclair Media? Someone must know how this is happening. I see what you are saying about how DJT flatters his people and gets them to think in his 'special' vengeful, hateful, fearful way. Just want to know, how we combat the messages of hate and sickness.
My brother in law listens to far right media with his i-pad. It's bigoted and fascist but I'm not sure what the source is. He's stuck in a mental rut and cannot change. He's sure that tRump won in 2020. It's delusional.
Steve, I have a similar experience with a dear friend. There is a christian conservative influence through her kids' church. That's all I know. Question! Do "the haves" worry to an extreme degree about "the have-nots" coming to take their stuff. (resource-guarding?
The "haves" and have nots" divide is created by fascist paranoia promotion. It's rampant in our society now. I believe it stems from social Darwinism, a major pillar of fascism.
When segments of Christianity radicalize into Dominonism, they accept authoritarianism. Author Chris Hedges calls them Christo-fascists. Their mindset is steeped in radical Calvinism and they become obsessed with dominance and submission. They start hating groups in society that they view as inferior. Political fascism does the same thing. It's an easy alliance between the two groups.
Sociopaths like tRump view themselves as demigods and need to be worshipped to feed their grandiosity. tRump's needy followers are obsessed with his omnipotence and need to worship him. It's a kind of sick symbiosis. The world of reality is left far behind.
Well said! It's a "sick symbiosis" indeed! They need someone to worship, and he needs to be worshiped! He also flatters them by making them feel important, just as they flatter him in the same way.
I actually think that he represents white, male, arrogant authority and they're used to falling in line behind men who strut around on the world stage dressed in those clothes.
Yes, he has become the hero of the broken middle class. They need someone to blame, so vengeance beocmes their tool against their targeted out groups. Classic fascism.
Prof. Ben Ghiat is always worth listening to.
It makes me sad that so many people are being duped. They just don’t want to see the truth.
More than duped; brainwashed.
Echos of Steven Hassan session with Lucid on cults.
To dupe- to deceive someone usually by making them do something they did not intend to do.
"Stupefied" applies too, don't you think?
But we nonetheless ought to make an effort to understand the people duped by a master manipulator/con man. To begin, the Christian Nationalist leadership is 'using' Trump for their own ends to destroy the democratic mode of government that has produced our 'decadent' society.
I'm always amazed by the phenomenon illustrated by Sarah Huckabee-Sanders here by how what we want affects how we experience the world. I don't know what's more frightening and impressive at the same time, our ability to take advantage or our ability to be taken advantage of.
"... how what we want affects how we experience the world."
This is what motivated reasoning and confirmation bias are all about. Those being affected by these, view reality through a distorted lens. Both of these cognitive biases are rampant now, since a large faction of society has accepted fascism.
There is such a strong comparison with Berlusconi but Professor Ben-Ghiat used the word kleptocrat which I learned back in the 1970s in political science. The rule of the "rip-off artist." It sounds "clever" but it is a very real thing, and the kind of comprehensive and indiscriminate vulgarity and corruption exhibited by Trump is truly all about himself, his self-indulgence and undisciplined venality. He is a kleptocrat. Trump has lived a life without rules, boundaries or empathy. The danger now is that Trump may morph from Silvio Berlusconi to someone more terrible such as Mussolini, or Papa Doc Duvalier or Anastasio Somoza. Trump could easily slip toward the kind of behavior we see in Putin and Mobutu. The Caligula Syndrome. The more we deify Trump the greater are the dangers to our culture, society and our lives. The rise of Trumpism--as with fascism--is surely a threat to democracy, but it is more. It is a threat to our culture, our society, our values and our happiness as people. Americans should imagine how an undemocratic social and political culture will look and feel.
Those who put their faith in a sociopath or psychopath to lead our country are so removed from reality that they are destroying our nation. Their degree of gullibility is a sickness.
Allowing fascist speech in the name of fair and balanced reporting only invites fascism. Our mistake was not criticizing fascism after WWII. We were so obsessed with communism that we ignored fascism. Fascism was not seen as a demon, only communism was.
Orange Jesus also has twelve disciples who follow in his footsteps. Follow their unholy actions with this infographic "Orange Jesus And His Twelve Disciples Are A Danger To Women"
https://thedemlabs.org/2024/01/16/orange-jesus-and-his-twelve-disciples-are-a-danger-to-women/
Thank you!
If you take the quote you used as the last sentence in today’s blog, and substitute Trump for Hitler and the U.S. for Germany, as a devout, but certainly not evangelical, Christian, what’s taking place in the U.S. today, one could argue, is what Mary prophesied would happen to Trump and the Republican Party in her Magnificat over 2,000 years ago. See Luke 1:51-53, NRSV
Agreed. See also, Psalm 73. Evil people may discourage us down to their level, but Ghandi was right about the ultimate end of tyrants.
Everyone eventually dies. Best to do good.
“When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall... think of it, always.”
Thanks for that quote from Gandhi, Melody. He also said, "I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary. The evil it does is permanent."
A commitment to non-violent means of working through conflict is required now, because without a change of direction, we're likely to end up where we're headed.
Also I like the Dante reference! Liz
Well said! Liz
Excellent, spot on! It’s bad enough that Trump says these things and even worse that there’s many who believe him! Some may not totally believe, but they say they do for power and control reasons!
Recalling my Catholic Catechism, Trump is an apostate. These so-called "Christians" are following the antichrist. This isn't original strategy, as Ruth pointed out. The Caligula comparison is spot on.
Thanks for this perspective, Ruth...next we'll see him on the cross, I'm sure! It would be funny if it weren't so dangerous.
I know there are people who need to idealize someone in order to feel safe in the world. We all have relative degrees of this idealizing need leftover from childhood. But I hope there are SOME previous Trump voters who will see that he has NO CONSCIENCE. A person with no conscience can "use and discard" people because he suffers no self-doubt, no regret, and no guilt about what he does and what he asks others to do for him. Suggesting that physically sick Iowans travel in below zero weather in order to caucus for him is a manifestation of this sociopathic trait. One doesn't need to be a psychiatrist to be trained to recognize that a person with no conscience has no morals or values guiding and limiting his behavior. A person with no internal limits will ultimately break all the rules until he's stopped by a society that sets the limit for him. Germans made a terrible mistake for the world and for themselves, when they set no limits on Hitler.
although i've long experienced Trump as a bloviating bombastic boring cringe-worthy disaster, i noticed that in past day or two, sneaky feelings such as, he likes Lays Potato Chips - like me, how bad could he be, oh that's just Uncle Donald and Anne Frank's, "In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart" have crept up in me - what's going on?? i've become subject to the wiles of the so-called strong [actually very weak] man who doesn't have a shred of self-restraint towards his appetites; he's gotten in though i'm fairly impervious - is it his relentless presence? - gotta go now to take a shower on the inside -
Madeline…he likes to THINK and talk like he’s already on the cross. In reality his bone spurs couldn’t take the nails….his metal allergy perhaps?
😁👍
That last quote just might have some truth to it. Americans have long boasted that they are the light of the world. Then they chose Trump. That should be humbling, but it certainly is humiliating.
More voted against him in 2015 than for him, but that “best of all systems” put him in power anyway. Has it been fixed yet?
Nope
Encourage everyone to also follow and read Dr. Barbara Walter, Poly Sci professor at Univ. of San Diego. Orange Jesus had Russian help in 2016, much like in other countries. La Penne in France, Brexit, Berlusconi vacationed on the regular with Putin. Austria, Hungry, and so many other country's conservative party leaders are targets for conversion by the FSB. It is the "Kremlin Playbook" to weaken the west. So that Russia can gain some leverage and increase their sphere of influence ( grow the global network of kleptocracy by weakening institutions from within Democracies. DJT as a savior or as President Orange Jesus is how Russia weakens us from within. The Ukraine invasion wasn't some Putin whim. The invasion was planned since probably 2004-2007, Russian hardliners never got over losing their empire and have been plotting to get it back. By weakening western democracies before the invasion ( DTJ/Brexit/Orban)....they just expected us all to be weaker. Its not that hard to imagine the world right now if all these right wingers where in power together./at the same time. What would that mean globally? First, bye bye NATO.
IF you are not sure how this all came to be this bad, expand your knowledge base, "There is Nothing for You Here" Fiona Hill, "How Civil Wars Start" Dr. Barbara Walter, and "The Kremlin Playbook" -Heather Conley
Shame on the U.S. media for not exposing Russian influence in 2016. AG Barr helped obscure; Bette Dangerous aka Heidi Cuda exposes today at last.
I know, right? The moment he said, "Russia, if you're listening…" the world should've stopped and not let him go one step further.
Ted, I haven't read those books but I have long suspected what you've described above...the revenge of the tyrants. In this long stretch of patriarchy or the age of male grandiosity, domination through force has been a central organizing principle. It follows that brutish men will take the tribe, then the village, then the country, then the entire world.
Putin's vulnerability to feeling shame at being bested by other men goes back to his early childhood where he was alone on the streets and bullied by the bigger boys in the neighborhood. Shame, and the need to avenge one's powerless self are the drivers of much brutality in the world. So I'm not at all surprised that he and others like him are organized around trying to crush the leaders of the democratic world and collapse a system that collapsed them. They're trying to transfer the humiliation to someone else in this zero-sum game of dominance.
Putin seems to be a sociopath or psychopath, just like so many of our worst leaders ( Pinochet, Mussolini, Slobodan Milosevic, Hitler, Stalin, Erdogan, tRump etc.). The world just has not learned from past mistakes.
Hasn't learned?
You're right, I left out a word. Corrected.
Excellent/necessary piece!
Christian Nationalism on display……
Thank you Ruth!
Agree! As said before, Christian Nationalism is an oxymoron! Can’t hate & love simultaneously!
Orange Jesus! Good grief.
What a travesty that Trump is considered a modern day deity by so many fools who call themselves Christians. He is so profoundly corrupt and dirty and the antithesis of anything holy. We really have a mass psychosis happening right before our eyes
"...so many fools who call themselves Christians". A real Christian could not vote for Trump.
Some Christians worship tRump while others think he's a pig. This differing opinion of him has caused a schism in the Christian church. My wife and her brother are examples of this divide. My wife thinks tRump is a monster but her brother worships the guy..... and they go to the same church. They cannot even talk about politics due to the divide.
I want to know more about how the DJT followers are getting their messages! Is it Christian Radio? Salem? Sinclair Media? Someone must know how this is happening. I see what you are saying about how DJT flatters his people and gets them to think in his 'special' vengeful, hateful, fearful way. Just want to know, how we combat the messages of hate and sickness.
My brother in law listens to far right media with his i-pad. It's bigoted and fascist but I'm not sure what the source is. He's stuck in a mental rut and cannot change. He's sure that tRump won in 2020. It's delusional.
Steve, I have a similar experience with a dear friend. There is a christian conservative influence through her kids' church. That's all I know. Question! Do "the haves" worry to an extreme degree about "the have-nots" coming to take their stuff. (resource-guarding?
The "haves" and have nots" divide is created by fascist paranoia promotion. It's rampant in our society now. I believe it stems from social Darwinism, a major pillar of fascism.
When segments of Christianity radicalize into Dominonism, they accept authoritarianism. Author Chris Hedges calls them Christo-fascists. Their mindset is steeped in radical Calvinism and they become obsessed with dominance and submission. They start hating groups in society that they view as inferior. Political fascism does the same thing. It's an easy alliance between the two groups.
Sociopaths like tRump view themselves as demigods and need to be worshipped to feed their grandiosity. tRump's needy followers are obsessed with his omnipotence and need to worship him. It's a kind of sick symbiosis. The world of reality is left far behind.
Well said! It's a "sick symbiosis" indeed! They need someone to worship, and he needs to be worshiped! He also flatters them by making them feel important, just as they flatter him in the same way.
I actually think that he represents white, male, arrogant authority and they're used to falling in line behind men who strut around on the world stage dressed in those clothes.
Yes, he has become the hero of the broken middle class. They need someone to blame, so vengeance beocmes their tool against their targeted out groups. Classic fascism.