David French has an interesting formulation to describe the strange phenomenon of conservative Christians rallying around a man like Donald Trump. These folks are essentially asking the president to hate their enemies for them so that they can remain true to Jesus’s commandment to love their enemies.
Whatever misgivings they may have about Trump’s personal morals, at least he fights. And, if he loses, then there will be a pro-choice president who appoints pro-choice judges, and no one will protect them from infringements on their right to live by the principles of their faith.
What happens next, according to French, is that people are drawn in by their initial acceptance of Trump as their proxy and representative. Before long, they begin to rationalize that any criticism of Trump will weaken him and empower his opponents, so they refrain from criticizing him. Then they begin to attack his critics even when they agree with them: “They’ll echo Trump’s lies. They’ll defend Trump’s lies. They’ll adopt many of his same rhetorical tactics, including engaging in mocking and insulting behavior as a matter of course.”
French describes this phenomenon using the hypothetical older women who is “so nice in person that you’d hardly think it’s real.”
…she loves Trump because she’s sick and tired. She’s sick and tired of the elite media deriding her faith as bigoted. She’s sick and tired of a political party that rejects the humanity of unborn children. She’s appalled at the way she believes the media have gone out of their way to destroy good men…
…She doesn’t necessarily like Trump’s lying, but the Democrats lie too, and if you read what she writes on social media, and you hear what she says to her friends, it’s full of condemnation against Adam Schiff, the Steele dossier, and the other laundry list of Resistance sins.
She doesn’t like Trump’s personal insults, but her political conversations are full of shock and anger at the opposition’s disrespect for a president she appreciates. That’s where she invests her emotion. That’s where she focuses her activism. Have you seen what The Squad says about Trump? The misdeeds freshman members of Congress loom far larger in her mind that the misconduct of the world’s most powerful man.
Here’s the end result—millions of Christians have not just decided to hire a hater to defend them from haters and to hire a liar to defend them from liars, they actively ignore, rationalize, minimize, or deny Trump’s sins.
Somewhere along the way, the idea of loving your enemies gets lost. Along with it, the standard against lying is abandoned. And, since Trump cannot be criticized and must be defended, every foul act in Trump’s history is either denied or ignored. Traditional norms of American government, like the separation of powers and Congress’s right to subpoena witnesses and documents, are thrown to the wayside because the president doesn’t abide by them.
Some of this is not unique to Trump. Leaders will transform the people who follow them and reshape the organizations they head, and to a certain degree this is what we expect from leaders. But, a moral leader can appeal to people’s better angels and mold them into better fathers, mothers, friends, and citizens. A moral leader can provide people with courage to risk their health and wealth on a bigger cause. The problem arises when an immoral leader reshapes people and organizations in a negative way.
Trump takes kind old ladies who worry about the unborn and transforms them into hate-tweeters. He turns upright and model citizens into apologists for sexual assault, white nationalism, business fraud, self-dealing and foreign interference in our elections.
For French, his primary concern is what this does to faithful conservative Christians. For the rest of us, the concern is what it does to the nation as a whole. As the core of Trumpism is a corruption of the national character.
When Martin Luther King Jr. sought to change the national character it was in obvious need of changing. For Trump’s supporters, they may feel the same about attitudes towards abortion or immigration. But they haven’t rallied behind a leader who wins people over with personal courage and Christian teaching. They’re not transforming people’s attitudes about the things they care about but are instead being transformed themselves into immoral beings. The causes they champion are sullied by association with Trump and his extreme un-Christian behaviors and beliefs.
French doesn’t mention it, but the movement around Trump is increasingly described as cultish, and we see him compared to Christ more and more often. This, too, is heretical, and a threat to monotheism.
When I think about this cult, I keep going back to the song Ship of Fools by Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia. I picture a time right after Trump leaves power and his intoxicating effect has worn off.
The bottles stand as empty
as they were filled before
Time there was and plenty
but from that cup no more
Though I could not caution all I yet may warn a few:
“Don’t lend your hand to raise no flag
atop no ship of fools.”
My main hope is that a leader will arise after Trump who leads these folks back in the right direction and who can restore their standards and morals. They’re ultimately victims of Trumpism just like everyone else, and French is correct to call them on it.
The future’s hard to predict. We should expect the unexpected. But it seems the only hope for our country is its continuing demographic shift. A nation that elected Reagan, two Bushes and a Trump; that keeps handing power to a party whose every nominee makes the last one seem positively Lincolnesque — seems a nation more than a bit lost. But the fact that an African-American president promising (if not delivering) a form of transformation was elected twice provides hope. We need a new electoral coalition.
With regard to your recent concern about Sanders, we need young people to turn out in unprecedented numbers. At this point, I’m as frightened of nominating Biden as I am of Sanders. I don’t think another “more of the same” candidate is gonna excite anyone. Warren would be my first choice but I’d support Sanders over everyone else except maybe Yang. I’m upper income, professional, higher income and they don’t scare me. I know I’m not a typical voter and we need to appeal to a wide range of people. I’m not convinced a real progressive is going to turn off suburban voters or fail to appeal in rural areas. And I think someone like that can excite a youth vote that’s been frustrated again and again.
Nice comment. Warren, Sanders or Yang could help change our politics for the better, if given the chance.
I agree; and I’d add that *any* Democratic nominee, if elected, would help change our politics for the better…even more so if elected along with a Democratic Senate and a Democratic House.
Where I live, the Philly suburbs, the Republican Party has run everything since the Civil War. In the past four years, we have seen the Democrats take over local and county offices for the first time ever. We are awash with new Democrats, which really aren’t a whole lot different than New Democrats.
The difference is that this isn’t the 1990’s and a whole lot more of these historically Republican suburbanites are willing to walk away from the party. They aren’t clinging to Tom Ridge or Arlen Specter anymore. They aren’t finding ways to rationalize Bush or sighing in relief that they can vote for Romney instead. They’re ready to vote for the Democratic nominee in huge numbers.
But these folks are absolutely not going to get on board with anything they consider to be radical leftism. They work in financial services, hospitals, medical devices, and health insurance and services. They are tax-averse. They are wary of the city and urban values. They are getting more comfortable with diversity as the suburbs and schools grow in diversity, but they still have conservative values about immigration and crime. These suburbs have acted for a half century as an anti-urban bastion both nationally and in Harrisburg. This is not a natural coalition for them to be allied with the big city machine or the city’s ethnic politics. It is pretty easy to break, and any normal Republican would break it in two seconds if Bernie Sanders is the nominee.
It’s only because Trump is so divisive that the Dems would still be competitive and potentially even win the suburbs here. But they don’t need a narrow win. They need an overwhelming win, coupled with very strong urban turnout.
So, maybe you can see why a candidate who doesn’t poll well in the black community and who is a terrible fit for the Philly suburbs, does not inspire confidence in his ability to carry this critical state.
The idea that he’ll win by energizing the party is somewhat ludicrous since most of the party hates him, and most of its leaders are freaking out about him. The youth vote might be helpful with Sanders, but they’d have to turn out in more than unprecedented numbers to overcome suburban loss, and I just don’t know if the urban vote will mobilize behind Bernie. It just seems unlikely, even if they’re committed overall to beating Trump.
Warren would do better in every single area I can think of except perhaps in the rural Obama-Trump parts of the state. But she has the same kind of potential there that Sanders has, and some of the same liabilities.
The best bet is to pick someone who can unite the party rather than causing defections from within the ranks. I think Warren can do that. I actually think almost all of the candidates can do that. There’s really only one candidate who cannot.
It does appear Sanders has attracted a lot of angst. I kinda shied away from him bc of his age. The socialist label always seemed inappropriate since he seems to want what most progressives want – even Warren. ( as an aside, I noticed recently that she has an increasing following among the Hispanic community.)
What is worrisome to me is the trend seems to be to the Mayor and I suspect that will drive many of the younger folks away, even split the party. So when you say he will unite the party I am not sure. He seems republican lite to me. And to me that is a no go, especially after the Orange One.
which mayor.
Buttigieg.
Thanks for your thoughtful comment. Whether the Democratic nominee is a “real progressive” or not, that nominee will be running on a more progressive platform than any major party presidential candidate in at least 40 years. And given the increased partisanship in national politics, what (arguably) matters more than the president’s individual views is what a majority party can pass through two houses of Congress so the president can sign it into law.
A health care (or energy, or tax, or education, or housing, or civil rights) bill signed by Pres. Biden (or Buttigieg or Bloomberg or Klobuchar) would differ almost not at all from a bill signed by Pres. Sanders (or Warren). The thousands of appointments a Democratic president would make to executive and judicial openings would be drawn from the same pool of possible appointees regardless of who’s president—and virtually all of them be vast improvements on the Federalist Society/American Family Association/Chamber of Commerce/NRA-vetted appointees named by Trump.
There are a lot of people who have spoken about this to left leaning outlets quite a while ago. Scott Walker pitch man Charlie Sykes for one!
Okay, so let’s hear why you think there will be some “fever breaking” after Trumps leaves office? What incentive will there be?
Well, the fever was predicted by me before I knew Trump was even running, because it’s a function of conservatives wanting to maintain control of the GOP rather than a function of wanting the GOP to win, which are not the exact same things. But the cult will largely disappear when Trump is no longer in power.
Interesting essay on Huff Post about elite looting of America and lack of any consequence, legal or otherwise. Seems to fit right in with suburbs Martin refers to. Maybe I shouldn’t worry too much about those places?
I’m a bit of a crank on the subject of belief. I think most people don’t actually believe half of what they claim to believe. Trump didn’t turn decent people into pigs, he just empowered their inner pig. People love to strut around claiming virtue for professions of belief which, as we’ve now seen, are about as solid as papier-mâché in a hurricane.