Biblical thinking
It turns out Trump is the victim of an authoritarian coup.
The day before former President Donald J. Trump was arraigned on federal charges, he gave an interview to Americano Media, a conservative Spanish-language broadcaster in South Florida, and described his indictment as a “regression” of democracy.
Minutes before he pleaded not guilty in a Miami courtroom on Tuesday, his spokeswoman told reporters that the episode was something “you see in dictatorships like Cuba and Venezuela.”
…
As he mounts his political defense against a 37-count indictment, Mr. Trump has repeatedly invoked corruption and dysfunction in Latin American governments, casting himself in the role of oppressed political dissident.
Why does that sound so familiar? Oh yes – because it sounds like men in skirts claiming to be oppressed by women. It’s the Hot New Thing for people at the top of the pyramid to pretend to be at the bottom and the victim of people who actually are at the bottom. You’d think it would be too blatantly outrageous to get any traction, but as we’ve learned, you’d be wrong.
Mr. Trump has repeatedly alluded to Democrats as “communists,” including during a speech on Tuesday night at his club in Bedminster, N.J.
“If the communists get away with this, it won’t stop with me,” he said. “They will not hesitate to ramp up their persecution of Christians, pro-life activists, parents attending school board meetings and even future Republican candidates, which they do.”
Roy Cohn lives again.
The Rev. Yoelis Sánchez, a pastor at a local church who was born in the Dominican Republic, said she did not hesitate when asked to go to Versailles Restaurant to pray with Mr. Trump. Several religious people, including evangelicals and Catholics, prayed with him while her daughter sang.
“We prayed for God to give him strength and for the truth to come out,” she said. “We are really concerned for his welfare.”
Ms. Sánchez, who lives in Doral, Fla., was not yet a citizen in 2020. She would not say whether she plans to vote for him next year.
“I don’t think he came here just because of the Latino vote,” she said. “He came because he wanted to meet with people who have biblical thinking — he’s pro-life and pro-family and Latinos identify with that.”
Pro-family? Really? Two divorces, bragging about not doing a lick of childcare, much extra-marital shtupping, you can grab them by the pussy?
I’ve been reading a good book lately: The Road to Unfreedom, by Tom Snyder.
Snyder introduced me to a lot of ideas which may not be as new to others as they are to me. One of them is “Implausible Deniability.”
We are surely all familiar with “Plausible Deniability.” This refers to the explanation tossed out in politics, which need not be true, but might be true, and you can’t prove otherwise, and so it’s sufficient. Call it the Bart Simpson principle: “I didn’t do it, nobody saw me do it, and you can’t prove anything.”
Implausible Deniability, on the other hand, is when you throw out something that is blatantly and obviously a lie, and you’re not daring your opponent to disprove it, you’re demonstrating that it doesn’t matter at all that what you’re saying is untrue, because your speech is an exercise of pure power. You are establishing that you are of a status above the question of truth or falsity. Your followers will believe your obvious lie, your implausible denial, because their exercise of belief in you demands it.
Thus: “Donald Trump is pro-life and pro-family.” It’s obviously false, eminently disprovable, but who cares? Facts are for losers. You can see how powerful Trump (or Putin) is by the degree to which he can lie and make people agree with him.
And of course, Ivana accused him of rape, and only walked the accusation back when he threatened her with his usual bullying.
It’s wild to see American evangelicals embrace this guy – not only is he not exactly a poster child for Christian living, he’s clearly Biblically (as well as every other way) illiterate and doesn’t even attempt to pass himself off as a believer, aside from the tepid ‘god love yous’ in his speeches. It really demonstrates how much this brand of Christianity is a tribal/political thing rather than any form of religion.
Then you should be praying he lays off the hamberders and covfefe.
A lot of theocrats really don’t care about getting everyone to become true believers. As long as you “bend the knee,” they’re good with it.
That’s something they have in common with Trump. He knows that most of the GOP leaders don’t like or respect him. I won’t say he doesn’t care, because he’s such an insecure needy man-child that I’m sure it does bother him. But he’s willing to settle for public displays of obedience. So he doesn’t care that, e.g., Kevin McCarthy thinks he’s a clown, as long as Kevin comes to Mar-a-Lago to kiss the ring, and publicly defends Trump after his indictment.
The evangelical right knows Trump isn’t one of them. They know that when a guy refers to “Two Corinthians,” and says he’s never had to ask Jesus for forgiveness of anything, that he’s not an actual practicing Christian. But Trump is willing to pose for photo-ops with the Bible in front of a church, and say nice things about them — and, of course, appoint justices to the Supreme Court who overturn Roe v. Wade.
Aka the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
That, too, but what I was getting at was that, for people who get off on dominating others, someone paying lip service to you is arguably better than someone sincerely fawning over you.
When, say, Mike Pence or Mike Huckabee waxes rhapsodic about what an inspiration the Bible is to him… well, sure, it’s nice to have “one of our own” in a position of power, but it’s no big deal.
When Donald Trump, who you know damn well thinks religion is for the little people, does the same… ahh, that’s him bowing to our political power.
It’s similar to how Trump enjoyed making Chris Christie his lapdog. He knew that Christie didn’t suddenly like or respect him, but Trump had the power and Christie needed to suck up if he wanted to be AG.
Or, to get even darker, it’s the answer to the question that some people ask about why Famous Actor/Athlete/Musician would sexually assault a woman when there’s no shortage of attractive women willing to have sex with them — the lack of consent is a feature, not a bug, for such people. (By which I mean rapists, not famous people.)
Ah yes. He has it all, doesn’t he – not just greedy and shameless and a liar and incompetent and corrupt and stupid and boring and trashy – but a sadistic power freak. Yum.
But he has his good points, don’t forget: 1. He is considerate; mainly towards himself, but that still has to count. Also 2. religious: he has been known to raise a Bible above his head for a photo opportunity, and no doubt recommending certain passages to Stormy Daniels and a whole lot of others as a path to the enlightenment he himself enjoys. Not only that, but he is considerate (see 1. above) and religious in his own humble and biblical way (see 2 above). No doubt that is intended to reinforce his followers in their Faith (in Trump himself admittedly). But faith in something has to be better than faith in nothing, which appears to be his only alternative.
Screechy, that is so on the mark. Making someone who doesn’t agree with you, and they know they don’t agree with you, grovel is the ultimate power. Christians don’t dream of turning atheists into Christians; they dream of turning them into slaves and submissives who pretend to believe. It’s dominance.
That’s what I said when people wondered why Harvey Weinstein bothered to rape women when there are always women who will gladly have sex with someone powerful. It isn’t about sex; it’s about power, but more than that. It is about humiliating someone else. Women are a frequent target for this, but we’re not the only ones. People of color. Service people. The “little-people” who make the country keep going.
I saw this in my students (male, mostly, but an occasional female). Go to the higher ups. Your teacher won’t get fired, but you will have shown you have power over them. Go about what? Who cares? The higher ups will be all sympathetic and caring, and will give the teacher what for before they check the truth of the statement. Even if the teacher comes out fine, it was an exercise in humiliation, and the student has demonstrated power over them.
In the presidential scandals game, Nixon was about power. He wanted it. He craved it. Trump wants money AND power…he wants to be called sir. He wants to have people bow down to him. He wants military parades to pass and salute him. But unlike Nixon, he doesn’t have enough savvy to realize when he’s gone too far. Of course, Nixon’s party leaders pointed it out to him; Trump didn’t hear anyone tell him that…except on the left, and he despised them and insulted them. They were stupid, un-American, non-Magadonians.
Yes, this in spades for the trans “rights” movement. Institutions believing that Trans Twitter reflects reality are part of the same phenomenon. They feel they can’t be seen not bending the knee to what they’ve been told, and mistakenly believe, is the “right side of history.”
I caught a clip on the news last week where Justin Trudeau, at a Pride event in Ottawa, used the “debating your existence” trope in his speech, though I’m sure that lots of thoughtful people have warned him about embracing genderist bullshit. Nobody is “debating their existence,” but using this vocabulary is a sign of submission and obedience to trans ideology. Literal virtue signalling. By the time he realizes that reality trumps craven opportunism, it will be too late. I don’t want the Tories to win, but it seems like it would take electoral defeat (and acknowledgement that advancing genderist demands had helped to bring about that defeat) to burn adherence to trans “rights” out of the Liberal Party and the NDP.