Thursday, January 25, 2018

Conservative evangelicals need Trump like an addict needs his 'fix'

Conservative evangelicals willing to hold Trump up as Messiah as long as he gives them their psychological 'fix.'

I said it yesterday and lo and behold here it is.

Evangelical conservatives are doubling and tripling-down in supporting Donald Trump. In spite of all of his bad behaviors, including basic incompetence, racism, and allegations of adultery, religious conservative leaders are continuing to hold up Trump as the new Messiah. They claim that Trump, in spite of all of his problems, is ushering in "pro-family" and "pro-life" policies.

Family Research Council president Tony Perkins, who knows he stepped into it earlier this week with his "religious conservatives will give Trump a do-over for his bad behavior"  comments, continued in attempts to soften the blow of hypocrisy.

According to Right Wing Watch:

Perkins said that evangelical faith leaders’ support for Trump is “not unconditional” but that “as long as he continues to be the most pro-life, pro-family president” and “continues to walk the straight and narrow with the right influence,” Perkins and his allies will continue to support his administration.

Perkins's group, FRC, also issued a public prayer for Trump:

“Thanks be to God for giving President Trump a burden to champion religious liberty. May Christians pray for and support the president for the good thing he is doing, even if they cannot approve of his past or present behavior in other respects.”

Not to be outdone, Franklin Graham, fresh from humiliating himself with awful defenses of Trump's behavior, is telling people to pray because Trump is supposedly facing a coup de etat. Franklin is echoing nonsense which shot up then fizzled down in right-wing circles about a secret government group working to overthrow Trump.


Lastly, the one who really takes the cake is megachurch pastor Robert Jeffress. Jeffress, who has demonstrated that he would defending Trump urinating on himself by claiming he was merely attempting to keep his leg hairs from drying out, claimed that pastors who don't support Trump are out of step with the "people in the pews:"

Jeffress said he couldn’t understand how faith leaders couldn’t support Trump, claiming that Trump is the “most pro-life, most pro-religious liberty, most pro-Israel president we’ve had in history.” “Probably they deep-down don’t embrace those beliefs that the people in the pews do. I mean, if you talk to them privately, many of them, they are just as concerned—perhaps more concerned—about the Palestinians as they are about the Jews who have a right to live in the land that God gave them. When it comes to those Colorado bakers, they really believe—if you talk to them privately—they should be forced to bake that cake for the gay wedding. When it comes to abortion, they are more concerned with the plight of the DREAMers than they are about protecting the unborn. That’s what I think it gets down to,” Jeffress said.

 I can tell you for a fact that Jeffress doesn't have a clue, especially when it comes to African-Americans who sit in the pews. We aren't exactly fans of Trump.

All of those statements about how Trump is supposedly so "pro-family" and so "pro-life" merely underline the ONE fact that  Jeffress, Graham, Perkins and the rest of the evangelicals who support Trump want to diminish.They don't care one iota about Trump's values or morals. They only care about what they want.

They rate Trump as being "pro-life" for all of the anti-abortion regulations he is pushing, while ignoring how the government under his watch let the CHIP program expire, thereby nearly causing millions of children to lose their healthcare.

They rate Trump as being "pro-family" by the conservative, but highly  incompetent judges he selected, one not having an iota of experience in practicing, while others showing an obvious anti-LGBTQ bias.  They consider him "pro-family" because he pushes awful regulations which could allow healthcare workers to deny treatment to the sick on the grounds of "religious liberty."

They  don't consider him Christian, because of his personal actions, but because he has given them access to meetings, invitations of the White House, and free access to places in our government which they have no damn business being in.

And here is the huge problem with that - Trump has not given any repentance when it concerns his actions. He has not publicly nor even privately apologized for his numerous errors in judgment, whether it be defending white supremacists or the over 2,000 lies he has told while in office. Him having an alleged affair with a porn star only scratches the surface. Truth be told, Trump needs to have his own wing in a confessional booth.

But according to conservative evangelicals, it doesn't matter as long as Trump gives them their  "goodies" or their "fix" because that's what this relationship is between Trump and conservative evangelicals is like.

A drug dealer and his client.

Nothing Trump has done which pleases conservative evangelicals has been necessarily good for America. It has only been good for them, their egos, and their desires to place themselves at the top of an echelon which leaves the rest of us who don't worship as they do in the dark as they bask in all of the glow.

That's what drugs do. They give a person an inflated sense of self-esteem, while blinding him or her to the reality of the situation.

And just like drugs, the relationship religious conservatives are having with Trump is boosting their egos while blinding them to the fact that the more they partake of the relationship, the more people are becoming hip to their true morals and values.

Call it what you will if you think I am too harsh, but don't call it a anything resembling Christianity. There is too much personal selfishness involved.


2 comments:

Jarred said...

Bear in mind that, for many white evangelical Christians, Trump's racism is actually something they share. Maybe not so openly and brazenly, but still.

Frank said...

FYI: https://youtu.be/K7JR3wxHx5Q