When asked how they can countenance Trump as the POTUS, evangelicals assert that they support him largely because of his judiciary appointments.
Well, any Republican would appoint similar jurists; thus evangelicals need not express approbation of Trump for that. That's like saying I approve of Safeway because it gives me a receipt for my purchase. It's just an insipid "reason" to approve expressly of Trump.
They'd have voted for any Republican. They like Trump especially, though, because he brought Pence on board - read the story of Daniel, in the Old Testament.
There are several Biblical narratives that apply - Daniel's most directly, Joseph, etc. The key factor is Pence and a couple of others - DeVos, Pruitt even - who are known fundies.
The evangelicals regard themselves as a kind of refugee population ghettoed and abused in a modern Babylon. They take no responsibility for Trump, or any other secular governance of the country. They make no distinction between an elected executive and an Old Testament pharoah or evil King - their vote carries no responsibility for any of the interchangeable secular and Godless.
They voted for Pence et al, and regard that vote as the best they could do for morality - politics be damned. Literally.
There are several Biblical narratives that apply - Daniel's most directly, Joseph, etc. The key factor is Pence and a couple of others - DeVos, Pruitt even - who are known fundies.
The evangelicals regard themselves as a kind of refugee population ghettoed and abused in a modern Babylon. They take no responsibility for Trump, or any other secular governance of the country. They make no distinction between an elected executive and an Old Testament pharoah or evil King - their vote carries no responsibility for any of the interchangeable secular and Godless.
They voted for Pence et al, and regard that vote as the best they could do for morality - politics be damned. Literally.
There are several Biblical narratives that apply - Daniel's most directly, Joseph, etc. The key factor is Pence and a couple of others - DeVos, Pruitt even - who are known fundies.
I tend to think it is the belief in an imminent "end times" and that Trump is fulfilling a role in the book of revelations that drives them the most. Not that much different to ISIL in the Middle East and how easy it is to radicalize followers.
The whole world is having to deal with it, re: climate change, so it is easy to expect that "fundies" of various persuasions, will come out of the wood work by the bucket load.
Perhaps some of them believe that Trump is the antichrist, and since antichrist has to rise to power before Jesus' return, they want anti Christ to gain power. Fundamentalist Christians can be quite insane.
That's redundant, isn't it?
I wish some kind of communication could be established between them and the body and mind of America. They're isolated by their long-standing sense of grievance, by local chieftains and especially by monolithic sources of [dis]information. https://www.vox.com/2018/4/3/171800...ive-trump-david-smith-local-news-tv-affiliate
For many people, the two conditions go together. Perhaps it has something to do with colloquialism compared to, well, it's not even necessarily a formal definition, since there are so many. But if Riesebrodt's Pious Passion is nearly overwhelming, in its English-language translation, by a dry unreadability that comes with the subject matter, that point ought to be significant in itself. Nonetheless, if one can find their way through the comparison and contrast of fundamentalist Christianity in the American 20th century to the fundamentalist expressions of Islam driving the Iranian Revolution ... well, right. It's a tough read, but worth it. Even still, though, the ignorance you observe is something many regard as an integral component of the fundamentalist experience.
Riesebrodt, Martin. Pious Passion: The Emergence of Modern Fundamentalism in the United States and Iran. Oakland: University of California Press, 1993. (p. 17)
One of the American challenges at present is figuring out where certain blocs are within a framework such as Riesebrodt suggests; there are fundamentalist Christians, but American "consevratives" seem to be swirling through a version of the process, perhaps with their factions percolating the literalist-rational and experiential-charismatic range derived from assertions of identical (identity-oriented) authenticity and feeding into generally antievolutionary (disruptive of evolution). As with "Islamist" and my use of the word "Christianist", we deal here with mythic-identity Americanists, or some such. It is one of the reasons why Kim Davis makes such an excellent example; she is, in this context, both a Christianist and an Americanist.
What is ironic about Christianism in the Davis episode is the self-destructive principle; the claim against gay marriage is an post-adultery claim that a Christian should not endorse adultery, yet when it comes to heterosexuals Ms. Davis not only has no problem "endorsing" their adultery, as such, she is, herself adulterous. Thus she is a Christian adulteress aiding and abetting adultery while refusing to do her job because she might aid and abet adultery, and adultery violates her Christian conscience. Thus, she is disrupting the civil rights of others, but only sometimes, according to a standard she refuses for herself and thus must similarly afford her satisfactorily fellow Christian adulterers. "Me, not thee," arguments do not presently work, in American jurisprudence, as well as they once did. Indeed, this is part of the "rapid social change" and "crisis consciousness" we might educe as an aspects of Americanist and Christianist fundamentalism or fundamentalization.
By comparison, if we start with the documented rise of American Christian fundamentalism, with Curtis Lee Laws in the early twentieth century, the years since have seen diverse assertions of what those fundamental components are; depending on who you ask, there are something like four, or five, or as many as twenty. In this way, fundamentalism is strangely experiential while doctrinally delineating what experience should be; it's not quite orthopraxic, like Islam, but very nearly a nod and wink convention empowering personal aesthetics to define God and thereby exercise some manner of judgment over others. Psychologically, it seems to be an empowerment struggle; in times of perceived crisis, people feel disempowered; the Christianist response to crisis consciousness, as such, is usurpation of God's authority for earthly satisfaction. And in this context we also see the, "me, not thee", aspect, that manner of aesthetic satisfaction as basis of definition, about the Americanist iteration: One's equality is contingent upon another's diminution; that is, one can only be equal if one is superior and another inferior. The Christian-supremacist justification for censorship of popular music and literature thirty years ago is the same as the Christian-supremacist justification for disrupting health care access is the same as the White-supremacist justification of pretty much anything; male supremacism and the human rights of women, which in turn was a driver of the American gay rights dispute. If supremacism was not in crisis before the Windsor and Obergefell decisions, well, yeah, the Gay Fray might have broken some very important but otherwise tenuous ties between supremacists and the diverse realities they perceive. And diverse preceived realities are important to note; one of the reasons the Gay Fray resolved in favor of homosexuals is that white men were among the potential winners. Winning the Gay Fray has nothing to do with how a white supremacist, male supremacist queer feels about nonwhites and women°.
Still, though, fundamentalism fundamentally requires a certain dose of myth, mythopoeia, or mythicism; and regardless of whether supremacism is legalistic, customary, or sociomoral, it still requires arbitrary presupposition which, in turn, cannot be justified without its own mythicistic dose or kernel°°.
At some point, it seems as if a certain degree of crippling ignorance is required in order to attend this range of Christianist fundamentalism.
Or, as Jeeves↑ put it, something about redundancy. Quantum Quack's↑ point is not irrelevant, here; the hint is "premillennial dispensationalism"↱, and the punch line is to never trust those who look forward to the end of the world.
____________________ Notes:
° It is not so much that I cannot wait to see, or something like that, but there will eventually resolve a faction within which cisgendered white supremacist males take up with transgender women in explicit declaration of artifice on the grounds that everybody needs somebody, and, let's face it, someone needs to play the woman, and God love the man who will teach the women how a proper woman acts. And it will start to be normalized to some degree within some far-right orbital valences, and it is going to happen beceause that is just how humans are—(no, really, pay particular attention to the so-called craigslist queers, and their post-prison-effect, misogynistic identity rationale explaining why repeated dating and sexual behavior between two men constitutes an affirmation of heterosexual masculinity; or, rather, pay particular attention to the phenomenon and your proverbial head will proverbially explode)—so I admit being somehow anxious to witness what that looks like in full bloom, even though it never should, in civilized society, go so far.
°° There are reasons it seems important to recall the kernel or germ of truth at the heart of myth; in this circumstance we might observe the potential for reasonably desscribing a kernel or germ of mythopoeia at the heart of the presupposition that in turn becomes a kernel or germ of surrogate "truth" for the active, functional myth.
"So, Mika, you are familiar with the fact that a week ago, Judge (Kimba) Wood ordered Michael Cohen's attorneys to disclose all of his clients for the last three years," Avenatti said, "and there were three clients listed—three clients listed. Do you recall which three?"
Brzezinski listed Trump, Fox News host Sean Hannity and Republican donor Elliott Broidy—but Avenatti said she was making the same mistake everyone else had.
"No, no, no," he said. "Mr. Trump, the Trump organization and Sean Hannity. Mr. Broidy was not disclosed in open court as one of Michael Cohen's clients."
Co-host Joe Scarborough asked the attorney what that meant.
"I think at some point we are going to find out, if in fact, the client in connection with the ($1.6 million) settlement was, in fact, Mr. Broidy. I'm going to leave it at that."
One of these days, Avenatti is going to go too far. Still, though, wait for the evangelical cognitive dissonance if it turns out Trump fathered an abortion.
Seriously, just ... remember this question exists. At some point it will be important.
____________________ Notes:
Gettys, Travis. "Attorney Michael Avenatti hints $1.6 million abortion payout was for Trump—not GOP donor". Raw Story. 26 April 2018. RawStory.com. 27 April 2018. http://bit.ly/2vSoKn2
Where are you getting your info?
Most conservatives went for the coarse, strong man because they had tried diplomatic guys before and failed (McCain, Romney). The left called those guys everything they've called Trump, so a guy who was already dirty enough for more mud to go unnoticed was the only viable option. The left used that trick one time too many, and it backfired on them. Now they whine about conservatives being like leftists, more pragmatic than principled.
Well, any Republican would appoint similar jurists; thus evangelicals need not express approbation of Trump for that. That's like saying I approve of Safeway because it gives me a receipt for my purchase. It's just an insipid "reason" to approve expressly of Trump.
Many Republican presidents have made SCOTUS appointments who ended up being less than conservative.
Justice Harry Blackmun was nominated by Richard Nixon in 1970 and confirmed unanimously by the Senate. In 1973, he authored the court’s opinion in Roe v. Wade, which protected the right to abortion.
Justice John Paul Stevens was nominated by Gerald Ford in 1975. A 2007 Times magazine profile of Stevens called him “The Dissenter” and mentioned the word “liberal” 44 times.
Justice David Souter was nominated by George H.W. Bush in 1990; Bush’s chief of staff said that he would “be a home run for conservatives.” He later voted to reaffirm Roe and dissented in the court’s decision in Bush v. Gore, which handed the presidency to the younger Bush.
ON MAY 1st John Roberts, America’s conservative chief justice, listed left to form a rare majority with the Supreme Court’s four liberal members. Cities may have grounds to sue, the quintet said, when banks make predatory loans to racial minorities. The timing, for some, was suggestive. With Neil Gorsuch now in Antonin Scalia’s old chair and retirement rumours flying about Anthony Kennedy, the 80-year-old perennial swing justice who has spent nearly three decades on the bench, could Chief Justice Roberts be emerging as the court’s new median vote? https://www.economist.com/news/unit...w-swing-vote-chief-justice-roberts-leans-left
So any Republican is not a guarantee of solid SCOTUS appointments.
so a guy who was already dirty enough for more mud to go unnoticed was the only viable option. The left used that trick one time too many, and it backfired on them.
They are fairly well educated, most of them. And from a modern Republican's pov, that's a problem with education in general - it tends to make its possessors less than Reaganite. And if somehow "conservative" and "latest Republican conjob" have been confused in one's mind, that can translate into "less than conservative".
Yep, character assassination is a propaganda trick, used by the left one too many times.
It lost its effectiveness through repetition, and was no longer viable for a really problematic candidate.
They are fairly well educated, most of them. And from a modern Republican's pov, that's a problem with education in general - it tends to make its possessors less than Reaganite. And if somehow "conservative" and "latest Republican conjob" have been confused in one's mind, that can translate into "less than conservative".
As you can read, they didn't call those guys everything they called Trump. You were in error to suggest they did.
Meanwhile, the occasional parallels in some terms are inevitable in describing people who share the requisite attributes.
It was used by the Republican Party and their funders, not the left, for propaganda. See the GOPAC memo, the James O'Keefe videos, and so forth - dozens of examples.
As you can read, they didn't call those guys everything they called Trump. You were in error to suggest they did.
Meanwhile, the occasional parallels in some terms are inevitable in describing people who share the requisite attributes.
It was used by the Republican Party and their funders, not the left, for propaganda. See the GOPAC memo, the James O'Keefe videos, and so forth - dozens of examples.
? Consult a good dictionary for the meaning of "ad hominem". It's not a synonym for "pejorative", or "insult".
And it doesn't matter which Republican slung the most. You have mistaken a feature of Republican campaigning for a feature of Democratic campaigning. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4443.htm
It shows the meaningless of it. "Less than conservative" means nothing applied to a Court Justice.
According to you.
Yep. And I'm right, too.
Meanwhile, not "refuting the point" is just you missing the point - the most likely visible reason for that being that you have confused "conservative" with "latest Republican con job".
On May 2, Rudy Giuliani revealed that the Trump administration has been lying for months about the fact that Donald Trump reimbursed his personal attorney Michael Cohen for the $130,000 he fronted to buy porn star Stormy Daniels's silence about her affair with Trump .... Giuliani has claimed that Trump gave him the okay last week to contradict several months' worth of denials, by revealing Trump's payments to Cohen.
In journalism this is known as getting out in front of a story. After federal law-enforcement officials raided Cohen's office on April 9, they surely had documentary evidence of these financial transactions, which meant it was inevitable the truth would eventually come out.
We should consider the strong possibility that the same tactic—i.e., shameless, baldfaced lying—may have played a role in the exposure of yet another Trump-related sex scandal. The Wall Street Journal published a story on April 13 revealing the existence of another nondisclosure agreement involving an affair between an adult entertainer and a client of Cohen's. The NDA employed the pseudonyms David Dennison and Peggy Peterson—the same names used in the Stormy Daniels NDA—and was otherwise very similar to the Trump-Daniels agreement.
According to this newly revealed NDA, Dennison agreed to pay Peterson $1.6 million, in exchange for Peterson's promise not to reveal the affair or her claim that Dennison had impregnated her. This NDA, like the Trump-Daniels document, was negotiated by attorneys Keith Davidson, on behalf of Peterson, and Michael Cohen, on behalf of Dennison. Payments were also delivered through Essential Consultants LLC, the same LLC created by Cohen to facilitate payments in the Stormy Daniels deal.
It occurs to me the WSJ story mentioned was two weeks before Avenatti teased the point↑ on msnbc.
Meanwhile, the point stands: Something about evangelical cognitive dissonance if it turns out Trump fathered an abortion.
____________________ Notes:
Campos, Paul. "Here’s a Theory About That $1.6 Million Payout From a GOP Official to a Playboy Model". New York. 8 May 2018. NYMag.com. 8 May 2018. https://nym.ag/2KNbTWO
In politics, all insults and pejoratives serve the purpose of ad hominem, to attack the person instead of the positions.
What, couldn't find one used against Trump that wasn't against McCain or Romney, so you had to get pedantic?'
It's called political correctness, the language manipulation, pushed by the left, that has taken over popular culture.
Yep. And I'm right, too.
Meanwhile, not "refuting the point" is just you missing the point - the most likely visible reason for that being that you have confused "conservative" with "latest Republican con job".
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