I don’t know if anyone noticed it or not but when Trump was sworn in as president, he was told to place his right hand on the Bible and repeat the oath. Instead of placing his hand on the Bible, he dropped it to his side. Ironically, he then appears on TV commercials selling Bibles! Can you say HYPOCRISY!!? Just another politician trying to get votes from the Evangelicals. He’s no Christian!
Evangelicals are chumps and hypocrites themselves. Endorsing Trump and his policies demonstrates that they were always for sale to the highest bidder and their vaunted morality meant nothing. And the currency used for bidding was basically corrupt SCOTUS justices, destruction of civil rights and decades of secularization, and (though many of them will usually not openly say so), white supremacy.
You have a gift for understatement.
Trump is about as deep into malignant narcissism as is humanly possible. If he has beliefs, they are strictly for self-aggrandizement and to validate his sense of entitlement. Any displays of faith in Christianity are purely performative. As he is incapable of admitting or accepting responsibility for anything, there is no need for him to seek forgiveness. Sort of defeats the whole purpose of confession…
All of this finds its origins in his childhood. His father, according to his niece Mary, was a high functioning sociopath. By default, Fred would have lacked empathy, been manipulative and especially distant emotionally. Multiple accounts detail a need for control in all things, as well as a history of abusiveness including humiliation and treating neediness or compassion as a weakness.
His mother was, at the least unavailable and at worst she was an enabler of Fred’s behavior.
The fact that this style of parenting can seriously fuck up your children is now on display for all to see in Donald.
In regards to him selling bibles…well, this plays right into the pathological public lack of shame he has always displayed. Where you and I may see this as a crisis of conscious, Trump merely sees it as a way to make a dime off of someone’s gullibility. Nothing more, nothing less.
I admit, the King Cyrus comparisons floated by evangelicals regarding Trump is not without a basis. Not in the sense that God directed either of them, rather that both are perfectly willing to make a transactional arrangement with anyone that brings them a direct benefit.
Unless you too had parents as fucked up as a football bat, you will never completely understand where Trump comes from or why he is what he is. Trying to put a sane take on his actions will just over stimulate your amygdala unnecessarily.
Hypocrisy may be seen as a moral failing by most people. For Trump, it’s merely a strategic element to avoid accountability. His continual projection can be seen as a form of unconscious or subconscious confession.
As he wanders off into the enchanted forest of dementia these personality traits will only intensify. His personality will gradually distill into their worst elements. The portions that required the most internal rehearsal will be the most enduring. This is already visible and has been for the last 5 years or so.
Have faith. Trump displays symptoms consistent with Primary Progressive Aphasia. Aphasia can eventually degenerate into mutism.
Karma is.
I can’t argue with any of this based on their actions. From what I’ve seen, there is something bordering on pathology at work.
While they have historically touted moral character in their chosen leaders, in Trump they merely redefine moral character as political allegiance. They place their loyalty with the one that promises to promote their agenda…so what if he’s broken all 10 Commandments…he got Roe v Wade over turned…so all is good.
Any Evangelicals out there can feel free to correct me on this one, but from what I’ve seen living in the deep American south for 8 years, Evangelicals are highly tribal, authoritarian and xenophobic. They are taught to ignore evidence in favor of faith. They seem to have been instructed from childhood that anyone who contradicts their beliefs is an evil liar and must be opposed. Of course, the authoritarian threat of eternal damnation is much more effective if the flock never questions the factual basis of said threat.
It’s almost like they were ready made for an authoritarian like Trump. He has used their existential fear of anything unlike themselves to his complete advantage. They seem blissfully unaware that laying down with dogs will find you getting up with fleas. As long as they all have fleas they still belong.
To me, Evangelicals, the People’s Temple, Heavens Gate, Jehovah Witnesses and QAnon all came out of the same clown car. Whenever faith dismisses and ignores evolution the faithful will never evolve.
This is essentially correct. One popular rationalization (I forget who originally promoted it) is to relate Trump to the Biblical King Cyrus. Cyrus was a pagan ruler whom God nevertheless supposedly “used” to return the Jews to the Promised Land. So Trump as a “modern King Cyrus” has been influenced, despite all his lying and grifting and serial adultery and so forth, to get Roe v Wade tossed, conservative biased SCOTS judges (and many lower court judges) installed, “anti-woke” campaigns instigated, secularism turned back in some ways by decades, etc. Therefore his character doesn’t matter – he’s just an instrument of God. This fits with the Bible verse that says that those in political power are put there by God to fulfill his purposes. That God evidently put, say, Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, and Mamdani in various positions of power, somehow they don’t have to be sanguine about that, that’s the devil’s work, I guess. Evangelicals never care about logical consistency – only about post hoc rationalizations to fit their dogma and agenda.
Absolutely. I was taught to always respect authority, never to question it and certainly not ever offend it by being “rude” to it. If that isn’t a formula for following orders blindly, I don’t know what is.
Part and parcel of that was the notion that “rights” such as civil rights are somehow selfish and opposed to law and order – even when the law says a person has civil rights guarantees, somehow they are snares of the devil unless those rights 110% align with their dogma. So if they think they have a right to discriminate when renting their church hall to the general public (they don’t*), they will angrily and aggressively claim that right. But when a gay couple is being legally married and wants to rent their hall, their right not to be uncomfortable trumps the couple’s civil rights, even when there is no such right in the law. And the gay couple suing them for discrimination is wrong and bad, because who would have the temerity to sue a CHURCH?!
They are so accustomed to cherry picking whatever supports their beliefs that they don’t see the slightest problem with such shenanigans.
*They CAN discriminate against (say) gays when hiring church staff or granting membership or deciding what members can rent the hall, but as soon as they offer the hall rental to the general public, they have to abide by all applicable laws. When they are uninformed or dismissive of what they know to be true and find out they are obligated / liable to the law, oh the caterwauling that happens then! The big bad guv-mint is FORCING them to have GAY WEDDINGS! The HORROR! Or often in the Bible Berlt, the local government structurally will look the other way until the offended party forces the issue in court, and then it’s the fault of those sinful Outsiders. Either way it’s just HORRIBLE and WRONG.
Once again, the mistake is being made, of trying to analyse the Orange Scrotum in terms of normal human behaviour. He is manifestly not normal.
Elsewhere, I drew parallels between the Dichromate Dotard and another revolting figure, namely one Julius Streicher, about which Airey Neave had much to say in his book on the Nuremberg Trials. Both individuals share a terrifying set of attributes. Namely:
[1] Rampant financial corruption. Even the Nazis found themselves to imprison Streicher, after an investigation found he was involved in huge corruption operations, involving the extortion of lucrative businesses from Jewish owners via brutal means. Cheetolini, of course, still has those 34 felony convictions hovering over him.
[2] Rampant sexual criminality. Again, even the Nazis were moved to imprison Streicher, after convictions for slander, sadism and rape. Baron von Shiztenpantz has thus far escaped such sanction, but his litany of sexual offences places him firmly at the Streicher level of obscenity.
[3] Lowbrow mentality. While Streicher was (amazingly) a schoolteacher and the editor of Der Stürmer, he was found at Nuremberg, upon testing by the resident psychiatrist recruited by the Americans, to have the lowest IQ of all the defendants. Trump has always exhibited the requisite characteristics, which have merely become more fulminating with the passage of time. Both, for example, have issued frankly deranged proclamations on the subject of medical science.
[4] Vicious racism. It’s almost superfluous to requirements to cover this, as the documentary evidence is so voluminous, denial thereof is untenable except by the genuinely insane.
But now, we have a fifth parallel:
[5] Responsibility for atrocities. Streicher spent a long career inciting Germany to launch the Holocaust, and was a key player in Kristallnacht. Omango-Tan has already presided over the atrocities committed by ICE, his personal Dirlewanger Brigade, and will doubtless preside over even more as time passes.
For those who need the background on Streicher, the following extracts from Neave’s book are apposite. First, from page 86:
Moving on to Page 87, we have this:
Page 88 provides more telling information:
As an illustration of Streicher’s warped mindset, we have this on page 95:
That last sentence should be making the light bulb glow above the head, so to speak. In Streicher’s case, we were dealing with a brain that was definitely wired up in a different manner to that of a typical human being.
I propose that we can only make progress, by viewing Mr Tangerine Mushroom Dick in the same light - as a specimen of utterly florid psychopathology, who is in effect, as I have stated previously, pure Id - the ultimate spoiled brat manbaby narcissist and sociopath, and who is completely unresponsive to the usual methods of behaviour management.
Pandering to his endless desire to have his ego masturbated, as is being done by people who should know far better, will only cause the disease he represents to fester and metastatise. The proper course of action would be to put him behind bars, in a maximum security facility, under solitary confinement, with no access to any means of broadcasting his verminous and pestilential cortical excrement to the outside world. Cut him off from everything except basic survival and medical needs, and instruct the unfortunates who have to deal with him, to treat him as Neave describes above - “like an ape exposing himself in a cage at the zoo”.
Until we stop validating his galactic entitlement, and treat him as the pathogen that he is, we will get nowhere. Indeed, ‘pathogen’ sums up this pustular specimen succinctly.
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human nature seems to be always tied to wishing for divine justice, whether you are atheist or religious
Justice is justice. It is purer without a divine element. It is just cause and effect, actions and consequences. Much of our public life is designed to cushion us from cause and effect, which is both a blessing and a curse. People stop seeing the connection, and that they get away with being wastful and selfish and cruel, and if they don’t have a lot of personal integrity and a good solid center, they devolve accordingly.
Justice is justice.
my grandmother suffered the same fate trump is about to suffer and the only crime she did was steal a rabbit in fourth grade. my grandfather killed japanese soldiers in ww2 but peacefully died in his sleep. my grandpa fought in a war but by his own admission, he didn’t fight for his country; he just wanted some justification to “shoot some yellow bastards”.
that’s some divine justice if you ask me. i guess my grandfather was rewarded with peace for killing grown men while my grandmother was robbed of her ability to speak because she was just a kid.
(both of them have a deep aversion against homosexuals but that’s not a crime, it’s what they’ve been taught when they were young)
I think it’s important to not confuse vengeance or retribution with justice. They are not the same thing. Justice must be just. It can’t simply be reactionary. “Just” of course is somewhat subjective but that’s why we have a Constitution and various laws and procedures, to make it as objective as we can.
So a visceral desire to “shoot some yellow bastards” isn’t justice, it’s vengeance for yellow persons existing and being different. And your aunt wasn’t struck mute because she killed a rabbit. She had whatever physical condition that was and it has nothing to do with whatever she or others misconstrued to try to make sense of that condition. People routinely seek for reasons where none exist. They have to explain why their god would do / allow the mutism and the only thing their dogma allows is it had to be a just punishment of some sort. My oldest brother was convinced that because he had done some drunken carousing and sleeping around as a young Navy grunt that god had waited around his whole life until just the right moment to strike him with cancer and kill him at the age of 67. That doesn’t mean one thing had anything at all to do with the other. It means that his ideology made unjustified connections between them.
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