03-02-2021, 12:20 PM
(03-02-2021, 11:57 AM)hollodero Wrote: For one, since the topic is as such, I have to express my bewilderment about your politicians talking about faith and God and prayers so awfully much. Left and Right, everyone prays for every issue and every person and every enemy every minute of every day. This is just gross. But maybe I'm just used to more rationally arguing leaders.
But for sure, many Americans seem to be quite religious people, and many American politicians are incredibly willing to be void of any principle and to appear as whatever is convenient. So probably, no surprise.
Yeah, the US has always had a healthy dollop of religion mixed in with its politics. Seeing as how many of the earlier settlers were fleeing persecution in Europe you got a big mix of different denominations. Of course the central theme was always a high degree of piety, feigned or not. For anyone that religious it can't help but bleed into everything else in your life, politics being no exception. You don't exactly stop being something you've been for three hundred plus years overnight.
Quote:I'm also bewildered that 80% or so of republican voters still seem to be in awe of Trump. What also struck me is one of the most popular explanations on how people can overlook all the lies, hyperboly and stupidity in Trump's words. They take him seriously, but not literally, so I'm told. And I suppose quite literally the only other entity that gets this kind of benefit is the Bible. One does not stone thy neighbor if he, whatever, works on a Sunday. One does none of the outrageous things the Bible suggests one should do. But it's still the most sacred book ever written, and holds the one and only truth. Seriously, not literally.
There are many other examples, but this one should do to illustrate my point. To me, the US political struggle less and less looks like a battle of ideas or policies or ideology. It is a religious quarrel. People siding with Trump (not all conservatives, far from it) treat their affiliation as a religious commitment. One that does not need truth or facts or observable variables. Just faith.
You're kind of halfway there, but its quite honestly a clash between what those on the left see as confronting and correcting historic evils and the right seeing it as an assault on the very foundations of the nation. Both sides are simultaneously correct and wrong. As Bel has correctly pointed out Trump is a symptom. He's accelerated a trend that has been in motion for some time.
Quote:And so, I more and more regard Trump not as a political leader, but a religious leader. Not for churches or of Christianity. But for the MAGA church and of Trumpianity. A sect.
It seems to explain a lot.
Your takedown, please.
I don't think that's largely true, although it certainly is for some. I think for many right leaning people the vision the left has for the future of this nation is abhorrent. In a way their position is completely understandable, they're now being told that everything they stand for and are proud of in their nation is evil and wrong. Their culture is discounted or dismissed as never existing. Unfortunately exactly what I feared, and predicted here, is coming to pass. There are many on the left who do not want a reckoning of past wrongs, they also want punishment for those they feel have perpetrated those wrongs or benefit from them. Many on the right, often correctly, feel they are being lumped in with awful people or practices simply by dint of their genetics (there's a word for this type of behavior btw). To combat this they turned to someone who promised a stop to this, a bulwark against this trend if you will. So, IMO, it's more about a return to nationalism than it is to a religion, at least for most. I think a large percentage of his supporters want to return to being able to be publicly proud of the US as a nation and its culture without being ridiculed and labeled a racist, yokel, redneck, hillbilly etc.
Unfortunately the cultural trend on the left isn't going to allow for this so we will see the schism only widen in the near future. The end game to all of this is the only thing that's currently up in the air.
