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US politics over the past 40 years have been dominated by a coalition of plutocrats and evangelicals, whose priorities are weirdly out of step with anything resembling Biblical Christianity. It started with Reagan, but reached a peak with Trump.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-evangelicals-apocalypse-coronavirus-981995/
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https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-evangelicals-apocalypse-coronavirus-981995/
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On its face, this is weird. Trump, after all, is the least Christian prominent mainstream US politician in recent memory: a philanderer, a cheat, a liar, a cruel xenophobe, a buck-chaser. He's devoid of empathy, charity, or kindness.
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As @bobmoserwrites, understanding how self-described "Christians" could back such a man requires that you delve into their theology, which is so selective in its view of the gospels that it's practically heretical.
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"The Christian nationalist movement today is authoritarian, paranoid and patriarchal at its core. They aren’t fighting a culture war. They’re making a direct attack on democracy itself." - @kathsstewart
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/31/opinion/trump-evangelicals-cyrus-king.html
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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/31/opinion/trump-evangelicals-cyrus-king.html
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Pence's worshipful glances at Trump don't reflect a marriage of convenience. Pence literally believes "we’re in the bloody final period of history before Jesus Christ returns to vanquish Satan" (so do Pompeo and Mark Meadows).
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/01/28/apocalyptic-ideas-influencing-pence-pompeo-could-also-power-left/
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/01/28/apocalyptic-ideas-influencing-pence-pompeo-could-also-power-left/
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Rapture Christians long for the end-times when a cruel God torments their enemies while they are swept up to heaven. The end of the world is a feature, not a bug.
"[The future is] a never-ending struggle … until the Rapture. Be part of it. Be in the fight." -M. Pompeo.
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"[The future is] a never-ending struggle … until the Rapture. Be part of it. Be in the fight." -M. Pompeo.
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Their leaders have declared Trump "a pagan king" ..."placed in the White house to help speed events along toward the Apocalypse."
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/oct/03/the-trump-prophecy-film-god-election-mark-taylor
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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/oct/03/the-trump-prophecy-film-god-election-mark-taylor
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Republicans have long reveled in being really bad at governing. When your philosophy is "Governments are incompetent and their powers should be yielded to rich businesspeople," then administrative incompetence only proves your point.
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Bad as that is, it's made infinitely worse if the Christmas-voting turkeys you rely upon to win office view each catastrophe as a step towards the Big One that precipitates the Rapture. Talk about perverse incentives!
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Trump probably didn't know much of this before he got elected. He's the machine-learning President, an unsupervised algorithm that doubles down on whatever gets him the most cheers. He's GIGO embodied.
https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/provocations/neophobic-conservative-ai-overlords-want-everything-stay/
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https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/provocations/neophobic-conservative-ai-overlords-want-everything-stay/
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But now he knows all about it and he loves it, because Rapture Christians cheer on his stupidest decisions. Which explains a lot about how badly he bungled the pandemic response.
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His belief that privilege would keep him (and America) from getting sick dovetailed perfectly with evangelicals' belief that being washed in Christ's blood is a form of vaccination. Trump's "the virus is fleeting" talking point fed evangelical rhetoric, which fed his own.
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That belief started to wear thin when evangelical pastors started dropping dead of coronavirus, of course.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52157824
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https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52157824
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Understanding the nature of the bond between the worshippers of Mammon and self-proclaimed Christians is key to understanding the current situation, from epidemiology to economics.
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The more I learn about evangelicals' "Christianity" the more I feel like I'm trapped in "A Fish Called Wanda": "Aristotle was not Belgian, the principle of Buddhism is not every man for himself, and the London Underground is not a political movement. I looked it up."
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