Jets
Platinum Member
- Jun 29, 2019
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From the OP:
What these groups share is a belief that their very existence is threatened. Evangelical Christian support for Trump is often motivated by the fear that secular liberals are seeking to crush Christianity and banish it from the land. Such a fear lends itself to support for an authoritarian who will crush the opposition before it gets a chance to strike first. Trump has shown that evangelicals will support anyone who even pretends to care about their motivating issues – abortion, Jerusalem, religious freedom – regardless of his obvious repugnance by any normal understanding of Christian values.
This ideology’s beating heart will be a white nationalism motivated by a belief that the “true” (read: white) America is under siege from a combination of racial minorities and liberal elites. This conspiratorial worldview likewise lends itself to a support for using state power against these enemies of the people. For the future, the fact that Trump has generally been rather incompetent and unfocused at dismantling liberal democratic norms and institutions is less important than the fact that so many of his rank-and-file supporters clearly relish the idea that he might.
What these groups share is a belief that their very existence is threatened. Evangelical Christian support for Trump is often motivated by the fear that secular liberals are seeking to crush Christianity and banish it from the land. Such a fear lends itself to support for an authoritarian who will crush the opposition before it gets a chance to strike first. Trump has shown that evangelicals will support anyone who even pretends to care about their motivating issues – abortion, Jerusalem, religious freedom – regardless of his obvious repugnance by any normal understanding of Christian values.
This ideology’s beating heart will be a white nationalism motivated by a belief that the “true” (read: white) America is under siege from a combination of racial minorities and liberal elites. This conspiratorial worldview likewise lends itself to a support for using state power against these enemies of the people. For the future, the fact that Trump has generally been rather incompetent and unfocused at dismantling liberal democratic norms and institutions is less important than the fact that so many of his rank-and-file supporters clearly relish the idea that he might.