Trumps Christian support

[George Jung]

Seems an odd bed-fellow; a adulterous, multi-married, mysogynistic abuser, supported by the Fundamentalists (and many others). This opinion piece offers some insights.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/06/opinion/roy-moore-christians.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-right-region&region=opinion-c-col-right-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region

[George Jung]

Re: Trumps Christian support

An excerpt:

''
That first jab at P.O.W.s persuaded me, a staunch social conservative, that Mr. Trump wasn’t qualified for the office he sought. A loudmouth who denigrates war heroes, I knew, doesn’t belong in the White House.

Yet I watched with dismay as many evangelicals and social conservatives — people I consider allies — embraced him. How could they back a candidate who obviously didn’t care a whit for basic decency, let alone religious tradition?

The question of how social conservatives should practice politics in the age of Trump has resurfaced as Alabamians are poised to elect Roy Moore to the Senate. The likes of Mr. Trump and Mr. Moore promise social conservatives an appealing menu of policies and judicial nominations. Their offer is especially attractive after a decade during which the left embraced a new, aggressive mode of secular progressivism and continued its war against tradition long after it had won most courtroom and ballot-box battles.''

[CWSmith]

Re: Trumps Christian support

George, there are some things in that article that simply don't add up. For instance:

The cascading harassment scandal, for one thing, suggests that even liberals may rethink some aspects of the sexual revolution. And if ultra-permissive liberalism is passing away, then the people who grew up in its wreckage will eventually turn toward tradition.

Granted, the pendulum swings, but sexual harassment has NOTHING to do with liberal sexual permissiveness.

A careful reading of that article demonstrates the misassociations that some conservatives make in their failed attempts to understand change.

[George Jung]

Re: Trumps Christian support

Oh, I agree entirely. This is simply the first article I've read that I thought provided some insights into why christians would even consider supporting someone like Trump, Moore, and others of their ilk.

'Deal with the Devil' isn't far off.

[John of Phoenix]

Re: Trumps Christian support

"Deal with the Devil" indeed. The guy is the perfect Anti-Christ.

[Flying Orca]

Re: Trumps Christian support

I think ascribing any kind of rationality to this voting pattern is overstating the case. Research indicates that people largely vote according to their tribal identity, full stop. These people do not identify as liberal Democrats, they identify as conservative Republicans. That's all that matters.

[Keith Wilson]

Re: Trumps Christian support

The author is an interesting guy - Sohrab Ahmari, an Iranian-born convert to Roman Catholicism, writer for Commentary magazine. What he misses (and it's not surprising) is white resentment. That, I think, tips the balance.

[TomF]

Re: Trumps Christian support

"But any of the other 16 non-vulgar, non-erratic Republican candidates in 2016 would also have nominated a Gorsuch."

I didn't find the piece as enlightening as I'd hoped. It read to me like the author shared my own bewilderment. Felt it more strongly, FWIW, because the author self-identified as a strong social Conservative.

The proffered answer was, I think, simply that there's fear among socially conservative religious folks that the world is becoming fairly aggressively atheistic/agnostic as it becomes technological and "progressive." They're afraid that the modernizing world will entirely reject the "traditional values" that the social conservatives feel were "baked into" the Constitution, and underpin whatever good things there are within the society Americans have built.

But the answer to all that fear ... can't be to reject the values themselves. Which, let's be perfectly clear, is the choice which has been offered in Trump and Moore - the choice which even the author of this Op-Ed identifies and which was the cause of putting pixel to paper. As our friend Sky Blue has reminded us over and over again, the people who voted for Trump knowingly chose to vote for an immoral person, by social conservative values. Blue has told us that this means the GOP is no longer attempting to be the party of Jesus, Babies and Guns, is no longer staking out a "moral high ground." Trump was a known liar of world-class proportions, a world-class misogynist with at least a dozen accusers on the record. A world class serial philanderer, whose brand was built partly by his high-profile affairs (Marla Maples) and his self-promotion of the same in stints on Howard Stern etc.

Roy Moore wraps himself in a particular blanket of social-conservative evangelical Christiosity, which we've discussed here at length - IMO, it's a noxious heresy. Itself suggestive of the existence of a malevolent will (really).

What I'd hoped that the opinion piece would do is explain how Moore's supporters - who Mickey despairingly notes are in many respects "good people" - are trying to retain that "goodness" by voting for what they know is the opposite of it. By voting for behaviour they'd never tolerate in their own family or from a work colleague. By voting in ways which vindicate personal immorality, somehow in the hope of recovering exactly the personal morality which Trump (and Moore) have defiantly ground underfoot.

All I heard from the piece is pain. Pain at being afraid of the same gradual elimination of social conservative religiosity from meaningful public life, but also pain at the execrable and futile "solution" which other social conservatives cleave to - because the author is honest enough to recognize that it's no solution at all.

[Peerie Maa]

Re: Trumps Christian support

It is the same as all of the other reactionary arguments.
No one is forcing them to have an abortion, no one is forcing them into a same sex marriage, and no one is going to stop them practising their religion.
But they have been made too afraid that the sky is falling to think rational thoughts.

[Flying Orca]

Re: Trumps Christian support

Yeah, it does seem to be about making other people live the way they think they should live themselves.

[CWSmith]

Re: Trumps Christian support

No one is forcing them to have an abortion, no one is forcing them into a same sex marriage, and no one is going to stop them practising their religion.

Sorry, Nick, but I think I've said this before - you really cannot lump those things together. Those who view abortion as murder, right or wrong, are acting to save another life. Those that oppose same sex marriage are interfering with the decision of two consenting adults. There is a tremendous difference there and liberals will never move the Christian right so long as they cannot understand that.

[Flying Orca]

Re: Trumps Christian support

I don't see the distinction. The key phrase is "those who view", and the reason it is key is that not everyone shares their views. They are welcome to try to persuade people to adopt their views; they are not welcome to impose them.

[TomF]

Re: Trumps Christian support

No, nobody's forcing them to have an abortion, to have a same-sex marriage, to switch the bathroom they use (or watch anyone else going pee), etc.

But think of it in terms of "herd immunity," perhaps. An epidemiologist will tell you that the mumps or polio won't get a foothold if a bit over 90% of the population who would otherwise be vulnerable to being infected ... has either been vaccinated or has already developed antibodies some other way. So in order to keep the "good" of a mumps and polio free population - a "good" which accrues even to the few who aren't vaccinated or who didn't develop antibodies - it means you need to keep adherence to the vaccination program really high.

I think that social conservatives petrified by the decline in the popular expression of and adherence to a number of social values. Values which they think are required at "herd immunity" levels within a population, if that population is to thrive. And that the new Atheists and Agnostics are to that kind of social "herd immunity" what anti-vaxxers are to worrying increases in Mumps infections.

The values they see declining are still things which in our discussions here in the forum, virtually all of us still tend to think are valuable, btw. Honesty. Civility. Willingness to protect someone who's being bullied. Love of one's country, and of one's family. The actual virtue of doing hard work and making a contribution to society, rather than taking handouts or living off trust-funds. These are the kind of "quaint" values we recognize (and somewhat romanticize) in "The Greatest Generation," but which we'd still like to think define us.

And social conservatives see a whole lot of the weirdnesses in academia, in identity-group politics (whether race or sexual orientation or etc.), in the media ... as challenges to those values. As chipping away at "well, that isn't really love of your country" or "well, that isn't really virtue" or "well, discipline and self-control isn't really necessary in this sector." And are they entirely wrong? Anyone gonna argue that our society's moral fibre has been strengthened by providing ever-greater opportunities for casinos and other types of gambling? By an ever decreasing proportion of kids having the same grown-ups involved in and largely focused on raising them, throughout their childhood and adolescence? Anyone want to argue that it's better for seniors to live out their final 10 years or so in institutions, visited little by their families and mostly cared for by folks who are badly paid - many of whom (in Canada at least) left their own families across the world to come and work here doing a job no Canadian really wants, while sending money back to feed their own kids/parents.

On the contrary - our society has, for a variety of reasons (many of which are excellent!) increasingly focused on the rights and desires of individual, autonomous adults. A "libertarianism" which is as common on the R as on the L, and which tends to downplay a relational obligations within a community, in favour of a curated individual life. And we're suffering for it, while also experiencing increases in consumer goods diversification and curated entertainment, luxuries which pacify us and suggest that the sacrifices weren't meaningful.

Social conservatives have the wrong solution - and cleave to the wrong versions of inoculation, the wrong romanticized versions of what "the good life" ought to look like ... but what they're seeing and being frightened by is actual fearful. Is actually causing massive disruptions in our society, suffered first by the people who aren't participants in the economic engines driving it all.

[bamamick]

Re: Trumps Christian support

The author is an interesting guy - Sohrab Ahmari, an Iranian-born convert to Roman Catholicism, writer for Commentary magazine. What he misses (and it's not surprising) is white resentment. That, I think, tips the balance.

Personally I think that's a huge part of it. At all times I wish these gun killings would stop, but in some cases there were lessons there to learn that got passed over that were too valuable to lose. Dylan Roof (sic?), the guy who shot the members of the congregation at the church in South Carolina made a comment 'if we don't stop THEM they will take everything we've got'. When I read that I was looking at a photo of this guy that looked like a meth head, squatting in front of a single-wide with a Confederate battle flag, and my first thought was 'who in the heck WANTS anything you've got?', but someone or something got it into his head that the black community was responsible for his miserable life, for him not being able to get ahead in life.

In Alabama we have a saying: 'thank goodness for Mississippi'. The point being that in almost any kind of measurement of standard of living it's either my state or Mississippi that comes in last. I think that for a lot of older, or poorer whites, the idea of the black community rising above them, becoming better educated than they are, getting the better job, living in the nicer home or driving the nicer vehicle, well, they just don't handle it that well. Trump and his cronies have preyed upon that fear and anger. The comparison between Trump and Hitler IS real. It's very real, and it is terrifying to consider that these people really and truly believe that they can roll back the decades of progress we have made as a country.

But apparently, they do.

Mickey Lake

[Peerie Maa]

Re: Trumps Christian support

Sorry, Nick, but I think I've said this before - you really cannot lump those things together. Those who view abortion as murder, right or wrong, are acting to save another life. Those that oppose same sex marriage are interfering with the decision of two consenting adults. There is a tremendous difference there and liberals will never move the Christian right so long as they cannot understand that.

My point still stands. No one is forcing you, Mr Smith, to have an abortion so your personal beliefs are being respected. If you were Ms Smith I would protect you from others who want to interfere in your control of your own body.