Christofascists and The Threat to American Democracy

I have many times stated that from my years in the Republican Party, the party's descent into insanity tracks directly with the rise of Christofascists in the party base and on city and county committees where they were cynically voted in by opportunists who foolishly thought they could control the Frankenstein monster they were creating. Now, the Christofascists are the core of the Republican Party base and most Republican elected officials are terrified of upsetting them - witness the over 100 House Republicans who signed onto Texas' frivolous lawsuit to over throw the 2020 presidential election.  Trump has skillfully conned the Christofascists by promising them special rights and playing upon their belief they are being persecuted merely because their ability to persecute others has been blunted.  The problem going forward is how does one deal with those for whom "belief" and a fantasy based "world view" override objective reality and facts?  Arguments based on logic, reason, and expertise mean nothing to this component of society which is nothing less than a threat to the nation's democracy.  Andrew Sullivan - with whom I often disagree - has summed up the situation well in a post on his blog (paywall protected).  Here are excerpts:

A long time ago now, frustrated with what I believed was a grotesque fusion of Christianity and politics in the Bush era, I coined the term “Christianism.” I regret it in some ways because it alienated many of the people I was trying to persuade. But its analogy to Islamism was not designed to argue that Christianists were in any way violent; just that, like Islamists, they saw no real distinction between politics and religion. 

I mention this because it seems to be a critical element in the current crisis of American democracy that we may now be missing. In a manner very hard to understand from the outside, American evangelical Christianity has both deepened its fusion of church and state in the last few years, and incorporated Donald Trump into its sacred schematic. Christianists now believe that Trump has been selected by God to save them from persecution and the republic from collapse. They are not in denial about Trump’s personal iniquities, but they see them as perfectly consistent with God’s use of terribly flawed human beings, throughout the Old Testament and the New, to bring about the Kingdom of Heaven. 

This belief is now held with the same, unwavering fundamentalist certainty as a Biblical text. And white evangelical Christianists are the most critical constituency in Republican politics. If you ask yourself how on earth so many people have become convinced that the 2020 election was rigged, with no solid evidence, and are now prepared to tear the country apart to overturn an election result, you’ve got to take this into account. This faction, fused with Trump, is the heart and soul of the GOP. You have no future in Republican politics if you cross them. That’s why 19 Republican attorneys general, Ted Cruz, and now 106 Congressional Republicans have backed a bonkers lawsuit to try to get the Supreme Court to overturn the result. 

Biden’s victory was not God’s will. Therefore it couldn’t have happened. That’s the core conviction. That no court and no judge, including conservative ones, can find any evidence for it in over 50 lawsuits does not matter. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe. “Who cares what I can prove in the courts? This is right. This happened,” declared influential evangelical Eric Metaxas this week, asserting Trump’s victory as a metaphysical truth.

This Thanksgiving, Metaxas opined: “Trump will be inaugurated. For the high crimes of trying to throw a U.S. presidential election, many will go to jail.” On November 30, he told Trump on his radio show: “Jesus is with us in this fight for liberty. … I’d be happy to die in this fight. This is a fight for everything. God is with us.”

This week, as Rod Dreher reports, he’s taken it up yet another notch. “You might as well spit on the grave of George Washington,” Metaxas says of the election “fraud”.  “It’s like somebody has been raped or murdered … This is like that times a thousand.” To those Republicans who are not up in arms, he says: “Yes, you are the Germans that looked the other way when Hitler was preparing to do what he was preparing to do.” Tomorrow, Metaxas will speak at the “Jericho March”, a demo in DC and elsewhere to demand the overturning of the election Joe Biden just won. 

On his indispensable blog, Dreher quotes a Greek Orthodox layman, one of the other leaders at tomorrow’s march, who argues that “[Trump] will soon be faced with a monumental choice. He can submit to Biden’s fraudulent victory … or he can refuse to do so and maintain control by any means necessary … I hope and pray that Trump can rise to this moment, and that not only is God not done using him as a cudgel of divine punishment against the wicked powers of the world, but has in fact preserved and prepared him for precisely this opportunity.” Not my italics. 

You might be a little alarmed at a Greek Orthodox Christian using the Malcolm X language of “by all means necessary.” But here’s what he means: “After [Trump] has fully exposed the attempt to steal the election, he must use his authority under the Insurrection Act to arrest and/or kill everyone who participated in this plot. He must arrest the leadership of the Democrat Party, everyone of significance in the mainstream media, the major players in big tech, and the numerous other globalist string pullers.” Alrighty then.

Among the other speakers at the Jericho March will be General Mike Flynn, who has endorsed the imposition of martial law and a new election.

Are these fringe nutcases? One wishes. The fusion of Trumpism with religious fundamentalism is everywhere you look. Jenna Ellis, one of Trump’s lawyers, is a home-schooled evangelical Christian who wrote a book arguing that “our system of government is founded upon the Christian worldview and God’s unchanging law, not a secular humanist worldview.” 

In a Marist poll, 60 percent of white evangelicals do not believe the 2020 election result was accurate, and 50 percent believe that Trump should not concede. That’s a big chunk of the GOP that Trump has tended to assiduously — from rushed anti-transgender tweets to welding the US to Netanyahu’s agenda in the Middle East. 

[T]he long-established network of evangelical churches and pastors, and the unique power of an actual religion to overwhelm reason, gives the right an edge when it comes to total suspension of disbelief. Christianists are not empiricists or skeptics. They’re believers. This time around, it’s belief in a “multi-layered, multi-dimensional” conspiracy involving hundreds of people in several states, rejected by almost every court. 

And Trump is at the center of their belief system now, which includes all his lies. The relationship of many with him is that of evangelicals and their pastor: a male, patriarchal figure who cannot be questioned and must be obeyed. Trump’s political genius has been in sniffing out this need to believe, and filling it, all the time, tweet by tweet, lie by lie, con by con. No wonder Trump Trutherism is now a litmus test for the Christianist faith, and therefore for all Republican office-holders. In January, if all else fails, they will try to force the US Congress to take a stand, with every GOP member on the line. It’s yet another brick removed from the foundation of the republic.

To survive, liberal democracy must have some level of moderation, some acceptance of the legitimacy of the other side, and room for compromise. It has to be based in empiricism, shared truth, deliberation and doubt. Fundamentalist religion has none of those qualities.

When this psychological formation encounters politics, it cannot relent, it cannot change its mind, it cannot simply move on. And a core element of our politics right now — and part of the unprecedented resilience of Trump’s support — is this total suspension of judgment by a quarter of all Americans. When that certainty of faith met a malignant narcissist who cannot admit error, a force was created that continues to cut a ferocious swathe through our culture and our democratic institutions.