Why white Christian America Voted for Trump

In contrast to the New York Times apology piece/op-ed yesterday I noted in a prior post today, the Washington Post has a piece that looks at what really drove white Christians to vote for Trump, especially in rural America.  The answer is not pretty and largely boils down to exactly what the Times op-ed tried to argue was not the case.  Hate, bigotry, a sense of rage at lost white privilege and extremist religious beliefs were the main motivators and it is clear that to these folks "Make America Great Again" translated to "Make America White and Christian Again."  And be assured that LGBT individuals have no place in their white Christian America.  The only good new is that towns like the one in the article are dying precisely because of the white "godly: Christians who have made such locales toxic to progressive and forward looking businesses that have not desire to turn back time to the 1950's. Here are some article highlights:

MOUNT AIRY, N.C. — From a perch on Main Street, the home town of actor Andy Griffith looks this day like it was plucked right out of the television show that bears his name. And it was.

And yet even as this city of about 10,000 nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains fills its coffers by selling nostalgia, many of its residents would agree with the now-popular saying “We’re not in Mayberry anymore.”

If only the real Mount Airy, which has experienced decades of economic and social decline, were like the Mayberry facade, muses Mayor David Rowe. If only his city and the rest of America could return to the 1950s again.

“Now it’s about secular progressivism, not the values you get out of this book,” such as honesty and hard work, said Rowe, 72, jabbing his finger at the leather Bible on his office desk.

But as Donald Trump prepares to move into the White House, Rowe and many of his constituents are hoping for a return to the past.

Visitors to Surry County spent $116.62 million in 2015, compared with $66 million 12 years ago, according to Jessica Icenhour Roberts, who heads tourism partnerships for the county, whose largest city is Mount Airy.  But Mount Airy cannot live on tourism alone, the mayor said.

“We try to live the good old days, but it’s hard,” Rowe said. Just down the street from a bronze statue of Griffith and a museum dedicated to his memory, out of sight of the boutiques selling Norman Rockwell and Thomas Kinkade artwork, sit many dilapidated textile mills that have closed in the past decade. From early 2000 to about 2010, about 9,000 private-sector jobs were lost when factories that made clothes went overseas.

Despite the steady stream of tourists, business owners are still struggling to create new jobs that will attract a younger generation, said Lizzie Morrison, 30, who runs an art studio and is the Main Street coordinator with Mount Airy Downtown.

Morrison said the city’s younger residents tend to be socially liberal, while most in the older generations look to the past. That tension makes it harder for someone like her to push for new ideas, she said.

A group of developers has been working on a project to redevelop an old mill, Morrison said, but the proposal has moved slowly because of resistance from residents. 

Many Mount Airy residents applauded the president-elect’s promise to revoke the Johnson Amendment, which effectively bars pastors from endorsing a candidate from the pulpit, Rowe said. They were heartened by his suggestion that Christians will be able to once again see “Merry Christmas” signs in department stores.

But the mayor acknowledges that the 1950s and ’60s were not idyllic for all Americans. He wouldn’t, for example, want to go back to the days when there were separate water fountains at the local Sears for whites and blacks. At the same time, he said, African Americans often bring hardship on themselves. . . . He noted that the Hispanics he has hired to work at his construction company are hard workers. He doesn’t encounter people who aren’t white in social settings much because folks tend to self-segregate, he said. Mount Airy is 84 percent white, 8.2 percent black and 6.7 percent Hispanic, according to 2010 census data.

Not everyone is nostalgic for the 1950s.  Ron Jessup, 68, who grew up in Mount Airy during that era, found the place generally friendly then, he said — as long as he and other blacks obeyed the racist laws and social mores of the time.

If African Americans went to the theater, they sat upstairs, he said. If they went to the restaurants, they avoided the counter. “We understood what was considered our place,” said Jessup, who is retired from his job as a high school principal in nearby Winston-Salem. Even now, all five Surry County commissioners are white.

As for Trump, Jessup believes his “Make America Great Again” slogan was code for “take America back again,” and a reaction to President Obama’s election.

“Sometimes we use Christianity when it’s convenient for what we want,” Jessup said. “You can’t allow someone to have racist remarks and then go to church and talk about Jesus as the center of your life.”

When she travels with her pastor husband, Thresa Tucker hands out an evangelistic tract that uses “The Andy Griffith Show” as an entry point for talking about Jesus. . . . . Tucker and her husband, David, said they voted for Trump because they want a more limited federal government. They mentioned social issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage and school prayer.

The Tuckers were also dismayed when their health insurance bill skyrocketed. Before Obamacare, they had no health insurance and paid out of pocket. Their monthly bill will rise from $115 a month now to $435 next year, Thresa Tucker said.

Many of those who have lost jobs seek help at White Plains Baptist Church, where her husband is preacher. But not all who seek help are worthy of it, she said. The church has to be a good steward of its money, so there are criteria for assistance, and she asks whether people attend church regularly. African Americans who have voiced concerns over what Trump will do for the poor would have a different perspective if they tried harder to help themselves, she said.

People just aren’t committed to church, anymore, he said. The church he attends used to attract up to 600 people on a Sunday in the 1960s, but is lucky to get a third of that now. Young people leave for college and come back with more progressive, secular values, he said.

If Trump does manage to “make America great again,” Rowe said it will involve preventing the government from encroaching on religion.  Christianity has come under attack in America, he said. “It’s subtle, not in your face, but that’s the way Satan works,” he said.

 I suspect that Mount Airy will continue on the road to further economic decline and obscurity. Sadly, its residents will not look in the mirror and realize that they, not modernity or secularism is the root of their problems.   

Trump Supporters View Everything Since the 1950's As Terrible

I have often argued that the goal of today's GOP has been to somehow turn the clock back to the 1950's when, according to the party base's view, everything was golden and perfection.  Unless, of course one is black, Hispanic, a woman, LGBT and/or non-religious.  Indeed, everything that has made America a more equal society is viewed as bad by Trumpkins who long for unchallenged white privilege and a time when open bigotry was more acceptable.  A piece in Salon looks new poll findings and at the troubling world view of Trump's base of support.  It is an indictment of what the GOP has become and the ugliness that it has long cultivated.  Now, it has spun out of control.  Here are article excerpts:

If you ever had the sneaking suspicion that “Make America Great Again” was code for “Turn America’s clock back to the 1950s,” a new poll suggests you were absolutely right.

According to a survey published by the Public Religion Research Institute, 72 percent of likely voters supporting Donald Trump say America has changed for the worst since the 1950s. By contrast, 70 percent of likely voters supporting Hillary Clinton say that America has changed for the better since that decade.

Not surprisingly, these findings are also sharply divided based on racial lines. While 56 percent of white Americans say America has changed for the worse since the 1950s, 62 percent of African-Americans and 57 percent of Hispanic Americans say that it has changed for the better.

That said, 56 percent of college-educated white Americans also believe that America has changed for the better since the 1950s; 65 percent of white Americans without college degrees say that it has not.

The group that most yearns for the 1950s? White evangelical Protestants, 74 percent of whom think things have gotten worse.

Across the board, the study found that Democrats were more likely to care about social justice issues than Republicans. . . . 61 percent of Democrats said race relations mattered to them personally compared to only 31 percent of Republicans.

Sixty-three percent of Democrats believe that immigrants strengthen American society, whereas 73 percent of Republicans say that immigrants threaten American customs and values.

Finally, 77 percent of Democrats say that America would benefit from more women serving in political leadership roles, a sentiment 62 percent of Republicans disagree with.

The 1950s is a decade closely associated with the Cold War, McCarthy era witch hunts, and violent backlash to the civil rights movement. Although not explicitly incorporated in the themes of Trump’s campaign, the Republican nominee’s critics have long noted that “Make America Great Again” could be viewed as a dog whistle for a return to an era before our society’s major strides in racial and gender equality.

[The] message where ‘I’ll give you America great again’ is if you’re a white Southerner, you know exactly what it means, don’t you?”

Note how southern evangelical Christians lead the way in longing for the bad old days of the 1950's. The remain among the most selfish and self-centered people (and racist) and display a contempt for the Gospel message they claim to support by their opposition to equality and social justice.  They should not be welcome in polite and decent society. 

Trump and the GOP's Effort To Turn Back Progress

One piece in the New York Times notes that many black Republicans have been disturbed by what they have seen and heard at the GOP convention.  One has to wonder why the Hell it took them so long to wake up to reality.  Today's aging white based Republican Party has only one theme that unifies the various factions of religious extremists, white supremacists and xenophobes: turning back the clock to a time when they and/or their beliefs were unchallenged and they could trample on the rights and lives of others, be they black, Hispanic, gay or non-Christians.  They long for the late 1940's or early 1950's before the civil rights struggles, when LGBT individuals remained invisible and conservative Protestantism was unchallenged and even Catholics were looked at with suspicion. A piece in Salon looks at this backward facing agenda.  Here are excerpts:

Delusional rabble-rousing, apocalyptic fear-mongering, flagrant falsehoods, dog-whistles and plagiarism; the Republican national convention has had all this and more since commencing earlier this week in Cleveland — and if everything goes according to plan, the GOP will officially be the Party of Trump by the week’s end.
 Though some of the most prominent Republican figures have opted to boycott the convention because of Donald Trump — including the two last living Republican presidents — it hasn’t mattered very much. On Tuesday night, the billionaire was formally nominated as the party’s presidential candidate — thus making the nightmares of George Will and Mitt Romney a reality.
 Not surprisingly, those who have been willing to attend and speak at the convention have taken Trump’s lead, employing an emotional, bombastic, and fact-free style. 

These speakers were clearly suggesting that America is in a desperately bad way; unsafe, crime-ridden, weak and vulnerable. But like their presidential candidate, none were too focused on the facts. Like the fact that police officer shootings are extremely rare and have been in steady decline for decades (indeed, they currently at historic lows); the fact that crime has dropped dramatically over the past several decades (for a variety of reasons, including the legalization of abortion, the elimination of lead from gasoline, and the aging population); the fact that you are more likely to be fatally crushed by furniture than to be killed in a terrorist attack; or the fact that President Obama has deported more undocumented immigrants than any other president in history.

Overall, the 2016 convention has displayed an underlying truth about the modern conservative movement: it is less concerned with real world issues than it is with exaggerated (or imaginary) threats and trivial cultural grievances that can never be overcome (culture is an ever-evolving set of beliefs and attitudes, and you can’t just hit the rewind button — unless, of course, there is a totalitarian state, as in Nazi Germany).

It brings to mind Thomas Frank’s classic book on right-wing populism, “What’s The Matter With Kansas?”, in which the author analyzes the reactionary backlash against the “partying and protests of the late sixties” and the country’s ever-changing social values and demographics — what he calls the “great backlash.” Leaders of the backlash movement, writes Frank, “have chosen to wage cultural battles where victory is impossible, where their followers’ feelings of powerlessness will be dramatized and their alienation aggravated… Its goal is not to win cultural battles but to take offense, conspicuously, vocally, even flamboyantly. Indignation is the great aesthetic of backlash culture.”

Trump is the culmination of this backlash culture. When the candidate says “Make America Great Again,” and Scott Baio calls on Republicans to “Make America America Again,” they are talking about the America that existed before the great backlash. Real America for them is the America of the 1950s — a decade that Baio helped romanticize in “Happy Days.” When gays stayed in the closet; when women were forced to go underground for illegal and unsafe abortions and were expected to remain in the kitchen; when African Americans were treated like second-class citizens and expected to keep quiet about equality and Civil Rights; when everyone was a good Christian. In other words, before politically correct liberals ruined everything with tolerance and multiculturalism. Again, there is no going back — but these cultural grievances will continue to be effective political tools used by the economic and political elite to divide the masses.

The angry, populist ethos at the 2016 Republican convention is akin to what you might have observed at a People’s Party rally in the 1890s. Of course the enemies are no longer J.P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller, but haughty liberal elites emasculating America, Muslims and Mexicans invading the shores, and LGBT people corrupting the culture, and so on. The great backlash is destined to fail; but with the nomination of Trump, it is going out not with a whimper but a bang.

Non-Traditional Families Are The New Normal

Despite the strenuous efforts of the far right in the GOP and the Christofascists to return America to the 1950's - a time that may have been the "good old days" for some in society but an ugly time for many others - a new study shows that the "traditional family" of a mother, father and children locked in a nuclear family no matter how dysfunctional that so worshiped by these folks is no longer the norm.  Indeed, the non-traditional has become the norm for the majority of families.  Whether this is a good thing or not lies in the eye of the beholder, but either way, society and social programs needs to recognize and adjust to the new reality.  Here are some highlights from Slate:

A new study by the Pew Research Center shows that the majority of American kids under 18 are not being raised in a “traditional” family, defined as two parents in their first marriage. Only 46 percent of kids have the Leave It To Beaver lifestyle; the rest are being raised by single parents, cohabitating parents, stepparents, or even grandparents. That's down from 73 percent in 1960.

Defining the nuclear family as “traditional” is somewhat misleading, as report author Gretchen Livingston told Jessica Goldstein of ThinkProgress. “In a lot of ways the 1950s and 1960s were an anomaly in family structure; the birth rate was uncommonly high, people married young,” she explained. “So even though people think of that as the traditional image of the family … it was actually [an] anomaly.”

The takeaway is that the image of a “traditional” family is a figment. Family life is always changing in response to economic and social change. 

These are the sorts of numbers that tend to get conservative hands a-wringing over the supposed problem of “out-of-wedlock” births, which have been rising alongside the number of kids being raised outside of nuclear families. As the report notes, “the share of children born outside of marriage now stands at 41%, up from just 5% in 1960.” But if you dig into the numbers a little, it becomes clear that the supposed scourge of bastardy isn't the primary reason for this shift. Only 34 percent of kids are being raised by single parents, many of whom were once married but are now divorced.

Not that these realities will quell conservative lectures about the near-magical properties of giving birth with a wedding ring on your finger. Younger women who give birth while single tend to be less powerful and less Republican than divorced people are, making them an easier scapegoat. But for the rest of us, this research is a bit of cheer before the holiday. If your family has a second Christmas at Dad's house, or you’re fretting about the etiquette of stepparent gifts, or you live in a family where “Santa” is not mom but grandma, don't despair. You're not weird, as it turns out. In fact, you're the new normal.

 Yes, the far right will rant and rave that society is going to Hell.  What's really gone to Hell is the ability of white Christians - especially fundamentalists and evangelicals - to dictate to others what is "acceptable."   But don't expect their whining to end any time soon.  There's way too much money to be made by the professional Christian class by making money begs to help them battles the evils of society.