There are probably around 130 founding fathers of the USA. Those who speak of the founders as though they were Messengers from God, probably couldn’t name any of them apart from the A-Listers: George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton.
THEY SUBSCRIBED TO DEISM
Despite the widespread myth that the founders were all Christians, most of them were Deists. they established America as the worlds first secular democracy based on the principles of the enlightenment. It’s no accident that the first amendment guarantees separation of church and state, since many of the original settlers were escaping religious persecution in Europe. Nowhere in the Constitution will you see the name “Jesus” mentioned, yet millions of Americans truly believe that their nation was founded as a Christian colony. Today, US Politics has been virtually taken over by the very people the founding fathers were trying to keep out of authority.
HOW DID WE GET HERE?
White Conservative Christians have always tended to believe that American Society was a finished product in the 1950’s. Therefore, after the social revolution of the 1960’s, they began to get heavily involved in all branches of Government, in order to stop what they saw as a decline in American values, via the new wave of liberalism. The rise of powerful Lobby groups, like Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority, the transformation of the NRA from a sane, sporting organisation into a club for Second Amendment fanatics, and the extraordinary growth of science-denying Christian fundamentalists in the Republican Party, can all be traced back to this period.
It’s important to remember, that the Republican Party was not always conservative, just as the Democrats were not always progressive. Historically, the Republicans were the party of Abraham Lincoln, whilst the Democrats were the party of the Ku Klux Klan. It wasn’t until northerners, like John F. Kennedy, took over the Democratic party in the mid 20th century, and threw the entire weight of the organisation behind the civil rights movement. In response, many Southern Democrats (Dixiecrats) like Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond, not only defected to the Republican party, but brought all of their fellow bigots along with them.
Over the next few decades, they systematically eliminated moderates from the party, and reshaped it into the abomination that it is today. A new generation of liberal minded baby boomers started joining the Democrats, and even the old racist democrats, who were still in the party (like Robert Byrd), totally changed their tune on civil rights.
Henceforth, we finished the 20th century with the Blue coloured Democrats moving into the progressive corner (although still fairly conservative by European standards), and the Red coloured Republicans moving into the realm of what journalist Chris Hedges calls, Christian Fascism.
In fact, many current Republicans see the American Constitution as being divinely inspired, just like the Bible. And the way they rant and rave about both of those manuscripts, it’s very clear that they haven’t actually read either of them.
TODAYS MADNESS
Leading television evangelist, Pat Robertson, proudly proclaimed that the Lord showed him, in a dream, a vision of heaven, with Donald Trump sitting at the right hand of God. As any Christian will tell you, that is where Jesus is supposed to sit!
And Robertson is not alone – many other TV preachers have made similar pronouncements about Mr Trump, such as Paula White, Kenneth Copeland, Franklin Graham, Jerry Falwell Jr, George Pearsons, Jim Bakker and Robert Jeffress, to name but a few.
Bear in mind that American Evangelical Christianity is very different to mainstream Protestant Christianity. The Mega-Church Evangelicals actually see wealth as a true sign of Gods blessing (The Prosperity Doctrine). So all Trump needed to do was constantly gloat about how rich he is, and suddenly he’s their virtual messiah.
Naturally, like all cult leaders, Trump is a narcissist and a con-man who makes brazenly empty offers about taking his people to the promised land, and no matter how much time passes without the promise ever coming true, his people just keep on trusting.
Of course, nothing makes a cult go more crazy than a sudden collision with reality. In the months leading into the 2020 presidential elections, dozens of evangelical pastors (including the aforementioned) from all over the US, made the bold announcement that God had spoken to them and told them that Donald Trump will definitely, definitely, win re-election.
Spoiler alert – He didn’t.
Now his followers have gone into a complete emotional meltdown, resembling Jack Torrance in “The Shining”. You don’t need to search for very long on platforms like Youtube, to find videos of such unhinged lunacy on full display.
Particularly disturbing are the psychotic shrieks and maniacal ramblings about the ‘Satan worshipping Democrats’ and their ritual cannibalising of new born babies (Yes, you read that correctly).
IT’S ON BRAND
The worst part is that all of this outrageousness was depressingly predictable. Before, during and after the 2016 Presidential election, Trump claimed the whole thing was being rigged in favour of his opponent, and that was an election he won!
Even 9 months before that election, when he was vying for the Republican party nomination, he lost the Iowa caucus to Ted Cruz. He then went on twitter to accuse Cruz of voter fraud and claimed that the whole election had been rigged against him – and that was a Republican-only event.
People like Bill Maher, Michael Moore, Michael Cohen etc. issued warnings right throughout Trump’s first term, that if he loses in 2020, he won’t leave the Whitehouse. He will, once again, claim that the election was rigged and that he is the real winner. Well, they were right. And whilst many dismissed his rantings as just Trump being Trump, others felt that the egotistical way in which he was undermining democracy, would be dangerous.
It was. On January the 6th, the Insurrection occurred. For the first time in US history, the Capitol Building in Washington DC was attacked. Not by Terrorists or a Foreign Army, but by privileged, gullible Trump Voters, who had all bought the big lie. This was nothing short of a coup attempt by Trump and his henchmen. Fortunately, they are all so stupid and incompetent, even after messing with the Post Office, Gerrymandering, Voter Suppression and Intimidation, they still couldn’t win.
THE FUTURE?
There is only 1 major political party in the USA right now. The other has degenerated into a Trump worshipping religious cult. Consider this, according to the Fact Checking department at the Washington Post, Donald Trump made 30,573 statements that were either false or misleading, during his 4 years in office. Yet according to Trump fanboys like Fox News pundit Stuart Varney, Trump has never lied, not even once. How divorced from reality does someone have to be to believe something like that?
Likewise, Republicans still in Congress, such as Ron Johnson, Ralph Norman and Andrew Clyde, seriously believe that the January 6 insurrection either wasn’t an insurrection, or they were Democrats dressed up as Trump supporters. Quite an impressive level of denial, as we know exactly who the rioters were because they filmed it and we could see their faces! Evidently, those who worship ‘The Donald’ are not only too stupid to wear a mask during a pandemic, they’re also too stupid to wear a mask when committing a crime on camera.
But don’t forget, this lunacy is ‘par for the course’ these days. Despite 86 failed lawsuits, and a plethora of voting recounts done by Republican state governments, Trump’s people still think the 2020 Presidential election was stolen by the Democrats. Not to mention Majorie Taylor-Green (R-GA), once again reminding us why she should be locked up in a psychiatric facility, after verbally abusing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) for her imaginary crimes against the United States.
I guess they got bored with their other braindead conspiracy theories about Obama being born outside of America. Even though he showed his short form birth certificate, and the state of Hawaii put his long form birth certificate on the web – and even though over 200 lawsuits filed by conservatives all failed – many have still not changed their mind about the first non-white President.
As Stephen Colbert once opined, reality has a well-known liberal bias.
