False Idols

There is something chilling about a political party that pretends to be very pious and devout to the Christian faith following a false idol. How many times have we heard the lectures that the Antichrist is coming and that they are among us now? How many times have we heard religious leaders more interested in passing the plate than in shepherding their herd tell us WHO this Antichrist was?

Oh, well it’s THIS person, no, wait, it’s THAT person, or, oh, I know, it’s THAT person over there. 

For the one person that is meant to try to tear down society and destroy the world they sure don’t know the star of their own show. 

The Republican party has changed since its inception, just as the Democratic party has, but the Republicans have morphed into a crazed party of White American Christian Nationalism and they are not just scary but a threat to the country we all call home. 

I used to make faces at the Republicans in office, to think they are buffoons, and to want to see them get ousted. I didn’t agree with their politics but generally, I could at least look at them and accept them as leaders. They all had agendas, like every politician, and some did massive damage to the social structure of the nation but that is a charge that can be launched at the Dems too. 

What we have now though is a party where the brand is what’s important, not who represents it. 

It’s about the team, not the players. 

It’s a game that they want to win no matter the cost. 

To think that a glorified huckster who fancies himself a gangster has the hold on the party that he does is crazy to me. Not surprising, I suppose, but crazy. I remember how fervently they fought against having him represent them when he decided he’d run for office. I remember how he came off as a loud oaf who pretended to be like the ‘everyman’ and how the established Republicans fought him fruitlessly. 

The nation craved a ‘strong man’, which is to say someone just like him. A big personality, lots of money – or the perception of lots of money, fame, a model for a wife, and he was willing to wrap himself physically in the flag to preach about how U.S. Jesus didn’t want them dirty foreigners rapin’ our babies and stealin’ our minimum wage jobs. 

He was America. 

Loud, rude, obnoxious, a bully, and he had to be Christian because he said he was one. 

He was all show, no go.
We love that lately.
We love the idea of someone who we THINK will make us respected and feared around the world by being loud and mean. Maybe we think back to our childhoods and how we almost admired the rich kid who had everything and never faced consequences for their actions. Maybe it’s the part of us that always wanted to be liked by the bully so they wouldn’t bully us. 

I have known people like that. 

Still do. 

People who loved the bully and how charismatic they were and how funny they seemed, not seeing, or wanting to admit they saw, that much of their laughs came from hurting other people. 

Is that what it is?

Is it our infatuation with fame and money?

Really?

Are we that shallow?

Of course we are. 

We have seen what Trump is. 

We saw it before the election when a tape surfaced of him saying awful things about how he objectified women and people who supported him shrugged it off. He was being honest. He was being ‘real’. Women even wore shirts saying how they wish this 70-something old man would grav their sexual region. 

What?

This is where we are. 

That’s like women wearing shirts in the ‘90s offering to perform a certain act on Clinton. 

NO ONE DID THAT THOUGH. 

BECAUSE IT’S CRAZY!

We have seen Trump for what he is – a rich kid bully who never has had to face consequences for what he does or says. He shreds documents to have no papertrail. He learned from gangsters how to treat people and how to muscle them. Don’t do what I want, then there’s consequences. He has shown this over and over and over. 

He is willing to make fun of people’s appearances, their religions, their heritage, their disability, and even their family. 

And he’s cheered. 

He wanted to set armed troops on protesters protesting police violence!
He stole a Bible from a church and held it upside down to show how devout he is!

He SIGNED A BIBLE as if he wrote it!

He is a man that is faking being religious because he doesn’t have a genuine bone in his body. 

We keep shifting our beliefs and expectations of him and the office of President to suit who he is. As long as he protects White Christian Americans from whatever boogeyman they’re afraid of today, he’s our guy. 

And it isn’t as if I have discovered anything. 

I am not breaking news here. 

We knew what he was from the start. 

He was a bully on his television show and before.
He created a fake persona to write to the newspaper to brag about how great and rich Donald Trump was. 

He seems like a man who desperately wanted to be loved by his father but instead got shuffled around here and there and became his father’s loveless ghost. 

I remember him having the military detonate a giant bomb, the Mother Of All Bombs, at the cost of millions of dollars, just as a show of strength to a world that shrugged in response. 

We know all this. 

And many of us just don’t care. 

There are people willing to go to war with our nation, AMERICANS willing to go to war to defend a BILLIONAIRE, and to fight a war they can never, ever win because of the lies of the Right Wing.

He represents the flag, and Jesus, and White folks, and some sort of weird idealized version of the country that never was. 

And people saw him as a Trojan horse.
They use him to get their ideas and their policies and their agendas through. 

He is the ram and they will be the troops. 

They are zealots, drunk on power and drunk off of their own stuff. They refuse to believe in science. They talk about how they support the military then refuse funding for soldiers who were harmed in battle or belittle those that don’t fall in lockstep with their views. They talk about how they are the law and order party and ‘back the badge’ then their supporters threaten the FBI, and judges, and anyone who dares to want to hold Trump accountable for anything.

The Democrats, never having faced someone like him, have never had a good answer to how to counter him. 

Even in the face of the craziest conspiracies – GUBMENT COVERUPS! FALSE FLAGS! PEDO PIZZA RINGS! SATANISTS RUNNING RAMPANT! ILLEGALS RAPING AND PILLAGING! CRISIS ACTORS! – they have nothing to counter it. You can’t deprogram a True Believer overnight. And let’s be real honest, this is a cult now, and they are out of their minds. 

They live in a world where anyone or anything that opposes them is evil and against God. 

They live in a world where women and minorities need to ‘know their place’, which I suppose is several steps back and in the shadows.  

We have seen the lower rungs on this ladder to Hell commit noxious acts and get shrugged off. 

Oh, well, the DEMONcrats do worse!
They eat babies and sacrifice cats to their horse god!

It’s all for the brand. 

Go team!

And for a party of God and of faith they sure are afraid. 

They are desperate to get to the gated community of Heaven, to show they are special, but are scared to death of people of color, of different backgrounds, of differing sexualities, of the poor, and on and on and on. 

People have been coming for our jobs, over our borders, and have been abusing social services for as long as those things have stood. 

It’s not new.

Neither are rich people conning working folks out of their hard earned money. 

We are being led by con people and crooks who are just working to push their agendas and to be as loud as possible so that they can parlay their short government stints into talk shows, and tours, and books, and speaking engagements. 

Only, Trump has inspired them with the same sort of sad need to be loved that he demands. I don’t think he wanted to be President until he was laughed at. He wanted to build his brand and move merch. Then they laughed at him and oh, he wanted it then. 

He wouldn’t be denied. 

And that’s what the new breed is like. 

They want the power, the juice, and the money, and some of them are so spun up in their own lies that they’re happy to believe them to sell the product.

They’re all salespeople who have bought into the company line. 

If folks were looking for a false idol, for an Antichrist, you have him. 

Front and center and loud as life. 

He is willing to tear down everything around him so long as he gets to be center stage. 

He’ll shake hands with the devil if it will sell more merch. 

He will never spend the money he has, whatever he has, but he still wants more. 

History may see him for what he is but for today, for the here and now, all he cares about is the power and the devotion. 

He just cares about himself. 

And if that’s not the makings of an Antichrist, I dunno what is. 

If this is modern Christianity, you can keep it. 

I’ll stay a heathen. 

…c…