Sticking With Trump

WITH LESS THAN A YEAR before the presidential election, it is becoming eminently clear that Donald J. Trump will be the Republican candidate. Normally, this would seem an astonishing set of circumstances, but when you consider the state of the Republican party, the state of the American conservative community, and indeed the state of the nation, it becomes less so. One third of all registered Republicans endorse violence as a means of achieving political goals. Two thirds still insist that Trump actually won the 2020 election, athough they know he didn't, and the same percentage still insist that the Capitol insurrection was justified by circumstances. None of this has cnanged in months, nor is likely to change going forward. The extreme right wing in Germany elected Hitler in 1933, despite his having spent nine months in prison for attempting to overthrow the German government by violence. "Make Germany great again" was the NAZI slogan. There are other parallels, many of them. Only perceptive Republicans seem to be concerned that their presidential candidate is facing ninety one felony indictments. All the other fading Republican presidential candidates, except for one or two, have been unwilling to speak the truth about Trump; that he is a pathological prevaricator,that he cares only about his own personal fortunes, and that he is almost certain to be convicted of multiple felonies even while the presidential campaign unfolds. And yet, Trump may very well be elected, only becaue of Biden's unpopularity, unpolularity totally unjustified by Biden's accomplishmens and policies as president. Biden's biggest liability is his age, and his unappealing personality. The American people are, for anyone who wonders, sufficiently shallow to vote an effective president out of office based on such superficial considerations. Trump's "popularity" among conservatives, such as it is, is predicated on racism, xenophobia, and misperceptions about the state of America's economic health. Trump's largest and most loyal base of support remains the conservative evangelical Christian movement, among which racism and xenophobia are strongest. They number upwards of one hundred million citizens, more than eighty percent of whom support Trump, despite Trump's demonstrated criminality and his conspicuous unfitness for political leadership. Thus the conservative evangelical Christian community reveals its own moral and intellectual bankruptcy. The fact remains that the agenda of Donald Trump; diplomatic isolation, neo-liberal economics, opposition to non white immigration into the United States, a reduction of government assistance for the poor, the elderly, and everyone except the wealthy, is not supported by a majority of the electorate, and they know it. They cannot implement their agenda by democratic processes, thus they eschew democracy in favor of authoritarian governance, as did conservative Germans in 1933. It is frightening the agenda which would confront the country in the event of a return of Trump to the presidency, and an American Congress with a Republican majority and Republican leadership. The current Republican speaker of the House asserts that the Christian Bible is his only guiding influence. According to the Bible, Almighty God sometimes elevates reporbtes to positions of power and authority for his own purpsoes. That in and of itself is alarming. It may be that God can do that without negative consequences. The tragedy is that American conservatives, by and large, seem to think that they can do the same.