Comparing, Learning

ALTHOUGH TRUMPISM IN AMERICAN is beginning to look like a forlorn, rejected lost cause crusading cult, its members firmly holding to irrational, discredited beliefs in an almost religiously faithful way, it cannot in any sense be compared, at least yet, to the origin and evolution of the Christian religion. For one thing, quite obviously, there is little to compare between Jesus of Nazareth and Donald J. Trump. Even non Christians claim to admire and emulate the former. the latter? It has reached the point with Mr. Trump where an reasonable person acknowledges his criminality and general evil.Unfortunately, we know much more about Trump than we do about Jesus, and are learning more every day. What we now about Jesus is very little, and we will most likely never learn anything knew aobut him again, even though "we" ( the historical profession) have in fact learned more about him in the twentieth century. Nobody who met or knew about Jesus wrote or said anything about him. The four meager accounts we have (the gospels), are contradictory, sketchy, incomplete, have been endlessly translated, changed and edited, and were written decades after Jesus lived and died, by people who never came within a thousand miles of him. We really cannot be absolutely certain he even existed, although he probably did. He said and did some ostensibly strange, questionable things, according to our modern standards of behavior, but, on the whole, was exemplary in every way, as an enlightened being. Trump, about whom we know much and ever more, is quite the opposite of Jesus, and when Trump's devout Christian cult followers try to tell me that several times in the Bible God evevated miscreants to positions of great importance to do his (the Lord's) work, I want to laugh, puke, or strangle. In truth the rise and persistance of Trump and Trumpism is much, much more akin to that of Adolf Hitler and fascism.. The current conservative Christian Rpublican interest in Viktor Orban and his Hungarian government proves this point precisely. Tucker Carlson is leading the way. Viktor Orban, Vladimir Putin, Modi in India, the Brazilian dictator Jiar Bolsonaro, Boris Johnson, and Donald Trump are all manifestations of this bizarre, twisted, malignant right wing "populism" sweeping not only the world but America as well, but which, knock on wood and God willing, are past their prime, and ready to fade away and die. Adolf Hitler would've fit right in with this crowd.