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A Deeply Fractured US

The culprits are willing to brag about their latest heist. The target is Air Force One "souvenirs".

The real D.C. crime wave​

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In a sense, it’s a daring crime given that the aircraft and the individual traveling in its executive cabin are among the most heavily secured entities in the world. And yet, it has become shockingly common — a rite of passage where the thieves proudly discuss and display their stolen goods.
Everyone, it appears, is pilfering from Air Force One.
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Politico Article
 
A mix of politics and religion that creates a theocratic illiberalism.

andrewsullivan.substack.com

The Intensification Of Christianism

Trump's GOP has corrupted faith in ways that are destroying our liberal democracy.
andrewsullivan.substack.com andrewsullivan.substack.com

“Happy Holy Week!” — as no one but Donald J Trump would say. “Let’s Make America Pray Again!”

If you thought there would ever come a time when evangelical Christians might draw the line at the Orange Herod’s antics, surely “the only Bible endorsed by President Trump!” for $59.99 a pop might have qualified. But apparently not, as we have come to accept. He’s getting a cut, of course — not that that would trouble Joel Osteen and his “prosperity Christians.” And Trump’s pitch is the familiar melange of lies and graft: “All Americans need a Bible in their home and I have [pause to acknowledge lie] many. It’s my favorite book” of all the countless books he has never read. For added value, it includes a “handwritten chorus to ‘God Bless the USA’ by Lee Greenwood,” alongside a copy of the US Constitution. As if the Almighty is a Republican.

This was the same week that Trump took to Truth Social to tell the world about a text he said he had just been sent: “Received this morning — Beautiful, thank you! ‘It’s ironic that Christ walked through His greatest persecution the very week they are trying to steal your property from you. But have you seen this verse …? Psalm 109: 3-8: ‘They have also surrounded me with words of hatred/And fought against without a cause.” So Trump’s fraud trial is seen by one of his supporters as the contemporary equivalent of the passion of Jesus Christ. “I’m praying this over you daily. Thank you again for taking the arrows intended for us.” This last trope seems to equate the prosecution of Trump for fraud with Jesus’ atonement for the sins of the world.

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When I first wrote about “Christianism,” I saw it as a politicized version of Christianity, a form of theocratically-motivated illiberalism. It still is, of course, and now the guiding philosophy of, for example, the Heritage Foundation. And the fusion of religion and politics is a potent and volatile thing, as the Founders well understood. Hence my concern about George W Bush’s desire to place a prohibition on gay marriage as an amendment to the very Constitution of the United States.

But the current iteration — a new intensification — is more radical. It’s an explicit fusion of a particular strand of Christianity with the identity of the entire country and the transformation of a secular politician into an anointed instrument of God’s will. It makes voting an act of religious faithfulness, not democratic deliberation.

The absurdity of Trump of all people as an emblem of Christianity, a faith his entire life mocks, matters not. In fact, it’s a test of faith that you see how mysterious the ways of the Almighty are. The best we can hope for is my old friend Rod Dreher’s response to Trump’s gold-ribboned Bible — appropriately revolted, but politically undeterred:

As gross as this is, it must be remembered that Joe Biden stands for abortion on demand, and the right of children to be mutilated for the sake of becoming another sex. What Trump does above is tasteless, and maybe even sacrilegious. But what Biden stands for is, from an orthodox Christian point of view, evil.
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And there you have it. The constant refusal of mainstream and online conservatives to break from the ever-crazier fringes to their right is an exact mirror of the cowardly toleration of the woke fanatics on the center-left. But while the left now draws on the energies of the new religion of neoracism, the right still has the depth and range of Christianity to plunder, use and abuse its opponents with. And as the extremes strengthen, it was only a matter of time, I suppose, before the Trump right embraced old-school anti-Semitism, just as the woke left has now adopted the new-school anti-Semitism of neoracism.

The departure of Candace Owens from Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire is not just a minor media story. It marks a rapid curdling on the extreme right. Owens has responded to the Gaza War with familiar tropes of a Jewish cabal calling the shots, and in the heat of online battle she deployed the term “Christ is King,” a reference to a minor part of Christian doctrine and a Catholic feast day. Andrew Klavan, another online conservative, called this out as an anti-Semitic dog-whistle — and before you knew it, X was aflame with #ChristIsKing and crude Jew hatred, led by Trump’s former dinner companion, the execrable Nick Fuentes. One of the ramparts of neoconservatism was the shift in the 1980s to refer to the “Judeo-Christian tradition” with respect to the West — a way to mute any tensions between evangelical Christians and Jewish intellectuals. It was always a bit of a sham — Jesus was either the Messiah or he wasn’t — but it worked in that Bill-Kristol-style, principle-free, whatever-gets-us-elected way.

It turns out, however, that these kinds of incoherent alliances only function in a chill era of liberal democracy, where we leave the jugular alone. But once the populist devils are unleashed, and there is never any cost to moving ever-rightward or ever-leftward, the old hatreds emerge. And what we’re seeing with what’s left of American Christianity on the right is a very Weimar thing: in an era of demographic ethnic insecurity and perceived cultural marginalization, as more people see their country under the control of sinister forces arrayed against them (the Deep State, the woke elites, the foreign policy Blob), the religion rooted in an abdication of worldly power becomes obsessed with wielding it ruthlessly — just for self-defense, mind you!

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When I studied Weimar in college, I was genuinely shocked to discover the existence of the Deutsche Christen — German protestants who sought to synthesize the Gospels with Nazism and worship of the Führer. No, I’m not saying this is the same as contemporary American Christianism. But I am saying that the abuse of Christianity to shore up a political faction behind a charismatic leader in a populist, extremist era is not a new thing in history. It’s actually critical to Putin’s nationalist and imperialist project as well.

The nationalism and racialism inherent in Christianism is, of course, profoundly blasphemous. But if you can persuade enough people that their very existence as a culture is at stake, which Trump has successfully done, then the blasphemy becomes part of the point, proof of your dedication to the cause. Watching all this rapidly unfold on Elon Musk’s X — which now shows me endless loops of racial crime videos and ever more graphs of racial IQ bell curves — is like watching the right radicalize and polarize itself in real time. The fervor here is as intense as that of the woke, because it is rooted in misplaced religious zeal.

Tragically, liberal Christianity has in far too many places become incapable of countering this with simple theological orthodoxy. It has itself become something of a social justice cult almost as politicized and partisan as the right. And yet this week of all weeks, and this Friday of all Fridays, we are invited to understand the deeper spiritual power that comes with the renunciation of earthly power. The longer I’ve lived, the more I have begun to grasp how this authentically Christian understanding of the limits of worldly power is a kind of bulwark for a free society, a guardrail against the foolish certainties of Christianist right and left, and a guarantee of some kind of spiritual humility and social peace.

I pray this week that this tradition survives this awful era, as it has done in some of the more hideous episodes of the past. But I have rarely felt less hope behind that prayer. Or sensed so much darkness coming toward us.
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kkwd said:
If you concentrated on that exclusively you would go bug eyed and your head would pop. A bit of levity helps even things out.
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That’s where memes come in

saturday night live snl GIF by HULU
 
dimsum said:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1773795559406543262

I saw this and thought it was The Onion. But no.
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Just more bizarre leftist angst and panic. Other than being the subject in an article, this has nothing to do with Trump. Not his idea, not his voice. Besides, it's up to a majority if it's going to change.

Every democrat seems to be turning into that insane blowhard, Morning Joe Scarborough on MSNBC.
 
Fishbone Jones said:
Just more bizarre leftist angst and panic. Other than being the subject in an article, this has nothing to do with Trump. Not his idea, not his voice. Besides, it's up to a majority if it's going to change.

Every democrat seems to be turning into that insane blowhard, Morning Joe Scarborough on MSNBC.
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Have you read the article that the tweet (or X or whatever the post is called) is based on?

It’s in the American Conservative, which is decidedly not left. And I would suggest that an article called “Trump 2028” would be about Trump.

www.theamericanconservative.com

Trump 2028

The Twenty-second Amendment is an arbitrary restraint on presidents who serve nonconsecutive terms—and on democracy itself.
www.theamericanconservative.com www.theamericanconservative.com
 
dimsum said:
Have you read the article that the tweet (or X or whatever the post is called) is based on?

It’s in the American Conservative, which is decidedly not left. And I would suggest that an article called “Trump 2028” would be about Trump.

www.theamericanconservative.com

Trump 2028

The Twenty-second Amendment is an arbitrary restraint on presidents who serve nonconsecutive terms—and on democracy itself.
www.theamericanconservative.com www.theamericanconservative.com
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I read it. It doesn't change anything. Nothing to do with Trump. Just people speculating. Did you read the comments? That's what I was talking about. Anything about Trump sets the left's hair on fire.

You missed again.
 
KevinB said:
Haley has more campaign funds than Trump and the RNC combined at this point.

I believe she’s playing a waiting game to see if Trump ends up getting jailed and/or ruled an invalid candidate.
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I have a hard time seeing that happen before November.
 
Fishbone Jones said:
I read it. It doesn't change anything. Nothing to do with Trump. Just people speculating. Did you read the comments? That's what I was talking about. Anything about Trump sets the left's hair on fire.

You missed again.
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So to confirm - an article called “Trump 2028” during the run-up to a Trump v. Biden election in 2024, which Trump could win his second term, arguing for abolishing term limits for Presidents, in a publication called The American Conservative, has nothing to do with Trump?

I’m just assuming the author is talking about Obama then. Obama 2028! :ROFLMAO:
 
KevinB said:
Haley has more campaign funds than Trump and the RNC combined at this point.

I believe she’s playing a waiting game to see if Trump ends up getting jailed and/or ruled an invalid candidate.
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Or for 2028. Haley’s no dummy, reasonably young, and she remains, objectively, a good Republican candidate once Trump’s cult and their hijacking of the party withers. If she’s smart, she’ll keep herself visible and engaged, IOT be electable in 2028. Easier for her if Trump loses this coming election; no way he’d be viable next time around after a failure this fall. I could also see her watching to see if Lindsay Graham ends up hanging up his hat, and making a run for an SC senate seat in 2026.

Whatever and whenever the specifics, she’s strategically positioning herself very well for when the Republican Party sets about shaking off its Trumpism hangover.
 
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