Andrew Sullivan echoes Senator and now proven prophet Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ):
A long time ago now, frustrated with what I believed was a grotesque fusion of Christianity and politics in the Bush era, I coined the term “Christianism.” I regret it in some ways because it alienated many of the people I was trying to persuade. But its analogy to Islamism was not designed to argue that Christianists were in any way violent; just that, like Islamists, they saw no real distinction between politics and religion.
I mention this because it seems to be a critical element in the current crisis of American democracy that we may now be missing. In a manner very hard to understand from the outside, American evangelical Christianity has both deepened its fusion of church and state in the last few years, and incorporated Donald Trump into its sacred schematic. Christianists now believe that Trump has been selected by God to save them from persecution and the republic from collapse. They are not in denial about Trump’s personal iniquities, but they see them as perfectly consistent with God’s use of terribly flawed human beings, throughout the Old Testament and the New, to bring about the Kingdom of Heaven.
This belief is now held with the same, unwavering fundamentalist certainty as a Biblical text. And white evangelical Christianists are the most critical constituency in Republican politics. If you ask yourself how on earth so many people have become convinced that the 2020 election was rigged, with no solid evidence, and are now prepared to tear the country apart to overturn an election result, you’ve got to take this into account. This faction, fused with Trump, is the heart and soul of the GOP. You have no future in Republican politics if you cross them. That’s why 19 Republican attorneys general, Ted Cruz, and now 106 Congressional Republicans have backed a bonkers lawsuit to try to get the Supreme Court to overturn the result.
And, yes, I took a moment to email Sullivan concerning Goldwater’s much pithier prophecy:
Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise. I know, I’ve tried to deal with them. – Senator Barry Goldwater
Sullivan’s article is worth perusing in full, but enough of the historical navel-gazing. The first step for rolling back this tide of anti-democracy is to find an argument which can gain traction. Here’s the first one to come to mind for me, which depends on the basic incompatibility between The Land of the Free, and the basic autocracy implicit in much of religion, which I present as a dialog between myself and a MAGA-ite:
ME: Why do you hate freedom so much?
MAGA: I don’t hate freedom! I love the United States!
ME: Stop lying to me.
MAGA: I’m not lying-
ME: Then Biden won the election after all?
MAGA: What, no he didn’t!
ME: Why?
MAGA: Because God told my favorite pastor that Trump won!
ME: Wait. God is dictating the outcome?
MAGA: Well, no. There was mass fraud –
ME: Hold on there. We here in the freedom-loving half of the United States have procedures for detecting fraud: evidence is found, presented to Courts, who rule as to whether the evidence is credible, and what relief is correct. Trump’s lawyers have failed in this regard. To the best of our knowledge, our procedures were valid and there was no fraud.
MAGA: No, no, no –
ME: So God dictated that Trump would win?
MAGA: YES! HE BLESSED TRUMP AS –
ME: And you hate freedom.
MAGA: No!
ME: In a free society, if we love freedom, we, en masse, must have the freedom to choose those who’ll govern us. No divinity can dictate that, or we are not free. In order to avoid chaos, we have to accept that if someone other than our favored candidate wins by the accepted procedures, then we accept that the winner is entitled to assume the position for which they ran.
That’s freedom. With freedom comes responsibility.
MAGA: There was fraud, I tell you! It was just so good it couldn’t be detected!
ME: Hah! If it was that good, then maybe Biden deserves to lead because he’s so smart? No? Oh, you still believe he’s a broken-down old man? No. Present credible evidence of fraud, or be an adult and accept that Biden won. That’s what Clinton supporters did in 2016. Why can’t the MAGA-ites be as good as the Clinton supporters were?
MAGA: I – no – (head explodes)
Short version: If God is dictating outcomes, then there is no freedom. If someone disputes the electoral outcome based on God, then they hate freedom.
