I can buy that Peter Wehner is sincere in his concern about the future of what passes for Christianity in this country, and how it has been hopelessly compromised by evangelicals' overwhelming support of a completely godless piece of shit.
But just like the seemingly sudden transformation of the Republicon party into a rump bund pretending to stroke its collective chin while enabling and supporting an utterly vile set of policies, this was a long time coming, because the elements were already in place. Trump just figured out how to weaponize them.
The dilemma "sincere" Christians faced and ignored a long time ago was when they decided to let open hucksters like Marion "Pat" Robertson and Jerry Falwell squirm their way into the political arena. They let weasels like Ralph Reed and Tony Perkins become power-brokers between people of faith and politicians with pockets, curating the official dogma of what "Christian" voters and their elected representatives would "stand for."
Besides, of course, everyone in the food chain taking suitcases full of cash. You really want to solve this problem, make these fuckers pay their taxes. Religious exemptions should not extend to business and politics, period. And the fact is, they've made politics their business, and they're making taxpayers subsidize them and their fucking Gulfstreams and mansions.
So when Wehner and his associates of faith are concerned that this open-market sellout to the thieving, lying, conniving, soulless, godless whoremongers that infest this suppurating chancre of an administration, when they see that these compromises may cost them the next generation of believers, all I can say is good. Because the kids that haven't been dragged through the molesty Jesus camps and cult megachurch indoctrinations deserve better than to be bundled into political currency by these hopelessly cynical people.
The new breed of temple money-changers that have barnacled themselves to the hull of this ship of fools -- Paula White, Robert Jeffress, Kenneth Copeland, Mark Owens -- are right to align themselves with someone so utterly bereft of even the concept of faith, as Trump clearly is. Because they are every bit as transactional in everything they do as he has always been.
It's hard to imagine the sort of chump who would actually be fooled by any of the posturing these people have done, the megachurch hucksters and their fatted, bronzed steer. In their way, the cultists are pretending and winking their way through this as much as the rest of the bastards whose cues they follow. It is a pro-wrestling dynamic as much as anything else. Call it "kayfabe for Jesus" maybe.
Which leaves (giving Wehner and Karel Coppock and that cohort the small benefit of the doubt) the true believers, who believe in the divine word and in the messages of Saints Ambrose and Augustine, out in the cold with nothing but their sincere faith. The problem with that is that there's not much market for it; the performative garment-rending of the inimitable Rod Dreher seems to be about where it begins and ends.
Even there, Dreher spends most of his time lathering over his tedious "drag queens to the left of me, fascists to the right" vaudeville act, in which he inevitably -- albeit, one is meant to presume, oh-so-reluctantly -- holds a gun to his own head and forces himself to vote the same as the fascists, if not precisely with them, you see.
They are all more than welcome to explain these fine distinctions to the actual humans: asylum-seekers drinking from toilets while psychotic guards jeer at them; Yemeni villagers dying en masse from cholera after being carpet-bombed by our Saudi bankrollers, with planes and missiles we sold to them; journalists being strapped to tables and dismembered alive by aforementioned Saudis; soybean farmers in the Midwest losing their family's land and shooting themselves because they were dumb enough to trust a cheap fraud who cares more about cheating at golf every weekend than anything else -- people currently being harmed in real time by the policies enacted by these monsters.
If any of these people really believed in god, they'd stop wasting their time trying to explain their cheap hypocrisies to the rest of us, and concentrate on squaring things up with him. Or her, as the case may be.
But just like the seemingly sudden transformation of the Republicon party into a rump bund pretending to stroke its collective chin while enabling and supporting an utterly vile set of policies, this was a long time coming, because the elements were already in place. Trump just figured out how to weaponize them.
The dilemma "sincere" Christians faced and ignored a long time ago was when they decided to let open hucksters like Marion "Pat" Robertson and Jerry Falwell squirm their way into the political arena. They let weasels like Ralph Reed and Tony Perkins become power-brokers between people of faith and politicians with pockets, curating the official dogma of what "Christian" voters and their elected representatives would "stand for."
Besides, of course, everyone in the food chain taking suitcases full of cash. You really want to solve this problem, make these fuckers pay their taxes. Religious exemptions should not extend to business and politics, period. And the fact is, they've made politics their business, and they're making taxpayers subsidize them and their fucking Gulfstreams and mansions.
So when Wehner and his associates of faith are concerned that this open-market sellout to the thieving, lying, conniving, soulless, godless whoremongers that infest this suppurating chancre of an administration, when they see that these compromises may cost them the next generation of believers, all I can say is good. Because the kids that haven't been dragged through the molesty Jesus camps and cult megachurch indoctrinations deserve better than to be bundled into political currency by these hopelessly cynical people.
The new breed of temple money-changers that have barnacled themselves to the hull of this ship of fools -- Paula White, Robert Jeffress, Kenneth Copeland, Mark Owens -- are right to align themselves with someone so utterly bereft of even the concept of faith, as Trump clearly is. Because they are every bit as transactional in everything they do as he has always been.
It's hard to imagine the sort of chump who would actually be fooled by any of the posturing these people have done, the megachurch hucksters and their fatted, bronzed steer. In their way, the cultists are pretending and winking their way through this as much as the rest of the bastards whose cues they follow. It is a pro-wrestling dynamic as much as anything else. Call it "kayfabe for Jesus" maybe.
Which leaves (giving Wehner and Karel Coppock and that cohort the small benefit of the doubt) the true believers, who believe in the divine word and in the messages of Saints Ambrose and Augustine, out in the cold with nothing but their sincere faith. The problem with that is that there's not much market for it; the performative garment-rending of the inimitable Rod Dreher seems to be about where it begins and ends.
Even there, Dreher spends most of his time lathering over his tedious "drag queens to the left of me, fascists to the right" vaudeville act, in which he inevitably -- albeit, one is meant to presume, oh-so-reluctantly -- holds a gun to his own head and forces himself to vote the same as the fascists, if not precisely with them, you see.
They are all more than welcome to explain these fine distinctions to the actual humans: asylum-seekers drinking from toilets while psychotic guards jeer at them; Yemeni villagers dying en masse from cholera after being carpet-bombed by our Saudi bankrollers, with planes and missiles we sold to them; journalists being strapped to tables and dismembered alive by aforementioned Saudis; soybean farmers in the Midwest losing their family's land and shooting themselves because they were dumb enough to trust a cheap fraud who cares more about cheating at golf every weekend than anything else -- people currently being harmed in real time by the policies enacted by these monsters.
If any of these people really believed in god, they'd stop wasting their time trying to explain their cheap hypocrisies to the rest of us, and concentrate on squaring things up with him. Or her, as the case may be.
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