Evangelicals and Trump may be playing with Devil’s Fire….Plenty of comments on Evangelicals and Trump are here at the bottom. But first, overall the GOP agenda & mindset have come to revolve around Trump & his echo, which poses real risks for our nation. It’s incredibly unfortunate there’s no rational/pragmatic conservative messaging source anymore that has much sway with the conservative base. The base has fallen instead for the garbage since the bombastic echo spreading their message through TV networks, radio stations & the internet have coordinated a remarkably uniform narrative, & by repeating the same basic nonsense over & over, it’s sunk into the psyche of their pliant audiences. Through years of echo pandering & brainwashing, the standard ideological mantra of the GOP base has transitioned from rational to radical.
With conservatives shifting way to the far-right, it’s brought on such a huge gap between the two parties, polarization & gridlock are the unavoidable net result. Our system of government requires working together & arriving at bipartisan agreements, but the wide divide keeps our leadership from being empowered or nimble enough to solve significant problems. Such angry nihilism latching onto the minds of the GOP base has brought us intransigent/unworkable policy positions along with electing President Trump, whom even to this day his starry-eyed fans continue to bow at the president’s commands despite his chronic dishonesty & bullying. It’s a toxic swamp fever destroying the integrity of the GOP that needs broken, so here at thevoracs.com we seek to expose Trump & his echo for the extremist/destructive forces they truly are, since in our current circumstance the good can only come about by first repelling the bad. You can help us out in our earnest & vital endeavors by sharing this information.
The real fake news comes from Trump & his echo, whereas the real news comes from the real media. If fake news is characterized by lying, that’s a surefire giveaway. Trump & his echo lie repeatedly & are constantly being called out, but their base in the bubble keep ignoring the facts. Fox has fallen in line the past few years by echoing the rest of the echo: What-s-Killing-Democracy-in-Am
These excerpts below from opinions/trump-is-no-joke
Some of President Trump’s detractors regard him as an object of ridicule to be laughed at and dismissed as a narcissistic, bombastic, uncouth showman, totally lacking in class. Trump may be all that. But there is nothing amusing about him. This president may well be the single greatest threat to our constitutional form of government and the rule of law to have ever occupied the White House. Considering our traumatic national experience with President Richard M. Nixon, that is saying something. Trump is hell-bent on overriding long-standing constitutional controls over the arbitrary exercise of executive powers. Undermining freedom of the press is a case in point.
Trump is waging war on institutions of government — the Justice Department, federal investigators, members of Congress — any and all who pose a threat to what he wants to be: America’s unchallenged ruler. That aim is what sets Trump apart from other modern day presidents. It comes through in the way he comports himself. In his view, he has no equal, there is none grander. No one in the world is more deserving of adulation and approval. We now know, if we didn’t before, that Trump is a compulsive liar. He is emotionally abusive to those around him — Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. His toleration for criticism, nil; his store of empathy, empty. Instead of the admiration he richly deserves, he’s being victimized by his own government — at least, he is in his own mind.
Which gets us to the threat that Trump poses. Unlike Nixon, if Trump — or his clan or campaign — is confronted with wrongdoing, this president will not go away quietly. Trump has made it clear that the law, evidence and the criminal-justice system mean little to him if they conflict with his interests. This is not a wish. But the prospect of Trump legally on the spot should be viewed with trepidation. He believes, I fear, that authority over his fate rests solely with him. The rule of law could soon be at stake. There’s nothing the slightest bit funny about that.
As I keep repeating over & over & over again, our constitutional democracy may be teetering on the edge with this unhinged ruler: donald-trump-and-the-crumbling
Even if our institutions of democracy are strong & empowered through historical traditions enough to withstand this Trump/echo bombardment, we shouldn’t take any chances, so I encourage patriotic Americans to speak out now about the dangers we’re witnessing, while forwarding on this information. We wouldn’t want to wait until it becomes too late, since it may be irreversible should America ever hit a tipping point on the slide towards totalitarianism. He becomes even more dangerous as his popularity goes up, which could be happening with the optics over the North Korean talks & the constant touting of a strong economy. Trump may not deserve credit for either, but he would be emboldened by rising approval ratings to ratchet up his dark power grab.
As Trump wages war on our constitutional democracy, doing it incrementally & under the radar so most Americans can’t perceive the threat, a key component to his strategy is attacking/delegitimizing a free press: Pathological-Liar-Donal
In other news, this move cannot be good: net-neutrality-rules-repealed-
Evangelicals and Trump a match not made in Heaven
I fully believe many conservatives now supporting Trump & placing blind faith in the echo haven’t a clue how extreme their views have become. The degenerative change in the standard conservative mindset has occurred gradually & incrementally over the years, to where they’re probably completely unaware to the degree their views have transitioned from rational to radical. If that wayward shift keeps moving unrelentingly to the far-right, next it’s our freedoms that could gradually drift away without realizing it (until it’s too late).
I fear a similar slippery slope is playing out within the evangelical community. When polling once revealed evangelicals believed low moral character did not negatively impact a political leader’s ability to do their jobs was down at 30%, just five years later (last year) among evangelicals that same question climbed to more than 70%. So in other words, evangelicals saying morality matters in a leader fell more than 40 percentage points in just 5 years! No doubt that reflects Trump’s ascension to the role of their omnipotent master: donald-trump-republican-party
From my perspective, it looks like Trump & his extremist cronies are driving the narrative for the GOP from which the base has fallen in line, while similarly much of the recognized evangelical leadership today may be charlatans driving their church flock towards that unholy marriage. Much of these wayward beliefs are communicated through news sources which have over time built up plenty of credibility & trust with their conservative audiences, expertly coordinating a core message using common tribal language inside the bubble, through a medium which has even come to include TV networks like Fox News & Christian Broadcasting Network. This bewildering lovefest between Evangelicals and Trump is bound to end badly.
For anyone who seeks to curry favor with Trump, it almost seems the prerequisite to even approach the throne is to practically give a blood sacrifice & bow at his feet to worship. It’s no secret evangelicals represent the religion who swoon the most over this earthly leader. Is that worth the price for favorable judges & legislation? Trump’s over-the-top attempts to pacify that evangelical following looks to be an unhealthy alliance that could easily backfire. True freedom of religion cannot entail the state favoring one religion over another, or a government trying to jam their preferred religion down our throats. A faith should stem from our own free will. Rogue governments of Muslim nations are notorious for forcing Islam on their people as a required religion, actually using it as a means to control their populations & repress/penalize non-sanctioned belief systems.
I’m likewise very uneasy when the U.S. Government designates through legislation a preference for a particular Christian religion. Would a state-sponsored religion change based on the faith of each new president? Furthermore, such threats to repeal the Johnson Amendment we’ve heard bandied about are also misguided, which could turn churches into political advocates despite their tax exempt status, while future leadership change in DC would likely translate into a severe backlash. Churches should be content about being tax exempt & separate, not preaching politics from the pulpit or turning financial offerings into Super PACs. Some of these faith leaders no longer concentrate on their higher calling, since it’s all about furthering extremist politics in support of their emperor king: evangelical-group-plans-
In evangelicals, the world is now perceiving a church abandoning any pretense of moral values, & no amount of pro-Christian legislation or Supreme Court Justices can ever undo that kind of damage to the core of the faith. The article excerpts below may be a bit too cerebral for my fellow-evangelicals who bash me for my views which they perceive as antithetical to our Christian faith, while what I’m really imploring Christians to do is contemplate whether the cost to our evangelical faith is really worth this profane allegiance to a vulgar earthly king, that is mostly perceived by rest of the world as the religion of trumpgelicals. The outside world increasingly see Evangelicals and Trump as practically joined at the hip. My criticisms are not out of spite, but a sincere concern a spirit of deception is driving many away from the one true omnipotent God into the enemy camp (or no camp at all): christian-america-dwindling-in
The insights inside this link have serious cautionary notes coming from an evangelical leader (this-evangelical-pastor-helpe
Schenck attributes this transformation to his late-career doctorate in ministry—specifically, his research on Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor who questioned the symbiotic, and problematic, relationship that emerged between Adolf Hitler and 1930s German evangelical churches. Schenck began seeing parallels in the closeness between the American evangelical church and the Republican Party, and wondering if the religious institution to which he’d dedicated his life had become complicit in providing a spiritual veneer for a hate-filled political agenda. Schenck says the result of this codependence culminated in 2016, with four-fifths of white American evangelicals supporting President Donald Trump, whose behavior often stands in sharp contrast to traditional Christian values. Schenck, still an activist to his core, is now a voice of ethical reform in American evangelicalism and public policy, specifically on gun safety.
Schenck explores this Trumpian phenomenon and his personal evolution in his new memoir, Costly Grace: An Evangelical Minister’s Rediscovery of Faith, Hope and Love. He is self-critical as he explores the forces that gave way to the ultimate abandonment of his former values, highlighting particular moments when his thirst for power and influence overrode his pillars of faith. Ultimately, the work is a meditation on the thorny relationship between religious leaders and politicians, and the dangers that lie in getting too close to the sun. I recently sat down with Schenck to discuss how evangelicals might extricate themselves from the moral contradictions of their Faustian bargain with the GOP, the “unwitting dupes” among his peers, and if disaffected evangelicals can be brought back into their faith.
I really had three groups of people in mind: One was my evangelicals, my tribe—the people I still very much love. In some ways, I see them as unwitting dupes. They got played. Some of them I see as terribly vulnerable; we all give in to our worst impulses at moments, and I want to give them the benefit of the doubt. So I wanted to take them through the process I went through and let them observe it. If they identified with any part of it, and it’s helpful to them, that will be wonderful. The other group I had in mind were the disaffected evangelicals, mostly young people who have left the evangelical fold. Part of the reason they can’t process [what has happened in the evangelical church] is because we have refused to name these failures. Once you name them, that can be very, very helpful to someone’s recovery. And then I had a reader in mind who was just curious, trying to make sense of these evangelicals—what we really believe and how we think. I know it’s frustrating and infuriating for a lot of people, and they just think, ‘”What is in these people’s heads? What are they thinking?” You know, I think sometimes people imagine something much more sinister than is really present there. There are plenty of sinister impulses, but there’s a whole system at play.
I say in the book that the Trump phenomenon may portend the total collapse of American evangelicalism, which for me would be sad, but not the saddest thing. We have an old phrase in evangelical parlance built on some biblical texts: “What the devil means for destruction, God means for good.” So, could God use this terrible thing in the end to bring about a better form of evangelicalism in America? We may reach a toxicity level where the patient must succumb, but we believe in resurrection, so out of death can come life…So, maybe this is the demise of what we now know as American evangelicalism, and largely, the Trump phenomenon is a symptom, rather than a cause. We made this terrible deal with Donald Trump because we were already demoralized. He didn’t demoralize us—he is the evidence of our demoralization.
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