OK, I'm on

As we hit less then 5 days to Trumpocalypse 2025. Ugh.

TOO MUCH GOING ON

The horrific continuing SoCal wildfires catastrophe. The bizarre Trump cabinet nominees,

The bizarre Trump Day One Executive Orders threats. The intractable Gaza-Hamas atrocity.

 

The creeping theocratic threat posed by U.S.  Evangelical Christian Nationalists ...

 

to wit,

Money, Lies, and God: A Conversation with Author Katherine Stewart about the Movement to Destroy American Democracy

INTERVIEW EXCERPT:

We have underestimated the importance of fact-based discourse on a functioning democracy. And we have failed to appreciate the many institutions and mechanisms that our society has developed over time to make this kind of reasonable democratic discourse possible. I know we all like to complain about the media, about “the academy,” about public schools, about the judicial system and all the rest. But these institutions and their practices have played, and must continue to play, a crucial role in making it possible for our society to deliberate on matters of public concern on the basis of fact and evidence, and not superstition or fantasy or brute power.

All of that apparatus of reasonable discourse stands in the way of would-be demagogues, or those who seek to protect unreasonable power and oligarchy. So the anti-democratic reaction has set about trying to destroy it, and tragically they are having some success.

Alongside the institutional changes there has also been a very damaging cultural shift away from truth. The New Right is in some ways reaping the harvest that the post-modern, deconstructionist left sowed over the past half-century. Maybe it felt good at the time to say that all claims to knowledge are just an expression of power, or that reason is a partisan project. Except now it is the New Right who seem to be saying that truth is in the hands of he who wins power, and reason is just a woke plot. People like Christopher Rufo appear to have taken up with gusto the deconstructionist idea that all truth is relative, and if you repeat a lie often enough it will count as truth.

Donald Trump managed to come back into power thanks to the Christian nationalists and their funders, operatives and enablers: Religious nationalist countries, you write, are often “theocratic in a certain fake sense – that is, they are regimes that endorse a particular religion and attempt to impose that religion and its homophobic and patriarchal values on society. But they are more often best described as cronyistic kleptocracies with strong militaristic features and absolute suppression of free speech and political opposition.” Is that about to be us/the US?

If MAGA gets their way, then yes, and we have a role model in Russia, which is a good Christian country by its own reckoning, but is a corrupt, kleptocratic oligarchy with a sad economy. That’s the direction in which the Trump/Musk administration appears to be taking us. Whether we go there depends on whether we have a collective will to fight for a better future.

Given that Trump and his allies are about to take power, how do you think understanding the alliance that brought them to power can help us resist this powerful authoritarian movement? Can we take advantage of the internal contradictions to slow or stop our descent into fascism?

We can’t fight something unless we recognize it for what it is. We need to understand how it works, and details matter. So that’s a crucial first step -- a clear-eyed assessment of the strengths and the weaknesses of this movement that brought us to this point. And yes, this movement is full of contradictions and divisions, and we need to expose and exploit them. I do think it’s important here to not overestimate the movement’s strengths. Yes, Trump won an election, but he did so by a very narrow margin. He won primarily not because the country “turned MAGA,” but because of clever and sustained voter turnout operations on their side, coupled with a lack of enthusiasm among the political opposition. Those of us who wish to preserve our democracy wouldn’t wish to emulate MAGA’s most craven tactics, but we would do well to learn from their strategic resolve...

You would seriously do well to read the entire interview carefully. Her new book comes out on Feb. 18th.

 

 

They gave me a pre-pub galley to review (thanks!). I am embargoed, however, from quoting excerpts directly prior to release date.

I've been onto this militant "Christian Nationalism" topic for a long time. Relatedly. "Project 2025," anyone? Acciding to Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts, the foundational constitutional prerogative of "Pursuit of Happiness" is only properly construed as the "Pursuit of" ("Christian") Scriptural "Blessedness."

 

I'm not making that up,

Much more shortly...