From the moment Donald Trump appeared on the political stage, I have been at a loss to understand the appeal. His history of business failures, bankruptcies, discarding one wife for a newer model (pun intended), and the record of leaving others to foot the bill didn't seem conducive to political success.
Way back when he paid a ghost writer to pen The Art of the Deal (I seriously doubt he has ever read a book, let alone written one and any information on the publication says the book is "credited" to Trump not written by him) I recalled something he "wrote" about dealing with banks. The reality is the quote was from J. Paul Getty, but Trump co-opted it as is his way.
"If you borrow a million dollars from a bank and don't pay it back, you're in trouble. If you borrow 100 million dollars from a bank and don't pay it back, they're in trouble."
It says something about a person who thinks that way. Yet Trump was chosen as President.
Obviously, I was wrong.
But surely after the disaster of the first term, people would see the light.
Wrong again. He lost, but almost 70 million people voted for him.
How can this be?
Then it dawned on me. It is a religion in the purest sense. Based on faith, ignoring reality, absent any actual evidence of validity, and assumes omniscience, omnipotence, and infallibility on the part of its progenitor.
Donald J. Trump, God's second coming.
It reminds me of the genesis (again, pun intended) of the history of other faiths where something miraculous happens. Something like an Angel with a Golden Tablet arrives, gives it to someone as the chosen divine representative of God on earth, someone who may not be the most shining example of a human to cover their prior history, and they promptly lose the tablet.
But everyone still believes it happened.
The religion here is more akin to those televangelists in those Mega churches raking in millions of small donations from those who think they can buy their way into heaven (And she's buying a stairway to heaven in the words of Led Zeppelin.)
Mr. Trump says all the right things, portrays himself as the savior, and acts and behaves as anything but, merely counting the money and working on the next invented "miracle."
Logic will not persuade them. Facts will not alter their faith. Reality is masked by their fervent hope in a manufactured myth. They are blinded by faith in a fraud, a promise more gorgeous than its realization. In the words of Aldous Huxley,
"Religion, it seems to me, can survive only as a consciously accepted system of make-believe."
Trying to discuss facts with those who support Trump, despite all the evidence of him being a king without clothing, is a waste of effort.
They believe in him, absolutely and irrevocably, and logic or facts have no effect.
They post AI-created images publicizing his close association with Christianity. The very image itself—a representation of a European-looking man bearing no similarity to the Nazarenes at the time of Jesus—underscores the use of false and misleading concept of embracing a savior more in keeping with their own self-image.
The other certain sign this adulation is a religion is how it coopts other religions. Much like Christianity co-opted December 25th for Christmas (A Pagan Holiday), the concept of a virgin birth of the savior (Zoroastrians), or the return from the dead of a savior (Baldr in Norse Mythology) for its own purposes, Trumpianism (my own invention) is co-opting Christianity. Trump's acolytes proclaim him as the Second Coming who will fight the Anti-Christ represented—in their minds—by Democrats and liberal philosophy.
One cannot have a God and faith without an enemy. Who would he smite?
Compounding their ploy, they cloak themselves in the guise of patriotism. Blind patriotism, such as fostered McCarthyism and Japanese Internment Camps.
And now they have all they need to spread their "faith" far and wide. A Savior, a doctrine of blind fealty, and the willful ignorance of anything contrary to their purpose. If that isn't a religion, nothing is.
The sophistry of targeting the unsophisticated with promises of a return to "glory days" has worked throughout history and is repeating itself here.
If ever there was a need to separate the "church" from the state, this is it.
Now let us all sit back and watch the faithful wail and gnash their teeth, "Yeah, but, what about…"
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