945 WORDS
DONALD TRUMP AND ALEX JONES DEGRADE AND PERVERT OUR CULTURE
Political discussion has always been full of aggressive, rude, and false accusations. But it’s gotten a lot worse! Here are facts, impressions, and my opinions. I highly recommend Sarah Posner's well-researched book detailing how Trump co-opted the Evangelicals for their votes.
It’s now much worse since Trump began his presidential campaign in 2016. His deviant, outlandish, and disgusting styles were well displayed in the GOP presidential debates. His actual incompetence as a president quickly showed up in the first months of his presidency and steadily went downhill (Woodward, 2018: Titled, FEAR: Trump in the White House).
Who voted for him?
About 85% of voting Evangelical Christians voted for Trump. Writer Sarah Posner’s 2021 book UNHOLY is subtitled, HOW WHITE CHRISTIAN NATIONALISTS POWERED THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY, AND THE DEVASTATING LEGACY THEY LEFT BEHIND. Spawned by conspiracy theorists from churches and pulpits, the Evangelicals believed that:
“To Trump’s religious devotees, God specially prepared him for this role [of a really strong leader, like King Cyrus, who reigned from 539-530 BC!]. Rose Troyer, who traveled to the Values Voter Summit [my emphasis] with her husband, Mark, from Lititz, Pennsylvania, tells me she began to see that Trump was a leader prophesied in the Bible during the 2016 Republican primaries, after listening to evangelist Lane Wallnau and author Fox News personality Jonathan Cahn, both of whom claim to have received divine prophecies about Trump’s victory” (Posner, 30).
Wallnau told the excited crowd at the Values Voter Summit that, “God can anoint a wrecking ball.” And, “Foretelling that Trump would be a wrecking ball president is one of eleven prophecies Wallnau claims to have made about Trump that have come true, all proving his victory in a spiritual battle between satanic and godly forces” (Posner, 31).
I finished reading Poser’s excellent book a full two years ago. But I did not pay enough serious attention to how Christian activists were vilifying “LGBTQ rights as a dark movement forcing anti-LGBTQ Christians to accept a radical, fringe set of norms about gender and sexuality, in violation of their religious freedom” (Posner, 30).
So when I tried to comprehend the political animus against LGBTQ, I didn’t see the importance of the Christian Nationalist views that their rights were being abused because LGBTQ people were becoming more noticeable and protected by policies.
Conservative Christians were complaining like they were the actual victims. But in fact, many governors were enacting many laws (1) removing protections for LGBTQ school children, (2) censoring LGBTQ books, and (3) intimidating such children from expressing their LGBTQ tendencies.
OBSERVERS OF AMERICAN CULTURE SAY WE’RE MORE AGITATED AND INTOLERANT
In 2023, after Elon Musk bought Twitter; and, he sought to allow more so called freedom of speech on the platform. Musk ran a poll which he said showed 70% of the voters wanted to allow the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones back on X(Twitter). Musk wrote that, “The people have spoken and so it shall be.” Previously, Twitter employed content moderators which attempted to filter out offensive content. News reports suggest there are fewer moderators now.
From The Bulwark’s Charlie Sykes, 11/16/2021, Alex Jones has lost four separate defamation lawsuits against Sandy Hook families. He now owes over a billion dollars to the victims of his awful lies.
Jones has repeatedly broadcast from Infowars that the Sandy Hook massacre was a “hoax.” Jones said it was fake, something made up. And in a sneaky, clever, insincere manner (i.e. disingenuously) Jones was quoted as saying: “I couldn’t believe it at first. I knew they had actors there, clearly, but I thought they killed some real kids. And it just shows how bold they are, that they clearly used actors. I mean they even ended up using photos of kids killed in mass shootings here in a fake mass shooting in Turkey—so yeah, or Pakistan. The sky is now the limit.”
Alex Jones has pushed out much dramatic falsehood hurtful to grieving parents. Further examples are:
Jones labeled as 100% “false flags,” the mass murders in Aurora, Colorado; the Columbine school shootings, and the nightclub attacks in Orlando, Florida and San Bernadino, California.
Just imagine how any parent would feel when their child’s death was called a falsehood and monetized by an unsavory businessman like Alex Jones and his Infowars.
VOTING AND POLLING DATA HAS SCARY IMPLICATIONS
There is a lot of voting data that can only be explained by voter ignorance. Trump is an anomaly. Lots of people hate him but vote for him anyway. Debriefed voters often justify their vote by misinformation. For example, republican voters asked why they plan on voting for Trump say Biden has ruined the economy so we need Trump; however, Biden and his administration have been very active and participated with Congress in passing laws and bringing the economy back from high interest rates and inflation; and at present, our economy is in pretty good shape.
The threatened recession has not happened. Biden has been flying around the world and interacting with many heads of state. Biden may be old, but he has a competent cabinet who gets things done. On the other hand, from the early days of Trump’s presidency, there was chaos due to his ignorance of federal government, his supreme arrogance, his distractability and that he was unable to benefit from the staff that had been given to him.
The candidate most Americans believe is going to be the next
president, the “wrecking ball” president Trump, is said by historian raters to
be one of the worst ever, getting the lowest grades for leadership. This from USA Today. https://www.usatoday.com/staff/2646358001/susan-page/ When Trump mentions Obama, Trump badmouths him. But the routinely cordial Obama ranks in the top ten of presidents!
Any references not found above are on the page BIBLIOGRAPHY / WORKS CITED in the VotersGettingControl.blogspot.com/ blog.
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