The Anti-Christ-in-Chief is celebrating the resurrection of all that is supposed to be good in the world, by castigating a caravan of Central American refugees bound for the U.S. border; while also doubling down on his repudiation of DACA. AND while throwing NAFTA under the bus in favour of his long-promised border wall. All good fodder for his alt-Christian base. Amen.
Trump is the violent collision between Globalized fantasy and reality. The infantile, "I want my cake and eat it too" skimming of cheap labour and cheap junk at Walmart, while attempting to maintain a non-existent racial status quo.
I read this interesting article in the newspaper today attempting to explain how Trump still manages to maintain 70% of the white evangelical vote. The article says that his religious base see Trump as the new King David - a deeply flawed man sent to "be an instrument of God". Unfortunately, the truth is the exact opposite. The reason why U.S. evangelicals have wholesale abandoned their Christian values in embracing Trump is because he gives outlet for their latent uncontrollable alt-Christian rage. He is how they take revenge on the left wing Communist conspiracy to destroy America. Archaeologists on the other hand will be clear eyed on the fact that forty years of Republican orthodoxy in the form of *free trade* and tax cuts for the wealthy, is what destroyed the empire. In other words, Trump gets it half right, which is more than you can say for the rest of his party.
Ironically, right next to the article attempting to explain the inexplicable, was another article (no link, sorry) explaining why now feels so much like the end times. In other words, to some Trump is the beginning, to many others he is THE end. I submit that more than a few in his evangelical base are praying he's the end as well, which is what makes this era truly dangerous. Moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem is just one step closer to Armageddon. The article went on to explain in far more banal terms, that we are in the midst of a monumental shift from the old way to the new way, which makes the future seem much less certain than usual. Our familiar bedrocks have dissolved into shifting sands. "Numbness" is the order of the day. It cited the fact that we have now become a "global" society which is why tweets from Trump are more widely followed than local politics. The second article of course much more closely explains today's anxiety about the future: We ARE in a generational shift from the old to the new, and the old are none too happy about it. Which is what explains the Trumptopian cliff dive of faith. The young have been thrown under the bus, and the old are self-destructing in real-time. Trump doesn't represent the wise Davidian "beginning" he represents what the fool does in the end. His erratic day-to-day policy shifts are recipe for global implosion, sooner rather than later.
Personally I don't fear for the future. The future will be the same as the past: grow, make, buy, sell, eat, go. How we do things changes constantly, what we do has stayed largely the same for my entire lifetime. Human beings are locked in a continual state of reinventing the wheel. Constantly believing that "now" is somehow different. The part of our brain that controls emotion and instinct is hardwired. It doesn't change. In a better world we would eventually find time for: be, learn, care and even evolve.
What will go under the bus however, is our current set of hollowed out corporate "values" - those that tell us that getting, buying, and having is all there is in life. Whereas, the old way was was called "more", the new way will be called "less".
Those who don't see the old way ending, ARE what is ending.
Those who don't see the old way ending, ARE what is ending.
