Supporters of President Trump gathered in Washington on Saturday to perform a “Jericho March.” Nothing fell down.
“Stop the Steal,” having become more and more laced with religious language ever since that Lin Wood show, reached its culmination over the weekend as Trump-allied ministers and others in ministry-adjacent roles spoke assuredly of the hundred visions they had received before the taking of Saturday’s toast and tea, all from God himself and all ensuring them of the justice of their politico-religious exercise.
This expression of fundamentalism and the campus fundamentalism that now enjoys mainstream success, the kind displayed in the streets all summer long, are too akin for comfort. Their methods, their posture toward “the system,” their language about the stakes, their unforgiving demand for fidelity are all quite similar.
Both accept as true Greg Lukianoff’s and Jonathan Haidt’s third Great Untruth: the untruth of us versus them, wherein “life is a battle between good people and evil people.” It’s as tempting an untruth as any other so frequently peddled in politics. Little benefits a candidate or his cause more than needless and endless stakes-raising.
To avoid any accusation of caricature, here is Michael Flynn from just a few days ago: “We’re in a Battle of Good vs. Evil — It’s Time for God-Fearing Americans To Fight.” That’s the headline of an op-ed in which Flynn also writes, “The battle we are engaged in cannot be fought with only human weapons: It requires the intervention of God because in a war against the forces of evil, only the Lord can obtain the victory.”
Allen West, chairman of the Texas GOP, suggested that “perhaps law-abiding states should bond together and form a Union of states that will abide by the constitution.”
Remove God, change a few words, and how stretched are you, really, to compare this with the ethos of ShutDownDC, which planned on exploring some “differences between protest and rebellion” back around Election Day?
Here’s some more from Flynn: “We do not want a world governed by tyrants whom no one has elected and who want to have power in order to destroy us.” Flynn continues, “We understand what their plan is: to eliminate dissent, subdue any criticism and outlaw those who do not submit unconditionally to the dictatorship of the ‘new world order.’” What is he talking about?
Conservatives, and even many of those not enthusiastic about all that the president brought with him, spent his term batting away crackpots who said basically the same things: that Trump is fascism’s introduction to America, that democracy was an inch away from dying forever, that Trump was illegitimately elected. The conservatives argued that institutions were, if anything, systemically good, well-founded, and worth protecting.
Flynn took a double shot and raised the revolutionaries. Presumably, Joe Biden is among the tyrants whom “no one” elected. Denial is really a choice. And bipartisan election boards all over the country certified vote counts. A Trump-appointed judge granted the president’s lawyers a hearing in a federal court in Wisconsin. Dictatorship, the elimination of dissent, the outlawing of criticism: None of them have won the day. The stage has been open for Trump’s team.
God forbid anything truly illegitimate, truly threatening, and of the gravity assumed here, plague the republic before these passions are calmed. A great many would lack the eye to discern it.
