MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
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MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Order today at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
Why are white Christians sticking so closely to President Trump, despite these claims of sexual indiscretions? And why are religious individuals and groups that previously decried sexual impropriety among political leaders suddenly willing to give Trump a “mulligan” on his infidelity?
Our new study points to a different answer than others have offered. Voters’ religious tenets aren’t what is behind Trump support; rather, it’s Christian nationalism — their view of the United States as a fundamentally Christian nation.
Comments
Buchanan, in a nutshell. Or out of the shell, maybe.
by moat on Mon, 03/26/2018 - 7:42pm
Ah but I think Bannon is the one who did it for Trump, got him this label. Trump's natural inclination is a very nationalist patriotism pretty devoid of religion, just U.S.A. #1. Bannon is whole hog Christian Western civilization # 1. That's what gives it wider appeal than just evangelicals. Bannon also shares the pitchfork thing with Pat.
by artappraiser on Mon, 03/26/2018 - 8:20pm
For sure, Bannon is the one who got them on the bus.
What keeps them on board is that Trump is sticking with the plan.
So far.
by moat on Mon, 03/26/2018 - 8:29pm
Actually, Christianity isn't Bannon's bag, either, though he tries to exploit it for his own ends. And Buchanan has always been more obsessed with white nationalism than Christian nationalism. We're really talking about Jerry Falwell (both of 'em) and similar folks. They overlap with the racists, but there's a different emphasis.
by Michael Wolraich on Mon, 03/26/2018 - 9:18pm
A while ago, you pointed out that I was citing Buchanan the author of books rather than the politician who appealed to whoever would find him appealing. Fair enough. But those books anchor the idea that our identity as citizens in this city state of America expresses itself in the founding documents as secular concepts that were only possible because of the development of Christianity. So, even if it doesn't look like it is Christian, the thing is Christian.
Saying the above does not to diminish the importance of the testimony from self identified Christians that politics required them to choose unpleasant means to achieve an end. That logic to my mind is as torturous as that issued by Buchanan. Meeting in the same America.
by moat on Mon, 03/26/2018 - 9:49pm
Fair point, but I'd say that Buchanan really favors "Western culture," which is a euphemism for white skin. Naturally, he understands western culture as Judeo-Christian, but it's the European pigmentation that's most important to him. For instance, he's much more afraid that America will be destroyed by (Christian) Latino immigrants than by radical Islamists.
by Michael Wolraich on Tue, 03/27/2018 - 12:21pm
I agree. For Buchanan, culture is like the Highlander, there can only be one.
by moat on Tue, 03/27/2018 - 1:22pm
Have you forgotten Unforgiven, or "How the West was Won"? Buchanan's from the former, neat trappings, but that old style's been deconstructed, much as Blood Meridian tore what heart was supposed to be in it out and tossed it on a pile of decaying corpses. None since The Magnificent Seven has the myth been trampled so bad.
by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 03/27/2018 - 3:52pm
Holy Kurosawa, Batman. The nostalgia for lost identity kept alive through acts of ritual violence is not just for guys with fake Scottish accents anymore.
by moat on Tue, 03/27/2018 - 4:39pm
I strongly disagree, Michael. He is radically pro-Judeo-Christian CULTURE. That will snag the Falwell evangelical types every time. (They don't care if you yourself haven't been born again, they care that the Judeo-Christian culture is taken back to the 50's and then maintained. Hence all the crap about things like, for example, Hillary and Obama trying to install sharia law!) It's the culture wars. And they are Christians. Like they would argue, the founders of the U.S. were. Not heathen seculars either (don't argue the Deist thing with these people.)
Here's one link where he explains how his is specifically Catholic. Here's another.
Here's one on the whole coalition of like thinkers @ TheAtlantic: Steve Bannon's Would-Be Coalition of Christian Traditionalists/From American evangelicals to Russian Orthodox, they're united against Islam. Is that enough to overcome all that divides them?
Here's the whole thing straight out, a Feb. 2017 piece @ Quartz.com, which explains the appeal:
What Steve Bannon really wants
by artappraiser on Mon, 03/26/2018 - 11:18pm
p.s. A good example of major Bannon/Trump supporters: Dennis Prager (of the constant hectoring on "How is the Godless west working out?") and Rabbi Shmuley Boteach of the way of the conservative g*d-fearing Jewish family values. Obama was a Muslim, you know. That's why they hid his birth certificate. You have to look at religion in a different light to get this, as maintaining Judeo-Christian civilization, not as obeying the commandments about adultery. Henry VIII had 7 wives and fooled around on the side. So did some popes. But they won the culture wars. (To believe this, you do have to rationalize all the stuff away about pogroms, the Holocaust, papists vs. Martin Luther, northern vs. Southern Ireland, etc. AND THEY DO TRY TO RATIONALIZE IT AWAY, don't they?) No problem for Trump, he bought in, with the birth certificate thing, with the anti-immigrant thing, etc.
by artappraiser on Mon, 03/26/2018 - 11:39pm
p.p.s. Comes to mind ex-Soviet Putin is on board, carrying around mom's crucifix and virtually single handedly responsible for the return to power of the Russian church in Russians' lives (and wars!)
by artappraiser on Mon, 03/26/2018 - 11:51pm
" Hence, many white Christians believe Trump may be an effective instrument in God’s plan for America, even if he is not particularly religious himself." Can also explain why Putin's biggest supporters are old Christian women complaining about their lazy kids and noting he knows how to make decisions. He's firmly in bed with the ageless greatness of the Orthodox Church in old Mother Russia.
by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 03/27/2018 - 1:11am
Every wannabe conservative superhero wears a Culture War cape, but Bannon doesn't strike me as a true believer. Faith is just a weapon in his arsenal.
by Michael Wolraich on Tue, 03/27/2018 - 5:28pm
From the study abstract:
Unique and independent my azz.
The most distinctive mythological narrative of America is the manifest destiny of the protestant white male. The Christianity, the male and the white are inseparable.
Racism is not epiphenomenal, unique or independent of Christian nationalism, from the link:
The point of the study, published iin The Sociology of Religion, seems to be a cover-up of the fact that white, Christian and racist is as American as spple pie.
by NCD on Mon, 03/26/2018 - 11:41pm
I think it's easily summarized as Multi-Culti values = the devil.
Then there's that: conservative = no change. Evolution = the only constant is change, therefore cannot be true.
The rulebook? Wherever it's Judeo-Christian values you swear on it in court, and when you take a vow.
Edit to add: Protestant work ethic, increasingly one of my least favorite things. (And historically, poor Catholics always fell for it, but rich powerful ones didn't. )
by artappraiser on Mon, 03/26/2018 - 11:50pm
"Christian nationalists" also hated Catholics and crosses.
Independence Rock, Wyoming:
by NCD on Tue, 03/27/2018 - 12:59am
Yeah, papists were evil, for a half millenia or so, like Jews were for a millenia or so.
But what happened is conservative Catholics like Bannon now side with the Judeo-Christian family values thing, that's been brewing since Vatican II multi-culti invasion and takeover of the good ol timey ways.
Similar with Jews, there are your good ones and your bad ones now. Owing partly to new interpretations of Book of Revelation and Israel and the like.
It's all still a plan, Stan, written by God in a book. They just got some things wrong in the past about what the book said, but they've got that straight now....
by artappraiser on Tue, 03/27/2018 - 1:16am
p.s. it's actually kinda ironic because conservative Catholics now don't have a problem with Luther Calvin et. al., rather they can see what went wrong with the church getting too elitist, the only Protestant that bother them is the multi-culti eliteness of the modern liberal Episcopal church with it's wimmins and gays and immigrants and all that...
Oh, I should throw in that the anti-papist thing in the U.S. was also fed mightily in the 19th century by the anti-immigrant breeding hordes from Ireland, Poland, etc. by the WASP ruling class. They grew more inclusive, as it were, as time went on, you just had to be a WAS, the P part was no longer required. BIG IRONY: eventual use of birth control is what made them acceptable, hah!
Edit to add: Comes to mind: Father Coughlin helped with the assimilation! So did Joe McCarthy! Communism is godless, ya know.
by artappraiser on Tue, 03/27/2018 - 1:33am
The current Vatican openly criticizes Conservatives Catholics for siding with hate.
https://www.npr.org/2017/08/06/541877769/vatican-addresses-catholic-trump-supporters
Pope Francis is siding with the student marchers
https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/25/europe/pope-palm-sunday-tells-youth-to-speak-out/index.html
Like the so-called Evangelicals who are willing to make a deal with the Devil, Conservative Catholics have lost their way.
by rmrd0000 on Tue, 03/27/2018 - 6:11am
It was just before Jesus was ready fully to take up His mission- fully knowing of course its ordained dreadful end. .
Along with His divinity He was also human enough to want to savor a few more days like this - just walking with Mary in the Spring sunshine- before He took up the Godness thrust upon Him.
Not to be. Jesus and the Blessed Virgin came upon a crowd. Mostly men as always on these occasions. . Getting ready to stone a Woman Caught in Adultery..
Realizing He could delay no longer Jesus walked into the cleared space in middle, between the Righteous enforcers and their terrified prey,
Jesus: "If you are to do this thing you intend , I command you to ensure that the first stone be thrown by whomever among you is without sin.¨
Silence as He stares directly into the eyes of each of them, individually ,in turn. With them avoiding that penetrating visual interrogating glance . staring at the ground instead. Then .....
Stone whizzes past Him.
Jesus: ¨MOM !¨
by Flavius on Tue, 03/27/2018 - 12:23am
careful, you're wandering into Last Temptation of Christ category
by artappraiser on Tue, 03/27/2018 - 12:59am
The book The Last Temptation of Christ was amazing. The movie? Jesus pulling someone's heart out of their chest was probably the worst of its excesses, but there were many. Read the book. [a novel that starts out with Judas leading a pack of 11 disfigured geeks, paralytics and mutants across the sage knows it's going somewhere]
by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 03/27/2018 - 1:09am
Yeah I considered that . My atheism was preceded by years of Chesterbelloc, Mauriac, Bloy , Greene, Bernanos and Dostoyevsky. Mixed with a dash of C.S. Lewis as in :
Apprentice
Screwtape:
I developed great respect for the ¨Commonweal ¨ Catholics I got to know when we were in that walk - up behind the Divinity School. And for their assurance their Savior would of course have saved that woman.
As for the bolshy BVM. Should it actually turn out to matter, surely if she were born ¨ free of sin ¨- and "full of grace " she ´d be indulgent of a sophomoric joke. Wouldn t she.
Wouldn´t she ?
by Flavius on Tue, 03/27/2018 - 10:16pm
Jake Tapper had an interesting exchange with Conservative pastor Greg Locke about Stormy Daniels on Twitter. Locke was casting stones at hooker Stormy Daniels. Tapper reminded Locke of the way Jesus dealt with a crowd ready to stone a prostitute. Locke ignored the meaning of the Biblical passage.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/jake-tapper-right-wing-preacher_us_5ab9a945e4b008c9e5fa8b8e
by rmrd0000 on Tue, 03/27/2018 - 7:53am