"It Is Rarely Noted That Trump Was the Clear Choice of White America": Recent Commentary on White Evangelicals Continuing to Burn Hot for Trump

PRRI, "White Evangelical Protestants Attitudes Toward Donald Trump, 2015 – 2019":

White evangelical Protestant attitudes about Donald Trump have moved through three distinct phases since PRRI has been tracking them beginning in 2015: 

1. Before Trump became the official Republican nominee for president in mid-2016, Trump's favorability never reached the majority among white evangelical Protestants. 

2. Between Trump's nomination and the inauguration, Trump’s favorability among white evangelical Protestants advanced past the 60-percent mark. 

3. By the time of his inauguration in early 2017, Trump's favorability among white evangelical Protestants jumped to nearly three quarters (74%). While Trump has struggled to lift his favorability numbers among the general population above the low-40-percent range, throughout his presidency, favorability of Trump among white evangelicals has remained exceptionally high, between 65% and 77% with an average favorability rating of 71%.

What We Are Now Living Through Creates a Serious Crisis of Religious Faith

In the video above, discussing the death of 16-year-old Carlos Gregorio Hernandez Vasquez in a detention center for immigrants this past May, Mika Brzezinski states that Nancy Pelosi is filling a leadership void and a moral void in this country. Joe Scarborough then states that evangelicals used to fill this moral void and no longer do so:

SIX HUNDRED ICE Agents Haul Away 680 Workers as Man in White House Heads to El Paso: What "Pro-Life" White Christians Have Wrought

HAPPENING NOW: In Forrest, Mississippi where one of the #ICE raids happened nearby Children of those who were arrested are left alone in the streets crying for help. Strangers and neighbors are taking them to a local gym to be put up for the night. FULL STORY TONIGHT ON @WJTV. pic.twitter.com/s2zuTTRYfM

— Alex Love (@AlexLoveWJTV) August 8, 2019

SIX HUNDRED armed thugs ICE agents.

They hauled away 680 workers.

"We Must Call the El Paso Shooting What It Is: Trump-Inspired Terrorism" — Commentary on White Supremacist Roots of Recent Mass Shootings

El Paso Shooter:
Not an immigrant.

Parkland Shooter:
Not an immigrant.

Tree Of Life Shooter:
Not an immigrant.

Las Vegas Shooter:
Not an immigrant.

Borderline Bar Shooter:
Not an immigrant.

Sandy Hook Shooter:
Not an immigrant.

Charleston Shooter:
Not an immigrant.

— Michael Skolnik (@MichaelSkolnik) August 4, 2019

Peter Baker and Michael D. Shear, "El Paso Shooting Suspect's Manifesto Echoes Trump's Language":

I Refuse to Hate: People of Faith Challenge GOP Racism, or What's Wrong with the U.S. Catholic Bishops?!

Chris Morley comments on Bilgrimage,

"We Are Watching as a President Returns Naked Racism to the White House": Commentary

The graphic above is the lead headline on Huffington Post this morning.  My commentary about it:

My Thoughts on Sharing the Photo of the Drowned Bodies of Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and His Daughter Valeria

We must force ourselves to keep seeing.

Yesterday, on social media, I shared a photo of the bodies of Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his daughter Valeria who drowned recently trying to cross the Rio Grande and enter the U.S. after weeks of waiting to enter. As I shared the photo, I stated that, though some media outlets had chosen to hide it behind a click-screen, in my view, we must not let ourselves look away: we are doing this to fellow human beings, and we need to see what we are doing.

"Indescribable Cruelty": Commentators on the Concentration Camps Now Being Operated by the United States Under Donald Trump

7/ For 10 years, not one migrant child died in U.S. government custody.

Since September, at least 6 kids have died in the custody of DHS or HHS.

How many more kids must die before we end this madness?

— Alvaro Bedoya (@alvarombedoya) June 21, 2019

The firing of gay employees of Catholic institutions is hardly the most horrific thing happening in the world today. There's also this:

Owen Jones on Obligation to Confront Trumpism, "A Resurgent Global Far Right" That Is Racist, Xenophobic, Misogynistic, and Homophobic

Holy hell did he snappic.twitter.com/TVWM9ONKGq

— Na'ama 🌈 (@iknowplacesmp6) May 24, 2019

Owen Jones is rapidly becoming a journalistic hero of mine. In the clip above a few days back, after Theresa May shed tears on announcing her intent to step down and the media found those tears the most important thing in the world to talk about for a time, he stated,

"With Nationalists Topping the Polls in Two of Europe's Three Main Founding Nations, It's Hard to See How Any of This Is Worth Celebrating"

The same politicians who claim they are for life fight living wages, want to cut food stamps & don’t want people to have health insurance. There’s a lie going on somewhere. https://t.co/AHgy1kefOH

— Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II (@RevDrBarber) May 28, 2019

It's very foolish for us to stick our heads in the sand and pretend that what is unfolding around us is not actually happening, and that the recent European elections give us reason to breathe a sigh of relief and say that the hard fascist right is not making inroads in very many places in the world now — when this is simply untrue, and this development should intently concern us:

Why I Continue to Insist That It's About Racism, Misogyny, Xenophobia, and Homophobia: A Footnote to My Recent Response to Responses

It's certainly true that every society or nation is different, and what applies to one won't necessarily apply to another. But I'm pointing out that there's a wave of manufactured right-wing rage across societies today, and asking why that wave is roiling society after society. It's entirely unhelpful to respond to such a sounding by saying, "Ah, but they're all different from each other, and you're not seeing the difference." This is to ask us to see only trees and pretend a forest is not growing there.

Why I Continue to Insist That It's About Racism, Misogyny, Xenophobia, and Homophobia: My Response to Your Responses

Thank you all for your thoughtful and valuable responses to my reflections about the wave of manufactured rage (racist, misogynistic, xenophobic, and homophobic) now driving political movements in many places, in my view. I've read and considered them. My thoughts:

The Wave of Manufactured Rage Sweeping Across Societies Now, and Silliness of the "Economic Alienation" Explanation: It's About Racism, Misogyny, Xenophobia, and Homophobia

Shorn of any ideological hue, this is populism distilled into its purest form: a pared-back rage over an apparently corrupt political establishment's failure to abide by the democratic will of the people. 

~ Paul Lewis, "Rage, rapture and pure populism: on the road with Nigel Farage" 

Farage and Brexiters are now riding a wave in England. Hard-right fascist-leaning movements are gaining strength globally, including across Europe. India's far-right groups just won a major victory in that nation. What Trump and his supporters represent in the American context is cloned again and again across nations now. My reading:

Ed Kilgore on White Evangelicals as Heart of Trump Base: "Committed to a Common Desire to Take America Back to Its Days of Greatness in the 1950s"

In "White Evangelicals Are Still the Heart of Trump's Base," Ed Kilgore comments on new Pew Research Center data that some commentators are erroneously interpreting to mean that white evangelical support for Donald Trump is waning. As Ed Kilgore notes, it's not waning. To the contrary, it remains robust, especially among the most churchgoing and committed of white evangelicals, 70 percent of whom report strong support for Trump.

Now New Zealand: Murderer's Manifesto Proclaims Trump as "Symbol of Renewed White Identity and Common Purpose"

#BREAKING: In manifesto, Christchurch, New Zealand mosque shooting suspect said he supported U.S. President Donald Trump "as a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose," but not as a policymaker. pic.twitter.com/RHW2SwzjXs

— Matthew Keys (@MatthewKeysLive) March 15, 2019

Things I've read this dark morning that are illuminating, and which I want to pass on to you:

Covington Catholic Pro-Life MAGA Boy Threatens Wide Legal Action v. Journalists and Dioceses as "Operation Stand Your Ground" Rolls Out on U.S. Campuses

Yesterday these posters were found spread around ASU Tempe campus... Lmk break this down for you right quick pic.twitter.com/mnNH9UsxfI

— Komal Kaur (@fiercesoftkaur) February 4, 2019

 

And now there's this development in the story of the Covington Catholic pro-life MAGA boys, as Sarasi pointed out to us in a comment here yesterday: Carol Zimmerman writes,

Have Watched Additional Footage of Covington Catholic Boys, and People Are Right: Such Questions It Raises! — Here Are Mine

Are we really going to debate whether those kids shouting ‘build the wall!’ in the face of a Native American while attending the March for Life in MAGA hats were just misunderstood?

Seriously?

— Joshua Holland 🔥 (@JoshuaHol) January 20, 2019

I've watched the additional footage of the Covington Catholic boys and Nathan Phillips circulated on social media yesterday, and it has really shifted my perspective. Now I have so many questions:

End of Year Takes & Hot New Year Takes on Religion in American Politics & Culture: Evangelicals White & Black, Exvangelicals, & King Cyrus in the White House

Lisa Sharon Harper via Eliza Griswold, "Evangelicals of Color Fight Back Against the Religious Right""

They're more white than Christian.

Family Funerals, Immigrant-Bashing, and the Weaponization of American Catholicism: Place to Which "Pro-Life" U.S. Catholic Leaders Have Brought Their Church

At a Catholic funeral for a parent, is it normal or usual to print at the bottom of the funeral program that anyone not in communion with the Roman church is not welcome at communion — especially when the SSPX members of this family trot to communion? /1

— 𝚆𝚒𝚕𝚕𝚒𝚊𝚖 𝙳. 𝙻𝚒𝚗𝚍𝚜𝚎𝚢 (@wdlindsy) December 28, 2018

"Only the Good Has Depth That Can Be Radical": Hannah Arendt on Banality of Evil — Critically Important Role of Thought and Imagination as Fascist Tide Rises

A key point of Hannah Arendt's analysis of the banality of evil is that evil is essentially stupid, as it manifests itself in the social arena. Evil lacks imagination. It does the same (misogynistic, racist, xenophobic, homophobic, elitist, fascist) thing over and over, expecting always the same results — since doing the same  (misogynistic, racist, xenophobic, homophobic, elitist, fascist) thing last time worked. So surely it will work again….