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Bad faith: will the GOP's unholy trinity prevail? [1]
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Date: 2022-11-16
Imagine a creature with three heads. One, a weaponized, divisive, Mammon-centric, bloody-minded version of Christianity. Two, the gilded colossus of Donald Trump that was unveiled (and bowed to) at 2021’s Conservative Political Action Conference (seven weeks after the 1/6 Capitol siege). Three, the unholy, ghostly font of venom called “Q.”
It moves in ways so mysterious, some high-profile scribes have strained to get a handle on it. According to an NPR report that aired three weeks after Trump’s attempted coup, some editors at the Washington Post reportedly wondered, was Q a conspiracy? An ideology? A cult? A game?
Equally at a loss, NPR apparently overlooked the title of its own report “Without Their ‘Messiah,’ QAnon Believers Confront A Post-Trump World.” Hmm. What sort of group boasts a “Messiah?” Comprises believers? And may tend to couch itself as confronting the world?
If you said, “a religion,” you win both showcases!
Let it be stressed. The fact that “religion” means different things to different folks should serve to highlight the danger that inheres when any one set of worshippers presumes to dictate ‘my way or the highway to hell.’ My dictionary (American Heritage, 2006) shows four definitions. The first two center on an all-powerful Creator. The third embraces pretty much anything that pertains to “spirituality.” And the last one is even broader and (if you will) more fundamental: “A cause, principle, or activity pursued with zeal or devotion.”
Last year, much of the Post’s speculation about Q came from its IT sage, Craig Timberg. In keeping with that fourth, most inclusive definition of “religion,” his summation of Q as “a really animating force in people’s lives” has strongly resonated. Of course, such force suggests it can pack a wallop in the political arena (whether Trump, Ron DeSantis, or anyone else holds sway).
Questions arise. Will donkeys and most newsies continue to let theocratic rightists pretend to live by and for our country? Can we survive with but one major non-despotic/non-theocratic party? Smeared and demonized by Q and its acolytes as pedophiliac cannibals, can Dems stand much of a chance at the polls going forward?
To keep yielding politically active religion to a veritable three-headed monster would be a bad cede, indeed. If wonky donkeys don’t divine (and respond to) the stirring, all-too-human allure of the GOP’s three-headed Godzilla in our Rotunda, our days as a nation may be fraught and numbered. If that sounds harsh, keep in mind how failing to read the writing on the wall already has cost us dearly. And that Q’s forces (as Timberg suggests) look to be growing more fervent. Self-righteous. Self-entitled. And oblivious to anything you might call honest, decent, or real.
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https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/11/16/2136646/-Bad-faith-will-the-GOP-s-unholy-trinity-prevail
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