Inside the Cult of Trump, His Rallies are Church and He is the Gospel

[Zorro]

Trump’s rallies—a bizarre mishmash of numerology, tweetology, and white supremacy—are the rituals by which he stamps his name on the American dream. As he prepares to resume them for the first time in months, his followers are ready to receive.

Yusif Jones, standing in front of a long row of porta-potties, slides his plastic Trump mask over his face. “I’m him!” he exclaims. He puffs up his chest in his homemade Trump shirt. It’s a short-sleeved American flag pullover, onto which he has ironed black felt letters across vertical red and white stripes: GOT TRUMP? Then he flashes the O.K. sign, a silver ring on his pinky. “I’m him, dude!”

For Trump supporters like Jones, the O.K. sign—thumb meeting index finger, three fingers splayed—is a kind of secret handshake. It began as a joke—a “hoax” meant to trick liberals into believing that the raised fingers actually represent the letters WP: white power. The joke worked so well that it became real. Now, in certain circles, O.K. does mean white power—unless you say it doesn’t. Jones, a big, vein-popping, occasionally church-going white man burdened with what he calls an “Islamic” name by his hippie mother, revels in this kind of coded message, a sense of possessing knowledge shared only by a select few. It’s Möbius strip politics, Trumpism’s defining oxymoron: a populist elite, a mass movement of “free thinkers” all thinking the same thing. They love Trump because he makes them feel like insiders even as they imagine him their outsider champion. That’s what’s drawn Jones here, to the CenturyLink Center in Bossier City, Louisiana, two weeks before Thanksgiving. Like many of the president’s 14,000 followers waiting for the rally to begin, Jones believes that Trump is on a mission from God to expose (and destroy) the hidden demons of the deep state.

To attend a Trump rally is to engage directly in the ecstasy of knowing what the great man knows, divinity disguised as earthly provocation. Jones tells me about Jesse Lee Peterson, a right-wing pastor and talk show host who calls Trump “the Great White Hope.” He doubles over and slaps his knee, signaling to me that it’s another joke. “He’s black!” says Jones, meaning Jesse Lee Peterson. “I love that dude,” he says. He considers Peterson, like the White Hope himself, awesomely witty. Jones straightens up. “But it’s true!” he adds. Which is how racism works at a Trump rally, just like the president’s own trolling—signal, disavowal, repeat; the ugly words followed by the claim that it was just a joke followed by a repetition of the ugly words. Joking! Not joking. Play it again, until the ironic becomes the real.

Later, I listen to Peterson’s show. He calls Trump the Great White Hope because, he says, “Number one, he is white. Number two, he is of God.” Peterson does not mean this metaphorically. Trump is the chosen one, his words gospel.

Peterson is hardly fringe in this belief. Many followers deploy a familiar Christian-right formula for justifying abuses of power, declaring Trump a modern King David, a sinner nonetheless anointed, while others compare him to Queen Esther, destined to save Israel—or at least the evangelical imagination of it—from Iran. Still others draw parallels to Cyrus, the Old Testament Persian king who became a tool for God’s will. “A vessel for God,” says former congressman Zach Wamp, now a member of The Family, the evangelical organization that hosts Trump every year at the National Prayer Breakfast. Lance Wallnau, a founding member of Trump’s evangelical coalition, dubs him “God’s chaos candidate”: “the self-made man who can ‘get it done,’ enters the arena, and through the pressure of circumstance becomes the God-shaped man God enables to do what he could never do in his own strength.”

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/06/inside-the-cult-of-trump-his-rallies-are-church-and-he-is-the-gospel

This article describes of some of the truly insane beliefs of Trump's cult; these are the people Trump is speaking to with his idiotic remarks.

There are a lot of mentally ill people in this country.

On an aside, an annual subscription to Vanity Fair is only $8 today.

[Thomas Hurt]

1. Idolaters and Blasphemers, putting a man before God.

[Turbineguy]

2. Trump needs the adoration.

Being adored by people who are risking their lives to do so gives double the satisfaction.

[Blue Owl]

3. The Prince of Piece -- Hairpiece, that is...

n/t

[Lord Ludd]

6. Hell Toupee nt

[Karadeniz]

4. When an article is full of old testament quotes...o.k.if you're jewish...it signifies a Christian

Hypocrite....they can't find much new testament scripture to back up hatefulness, but they feel free to twist the Hebrew writings into a pretzel.

Let's start with Trump being sent by God to accomplish their agenda. One, in the prodigal son, the god/father never leaves his area, not even to help his bankrupt son wallowing among swine. Christians like to think they have a personal god. NO. God is far removed from human affairs and will acknowledge you when you're ready/qualify to enter God's realm.

Two,

When the opposition accused Jesus of obtaining power from Satan, Jesus is clear that good works cannot be ascribed to an evil source. Good comes from good. Easy peasy. All those evangelicals, knowing Trump's many acts of incompetence, failure, cheating, corruption, distort Christian theology when saying Trump is part of God's plan to help them. False.

[MyOwnPeace]

5. OMG!!!!!

There should have been some sort of governmental safety regulation that would stop people from going so far off of their rocker - but I'm sure there would have been a presidential executive order over-ruling it anyhow!