The American Taliban under Trump

 

 

 

I first heard the term; “The American Taliban,” on the series; “The Newsroom,” which was created & written by Aaron Sorkin. But as is often the case, intelligent television doesn’t go over well with American viewers so it was a short-lived series.

However, we were fortunate in that Sorkin laid out the key features of the American Taliban in one of the series’ episodes & I am using them as an outline for this essay. Determine for yourself how accurate a portrait they give us of America as of January 21, 2020, the day the farce of the Impeachment against the miscreant in the White House began.

 

“Ideological purity: Fundamentalism is an term used to describe religious movements that reject modernism (particularly scientific thought and secularism), that claim to find all truth, including science, history, and psychology, in their sectarian scriptures, and that often try to impose some degree of religious law on all citizens of any government they are able to control. The type species is the Christian Fundamentalism of the 1920s, which is a reaction against Darwin’s theory of evolution; by extension the term is applied to Haredi Judaism and Wahhabism in Islam. In more abstract terms, it can refer to any movement to recapture an ideological “purity” within a religion, that supposedly has been lost by mainstream adherents of the religion at large;”

    • This “ideological purity” is an absolute that all fundamentalist leaders must strictly stick to whether they be Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or whatever. They must claim to know the Will of God & therefore, any who dares to question their claims is a heretic & must be driven out or killed in order to preserve the purity of their version of the truth. One would think that the founding values & principles of a religion would also have to adhere to this “ideological purity,” but clearly this isn’t the case when it comes to American “Christian” evangelicals. Why? Because Trump is the poster boy of how to violate every one of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount guiding principles for self-professed Christians but they love him anyway.
    • Compromise as weakness: and again, I’m confused because if compromise is weakness, why have the 60% to 70% who proclaim absolute support for Trump, compromised their “principles” & “values” by supporting such an evil person? Of course, the GOP who have gotten nearly everything on their wish list, won’t compromise an inch with the Democrats because they, the GOP have the upper hand because they control the Senate. And Mitch McConnell stated it very clearly from the beginning of Obama’s presidency that the GOP was going to block every single act or law that Obama tried to pass. This shows clearly that McConnell & the GOP don’t give a damn about the American people, only about maintaining & expanding their power. And again, the “Christians” believe that any compromise with non-Christians, especially Secular Humanists is a de facto bargain with the devil.

      Obama bent over backwards trying to compromise with GOP & as a result, we got Trumped!
    • A fundamentalist belief in scriptural literalism: Yep! Like back in the days of the Old Testament, people really did live for 800 to 900 years, Noah actually took two of every animal species on Earth into the Ark, etc. etc. etc. And if you dare to question such things, you are guilty of heresy and may be stoned like the Islamic fundamentalists enjoy doing in Afghanistan but it’s usually women who are the ones getting stoned for some reason?
    • Denying science: this one goes almost without saying as the one I just covered makes clear i.e. Science easily proves the absurdity of such claims as people roaming the earth with dinosaurs, etc. so organized religion has been at war with science throughout most of history. Just reflect on the fate of  Galileo for example. In fact, the modern variation of Christian fundamentalism basically sprang from the days when Darwin’s Theory of Evolution started being taught in our public schools. And tragically, in Trump’s reign of ignorance, Climate destruction denial which denies the scientific proof of the overwhelming majority of climate scientists on the planet & the Christian fundamentalists are tickled pink about it because they can’t wait for the destruction of our planet & believe Jesus is going to thank them for their ignorance & their help in bringing an end to the world. Remember, Jesus loves you!
    • Unmoved by Facts: Yep & as Trump’s resident witch, Kellyanne Conway tells all their faithful,” there are alternative facts. “Of course, there are in their alternate realities. I wish someone would dare Kellyanne and Trump to demonstrate their alternative facts by jumping off a high roof to prove that gravity isn’t a fact either. Naturally, the Trump team spout alternate facts daily but we, non-believers have always referred to alternate facts as lies. In fact, I think Trump is going for the world record in alternate facts with his list of lies which is somewhere around 16,241 but hey, who’s counting?
    • Undeterred by new information: a polite euphemism for stubborn as a mule, willfully ignorant, and you may as well give up hope of them ever opening their minds. They have their “faith” and that’s all they need. These are just the kinds of people who make good, little Nazis, cult followers, etc.

      a third of the U.S. public has drunk Trump’s Jonestown Kool-Aid
    • A hostile fear of progress: like their fear and rejection of science & facts, progress is seen as a threat to their calcified beliefs that they desperately cling to or else their entire belief structure could collapse. This scares the hell out of these pea-brains & they’ll kill you rather than admit their errors. Of course, they conveniently ignore things like the automobiles which they drive were invented due to progress. And it never ceases to amaze me how they constantly love to portray themselves as the victims of our society. When they are the bullies & the ones who persecute people, who don’t accept their hypocritical principles & values & seek to enslave us all.
    • A demonization of education: this is a subject that is dear to my heart because I have loved education all my life, been an avid reader since second grade, & have worked as an educator for the majority of my work career. In fact, my first book is about the Christian fundamentalists war on secular humanism which they see as a clear & present danger to their reign of error & terror. It’s not a coincidence that Trump appointed Betsy DeVos as our Secretary of Education, a person who never attended public schools, who is rich, & who is pushing Charter Schools down our throats.
      “It Can’t Happen Here,” right?

      Also bear in mind that one of the first things that all dictators, whether religious (theocrats) or oligarchs do is either shut down all the public schools or take them over. Why? Because as people slowly become more & more informed, they begin to question established “authorities” like the Church & the State. {if you’d care to spend 10 mins. watching this video, you’ll gain a great overview of how the GOP has duped so many Americans into focusing their anger on the govt. rather than the corporate cockroaches who deserve the lion’s share of the blame for why we’re in this terrible state of being}</li>

    • A need to control women’s bodies: this is one of those aspects of fundamentalists’ beliefs that I can only speculate on because it is hard for me to fathom their fear of women? Perhaps it’s as simple as their insecurity as men & their wish to always remain in control over their families? And by being the authoritarians in their communities as well as in their families, they never have to worry about pleasing their wives sexually?

      Trump’s “Christian” values i.e. “Grab them by the pussy.”
    • Severe xenophobia: strangers & foreigners who are by definition strangers, like knowledge, new information, etc. are a threat to their belief systems which are clearly very fragile or they wouldn’t be so insecure about it. Why? Because contradictory ideas may slowly infect their communities, their families and they will lose their precious control. Of course, this also helps to justify or rationalize their racism & their desperate attempts to maintain the purity of their ideology. And once again, they just conveniently ignore all inconvenient truths & facts i.e. that America is a nation made up of immigrants from all over the world. If these frightened & dangerous children had their way, they’d live in a nation not unlike what Hitler wanted for Germany where everyone was blue-eyed & blonde.
    • Tribal mentality: well, as I just pointed out, fundamentalists ideally would like to live in a world where there are as few physical differences between their faithful as possible but given the realities of this world, a close second is a common mentality or way of thinking about the world. And this is why they paint a picture of you’re either with us or against us as our illustrious, chicken-hawk president, George W. Bush, the Coward from Crawford declared when he launched his “War on Terror.” This simplistic & obviously ignorant Manichean view of the world makes it easier for their faithful to carry out their crimes against humanity in the name of Jesus, God, Allah, or whoever.
    • Intolerance of dissent: this attribute of the fundamentalist mindset is one of the scariest in my book & again reveals how dangerously ignorant these people are. Jesus was clearly a dissenter in his time in that he spoke out against the Roman authorities & committed civil acts of disobedience. And in America’s history, our founding fathers were all dissenters from British rule. The United States would’ve never even come into existence without dissent but fundamentalists don’t want us to remember these facts or to ever even learn about them. Again, showing how weak their faith is!
    • Pathological hatred of U.S. government: and here we have another one of those very convenient crossing of paths by the “Christian” fundamentalists & the Republican party. You see, my imaginary reader, the Republicans swore that they’d overturn every single part of FDR’s “New Deal” which established much of what we now refer to as the “Social Safety Net,” for all of us not born with a silver spoon in our mouths. And they’ve been spreading their anti-government propaganda ever since i.e. you too can become rich if you don’t rely on the government for unnecessary handouts which only make you lazy & prevent you from becoming self-sufficient & wealthy. We’re supposed to ignore the fact that most of the rich & the giant corporations who have monopolies over us, have been subsidized by that same evil government. Yep! The same government that keeps handing out tax breaks to the rich, subsidies for their Research & Development, tariff protections, the infrastructure that allows them to do business, the military to protect their corrupt businesses overseas, etc. etc. etc. And no, this isn’t a free pass in terms of excusing our government’s long track record of crimes against humanity. But, the government is the only force capable of standing up to the corporations when their greed is just too far overboard. Moreover, it does occasionally stand up for us & does provide some assistance to we, the people, every now & then. The corporations behind this decades long propaganda war against the government want to abolish everything the government does to help us but preserve every handout & protection it provides them with our tax dollars. So, when I hear these morons i.e. Alex Jones, Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, etc. railing against the government, I wish that I had a public forum from which I could call out their hypocrisy. Hell, if it weren’t for our government allowing the corporations to steal our public airwaves, these conspiracy theorists & traitors like Jones, Limbaugh, & Beck wouldn’t have the platforms they do to spew such bile and fear & hate.

 

Unquestionably, the Trump campaign team knew they’d have to throw these dangerously crazy evangelicals a big bone to gain their support for Trump, hence Pence as his running mate.

Trump is clearly one of those with the attention span of a goldfish

 

Some argued no big deal, the vice president does nothing of any significance but the fact that were Trump to have a heart attack or something, we could end up with this American Taliban as leader of the free world. Yeah, pretty scary shit, right?

 

A lot of us who live on either coast tend to forget or perhaps never knew just how powerful these “Christian” fundamentalists are & how many millions of regular Americans listen to them on the radio daily as well as to the Rush Limbaugh show. And we ignore these people at our own peril!

 

How soundly can we sleep knowing we have someone who prays for the end of the world, a heartbeat away from the presidency? Remind you of anyone? Osama bin Laden perhaps but with the mightiest arsenal of nuclear weapons on the planet at his fingertips?

 

Scare tactics you say? Fuckin’ A! But bear in mind that the corporate cockroach masters who own the media & Washington D.C., are using scare tactics day-in & day-out and have been for well over 40 years to scare us into spending over half our budget on weapons of mass destruction while letting our health, education, & welfare go to ruin.

I am trying to warn you but we have become so used to the steady barrage of fear mongering by the powers that be that honest warnings like mine fall on deaf ears I fear? If the public knew of how many close calls we’ve had regarding nuclear exchanges between the U.S. & Russia, they’d be shaking in their boots.

 

Conclusion, we have a 73-year-old who is obviously cognitively impaired to many, if not most of our mental health professionals. And he is also clearly morally bankrupt to all but the willfully blind & ignorant who proclaim they’ll support him no matter what. Gee? I wonder if they’d still support him if he raped their 12-year-old daughter? After all, he was buddies with Jeffrey Epstein though of course he now denies it.

I wonder what Trump’s buddy, Jeffrey Epstein might have told us about Trump?

But he did hire Epstein’s lawyer, Dershowitz, to help with his fight against his impeachment. And Dershowitz succeeded in getting Epstein a mind-boggling deal after being convicted of sexually trafficking teenage girls.

 

Yeah, once again we see on full public display those good, wholesome American values the American Taliban love to brag about along with their GOP (Greedy Old Pigs) pals.

 

So, we have this spoiled, rich brat as president who more resembles a teenage girl spending the majority of her day on Twitter spreading gossip & rumors and viciously attacking other girls’ character with lies. And our “commander in chief” who can’t even be bothered to read his daily briefings because he’s most likely not even able to comprehend their complexity, is sitting in the White House playing with matches in a gasoline-soaked room. And if he continues playing with the powder kegs in the Middle East, he may just make the American Taliban’s dream of the Apocalypse a reality?

“Christian” evangelicals’ Wet Dream

 

As for me, I’m an atheist who believes in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and that’s how I live my life.

 

Rob DeLoss, Gold Beach, OR on January 22, 2020

 

March 2024
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