Once upon a time, effort was what mattered. We taught our kids to “give it their all,” and if they came up short, they’d learn to do better the next time. But somewhere along the line, our values changed.
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There’s a fundamental difference in how Trump’s base looks at things and how thinking individuals view the world. And the nature of evangelical religion — how it operates — holds the key to identifying it. There’s long been a tension between faith and science: not just faith in the sense of religious piety, but in the sense of belief without evidence.
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White supremacy denotes superiority. Domination. BLM just asserts that Black lives matter. … When one side wants to dominate the other, and the other side just wants to acknowledge the right to have a life (not even bothering to mention liberty and the pursuit of happiness), there’s no equivalency there — false or otherwise.
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Our problem is that we’d still rather spin our wheels with scapegoating and conspiracy theories than work together. Because we don’t trust each other. We’ve forgotten how to look for that spark of commonality in one another’s human eyes, and we’ve chosen instead to focus on how we’re different, and why we’re (supposedly) a threat to one another. Recognizing that spark won’t solve every problem. It’s just a beginning, and there will be a lot of work involved. But beginning is better than never trying.
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(Trump’s) been acting like Jesus, without all the nice-guy talk about loving your neighbor and turning the other cheek — which is exactly what makes him more attractive to many evangelicals than their putative founder. They feel like victims, and they want to lash out. To fight back. And Trump’s “vengeance is mine” attitude gives them permission to do so, whatever Jesus himself might have said.
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Why should people refuse to wear a mask? How is it more of a hardship to put a piece of cloth over your face than to spend several days on a respirator in the ICU (at a cost of thousands of dollars)? Of course, that won’t happen to them, because they’re special, chosen people. They’re “immune.” They don’t have to wear seat belts or condoms, either. It’s all such a terrible inconvenience. But this isn’t really about personal freedom. It’s a repudiation of personal responsibility.
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