The essence of the conflict between modern conservatives and progressives isn’t policy, as the Trump years made clear.

It has nothing to do with taxation or abortion or the any of the other issues that came to define the two parties from Reagan through Obama. Those things are ephemeral, especially on the conservative side. They think nothing of abandoning supposedly “core” principles such as opposition to Russia or “law and order” if they no longer serve their needs of the moment.

(Ask the police officers assaulted and beaten by the January 6 insurrectionists if Republicans are champions of law and order.)

But if it’s not about policy or principle, what is the nature of their conflict?

Owning the libs

Simply put, so-called conservatives define themselves by their opposition to the other side: “owning the libs.” This is how Donald Trump has maintained his popularity. The more Democrats hate him, the more the Republican base loves him — not because of anything he’s done, but simply because “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

And the more Trump confounds Democrats, the more the Republican base loves it. This leaves Democrats in an impossible position: The worse Trump’s behavior got, the more certain they were that Republicans would repudiate him. Bragging about sexual assault. Excusing racists. Demanding political favors while withholding aid from a foreign government. Encouraging an insurrection.

Each time Trump did something worse, they had no choice but to call him out. But the moment they did, the Republican base would rally to his defense because they’d come to view Democrats as worse than Russians, sex offenders, racists, and even traitors. If the Democrats ignored Trump’s misdeeds, they’d be encouraging the behavior (and worse); but if they tried to hold him accountable, they’d be creating a martyr. It was, and remains, the ultimate Catch-22.

Trump saw this and adopted a strategy that was pure evil: Do the worst he possibly could, so he could force the Democrats to condemn him. This would then boost his popularity with the base even more. Democrats had backed themselves into a corner by promoting a “cancel culture” of zero tolerance and zero forgiveness, which created a backlash that Trump exploited to insulate himself from consequences and enhance his power.

How much of this has been strategic and how much is simply a reflection of Trump’s vile character is open to debate, but it doesn’t really matter much in the end. Either way, the result an Orwellian nightmare in which the worse the offense, the more fervent the defense of the man who’d committed it.

The evidence be damned

Still, this alone can’t explain why conservatives came to believe the election had been stolen from Trump, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

The evidence was not just overwhelming, but entirely consistent. It came from Democrats, independents, and even lifelong Republicans. But it didn’t matter, and it wasn’t even all Trump’s doing. If Trump were the sole catalyst, he’d have been able to persuade his followers that the COVID vaccine was safe and effective. He couldn’t, however, even though he tried and had every reason to do so: Developing the vaccine was one of his few successes — and doubtless the most significant of his administration.

That leaves open the question: If Trump’s divide-and-conquer strategy wasn’t the only factor at work here, what else was in play?

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. This goes far beyond the debates over creation vs. evolution that have long served as a proxy war between the scientific community and the faithful. It’s a matter of two different mindsets. One bases conclusions based on facts; the other creates facts to support its conclusions.

Faith isn’t based on evidence. It’s not about believing in miracles or even agreeing with Jesus’ teachings. It’s a divine gift: the result of grace. You either have it or you don’t. Those who need miracles as proof before they’ll believe are part of a “wicked and adulterous generation.” So the scientific method isn’t just a nuisance, it’s an abomination.

Self-defeating

This is not, needless to say, the view of all Christians. Thomas Aquinas and a long line of other theologians have sought to explain God to the rational mind — even while acknowledging that the mind can never fully wrap itself around the infinite. Popular apologists such as Josh McDowell sought to prove the resurrection and explain other thorny scriptural problems by presenting what he called Evidence that Demands a Verdict.

But others within Christendom have frowned on this approach, arguing that faith isn’t really faith if you need evidence to back it up. The verdict has already been rendered.

You might ask yourself, “Why have faith in Jesus as opposed to Allah or Zeus or a can of Drano?” To the faith crowd, such questions are immaterial. Everything’s predestined to occur, and God hardens or softens hearts as he sees fit. (Just ask the pharaoh whose heart Yahweh hardened against Moses, a man carrying God’s own message. If this seems blatantly self-defeating to you, you probably don’t have faith.)

It's easy to see how this kind of faith can morph from religious conviction into wishful thinking and, thence, into denial.

That’s exactly what happened with the COVID vaccine and again in the aftermath of the 2020 election. Antivaxxers and proponents of a Trump victory started with a conclusion (the vaccine is evil; the election was rigged) and worked their way backward in search of proof. When they couldn’t come up with any, they stuck to their guns rather than admitting they were wrong.

Because they couldn’t be wrong. They had to be unwavering in their faith, regardless of the evidence. In fact, many likely viewed that evidence as a test of their faith; it only persuaded them to cling more tenaciously to their false beliefs. This is, conveniently enough, a handy way to avoid cognitive dissonance — and to keep from exercising that most Christian of values: humility.

Whose lie?

While many in the media have (accurately) framed election denial as “the Big Lie,” those on the opposite side have the, well, opposite view. They believe the certified election results were the real lie, orchestrated by evil elites who encouraged mail-in voting (which often favors Republicans) and installed rigged voting machines (with the help of Hugo Chavez’s ghost!).

“Faith-alone” Christians love to quote the warning in 2 Corinthians that Satan “masquerades as an angel of light,” and it is therefore not surprising that his servants should “masquerade as servants of righteousness.”

Fake election results “masquerading” as the real thing? That’s not a very big leap, and it’s exactly what these folks are prone to believe. They’re the same people who tend to dismiss Republicans who disagree with them as RINOs — Republicans in Name Only, masquerading as servants of the truth (aka conservatism).

More Orwellian stuff: Evidence is a lie; faith is the only truth.

And Trump is the new messiah whose word is infallible. How do we know? He said so!

“Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of... Trump.”

Stephen H. Provost is the author of Trumpism on Trial, a three-book series on the Trump presidency and its consequences, as well as several books on religion, mythology, and philosophy.