The GQP Is A Politico-Religious Cult Which Worships A False God And Graven Idol

The first three Commandments in the the Judeo-Christian tradition are:

1. I am the Lord thy God (monotheism)
2. Thou shalt have no other gods before me (false gods)
3. Though shalt not make unto thee any graven image (think golden calf)

The annual circus of far-right fringe groups at the Conservative Political Action Conference (or more accurately, the Conservative Paranoia and Conspiracy Conference) has made it abundantly clear that they not only reject American democracy – they are a platform for Donald Trump to continue to promote his Big Lie that the election was stolen from him – but they also reject the first three Commandments by making a graven image, a golden Trump, of their false god to trot around the convention hall.

The GQP is a politico-religious personality cult which worships a false god and a graven idol – Donald Trump.

All those white evangelical Christians and charismatic Catholics in the GQP base should be shocked and deeply offended, and turn away from this false god while you can before a “jealous God” punishes you. Exodus 20:5-6:

“You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.” 

The New York Times reports, At CPAC, a Golden Image, a Magic Wand and Reverence for Trump:

Tommy Zegan, a Trump supporter who had recently moved to Mexico from the United States, created a six-foot-tall fiberglass mold of the former president and painted it gold. Mr. Zegan’s Trump carried a magic wand in his left hand, a reference to Barack Obama’s quip in 2016 about Mr. Trump’s needing one to bring back manufacturing jobs. The sculpted Trump wore his customary suit jacket and red tie, American flag shorts — and flip-flops — “because technically he should be retired,” Mr. Zegan explained, “but he chose to be a servant.” [Don’t hurt yourself laughing.]

The final product, titled “Trump and His Magic Wand,” was among the more popular attractions at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Fla. On Saturday, attendees flocked to the event’s merchandise hall for photos with the golden sculpture, the scene an almost literal rendering of the Republican Party, which continues to reserve its reverence not for ideas or elected officials but for one man.

Acutely aware that his sculpture is in fact a golden idol, Mr. Zegan lied his ass off just like Donald Trump (Lying is a Commandment in this politico-religious personality cult) to falsely assert that it is no such thing. “Are you goin to believe me or your lying eyes?”

“It’s definitely not an idol,” Mr. Zegan insisted. (“I was a youth pastor for 18 years,” he noted.) “An idol is something somebody worships and bows down to. This is a sculpture. It’s two different things.”

Nice try, Dude. No one is buying it.

The defiantly pro-Trump mood at CPAC represented a culmination of a cycle that began in 2016, when Republican leaders publicly supported Mr. Trump’s nomination for president while privately presuming a landslide defeat and subsequent irrelevance. It was a pattern that held firm over the four years that followed, with many lawmakers continuing to indulge the president, all while confident that a breaking point — whether a loss in 2020 or, most recently, the riot at the Capitol by Trump supporters on Jan. 6 — was imminent.

A politico-religious personality cult of Donald Trump.

Zach Beauchamp adds at Vox, This golden statue of Trump at CPAC is a perfect metaphor for the state of the GOP:

The Golden Calf is one of the most famous stories in the Old Testament. The Israelites, newly freed from Egyptian slavery, have a crisis of faith while God is speaking with Moses on Mount Sinai. They melt down the golden jewelry to construct a physical god — a statue in the shape of a calf — to worship in place of their abstract, invisible deity. It’s a story about the allure of idolatry, how easy it is to abandon one’s commitments to principle in favor of shiny, easy falsehoods.

This biblical tale trended on Twitter in the US Friday morning because of the following video, filmed on the first day of the 2021 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Someone involved in the conference constructed a golden statue — not of a calf, but of Trump — and wheeled it out to cheers from conference attendees. “That is so cool,” one of the onlookers says.

https://twitter.com/WilliamTurton/status/1365109969490567169

There are so many reasons why this is a perfect metaphor for the state of the GOP after the Trump presidency.

The party sacrificed its commitment to political principles, including previously cherished ideals like free trade, on the altar of Trumpism. White evangelicals abandoned their alleged commitments to godliness in public servants and embraced a man accused of serial sexual assault who had an affair with a porn star and paid her hush money to cover it up. Conservatism, once seen as a high-minded intellectual tradition, became undeniably base and degraded in the Trump years.

But above all else, the statue points to the way in which the GOP remains the party of Trump even after his presidency — gaudy golden aesthetic and all. The party’s base is so committed to the former president that they construct idols of him, literally, to stand up at their premier political conference.

The party leadership understands that, of course. It’s why the vast bulk of the GOP Senate caucus embraced flimsy constitutional rationales for acquitting Trump in the most recent impeachment trial, despite clear evidence that he incited the January 6 riot at the US Capitol that threatened their lives. They are too afraid of their own voters to turn on Trump, and so have no choice but to embrace him — despite knowing how much of a threat he poses to their party and American democracy.

Trump’s hold is so powerful, in fact, that even his children are now considered leading possibilities for the 2024 GOP nomination — despite the complete lack of any relevant qualifications.

A recent poll found that Donald Trump Jr. was one of the most popular choices for the 2024 nomination, doing better than Sens. Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley combined. [This is somewhat overstated].

On Fox News Thursday night, former GOP House member and Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows openly proclaimed that it’s still Trump’s party — either Donald, Donald Jr.’s, or Ivanka’s. “We will see the start of planning for the next administration and I can tell you — the people that are at the top of that list, all of them have Trump as their last name,” he says.

The Trump crime family will not be able to run from prison in 2024.

In the Bible, the Golden Calf story ends with a furious Moses destroying the idol — dumping its ashes into water and forcing the Israelites to drink it as punishment. In theory, the voters in 2020 could have been the party’s Moses, the loss of the White House and the Senate their bitter ashwater.

And yet, here they are, still building idols of a false god.

The Times continues:

Meanwhile, their constituents’ devotion to Mr. Trump only hardened. For many voters, Mr. Trump became the party. And at CPAC, many of the thousands of attendees sporting Make America Great Again hats made it clear that their loyalties no longer lay with the institution itself. [See, Trump Loyalists Spurn ‘Failed Republican Establishment of Yesteryear’.]

Despite four years of professions of fealty to Mr. Trump from the party’s elected officials and their orienting of the G.O.P. around his image, dozens of conservatives this weekend bristled at the Republican label, castigated the party’s current congressional leadership and vowed to leave the party altogether should Mr. Trump decide not to run for a second term in 2024.

There’s the door – don’t let it hit you in the ass on your way out.

The party’s viability in the future, these people suggested — some as they proudly displayed their well-worn Trump 2020 T-shirts — was entirely contingent upon its members’ willingness to remain fixed in the past.

White grievance politics, i.e., Trump’s Big Lie that the election was stolen from him, just like Hitler used the Big Lie that Germany’s victory in World War I was stolen from them by the Jews after his failed beer hall putsch in 1923 and his subsequent imprisonment for treason, which he used to write Mein Kampf, and later rise to power. We’ve seen this bad movie before.

“We’re so disgusted by Republicans that, honestly, if Trump’s not running, we don’t care who wins,” Sany Dash said as she worked at her Trump merchandise booth.

[Ms.] Dash, an Indian-American from New York who called herself a “Day 1” Trump supporter, appeared angrier at the moment at Republicans, and specifically at Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who has urged her party to break with the former president. Ms. Dash said she was preparing to open a store in Wyoming in the next two months and call it Bye Bye Liz.

“Liz Cheney is a descendant of a warmonger,” she said. “Sorry, we got into war with Iraq, and so many people died — millions of people’s lives changed.”

She continued: “I don’t care what she has to say now. It’s like the Bush girls in Austin. I don’t care how woke you are in Austin, just because now you get along with Michelle Obama, but your father killed a lot of people. So excuse me, I don’t want anything to do with you people.”

Like all of the dozens of CPAC attendees interviewed, Ms. Dash said she hoped Mr. Trump would run for president in 2024. There are some other Republicans she likes, including Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota — “I like Kristi Noem, because she fights back,” she said, calling her a “female Trump” — but she said she would stick with the G.O.P. only if Mr. Trump, or someone who pledges to lead as he did, was the nominee.

“I mean, I’ve heard the rest of them — if they actually come through, that’s wonderful,” she said. “If they don’t, I’m going to be out of this party, just like everyone else. It’s that simple.”

Again, there’s the door – don’t let it hit you in the ass on your way out.

Della Striker, 70, is a lifelong Republican and, for the past three years, has been a fitness instructor at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s resort in Palm Beach, Fla. But she said her allegiance to Mr. Trump had come to transcend political parties .. in 2015, she said, she heard a voice.

“I’ve heard the Lord five times in my life,” she said. “I woke up in 2015 — I was waking up, and it said, ‘I want you to pray for Donald Trump.’”

Six years later, Ms. Striker said she was “very upset.”

“Seven Republicans turned on him,” she said, referring to the senators who voted to convict in Mr. Trump’s impeachment trial this month.

The Times goes on to interview more delusional nuts like this in this piece.

“No opinion,” Mr. Zegan, the sculptor of the golden Trump, said with a shrug when asked about Mr. Pence. Mr. Zegan, like several of those interviewed, expressed the false belief that the loosely affiliated group of far-left anti-fascism activists known as antifa was responsible for the riot at the Capitol (“It’s eventually going to come out,” Mr. Zegan promised). But while some said that Mr. Pence had “let down” Mr. Trump by presiding over the congressional certification of Electoral College votes, even they seemed not so much angry toward him as indifferent.

As for Nikki Haley, Mr. Zegan was a bit more animated, pulling out his phone and showing a photo of a painting he had made of her. “I would love to present it to her, but I’m kind of disappointed in her,” he said. “When she bad-mouthed Trump — she should’ve just kept her opinion to herself.”

In other words, two figures who were once considered rising stars in the G.O.P., who for years have had an eye to 2024, appeared to have less currency at CPAC than a freshman congresswoman known for her conspiracy theories and her devotion to Mr. Trump. [Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Q-FL).]

Asked how he defined the Republican Party right now, Mr. Zegan grinned weakly. “In shambles,” he said.

I can’t imagine why.

Huffington Post adds Faith Leaders Denounce The Radicalization Of White Christians In Wake Of Capitol Riot:

Nikki Toyama-Szeto, executive director of the advocacy group Christians for Social Action, is still deeply disturbed by the way her religious tradition was distorted during the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Some rioters carried crosses, Christian-themed flags and signs. A group that stormed onto the Senate floor  bowed their heads for a prayer led by a conspiracy theorist who thanked God for “filling this chamber with patriots that love you and that love Christ.”

“It scared me because I know the ways that people have twisted faith to fuel violence and justify all kinds of behaviors,” Toyama-Szeto told HuffPost.

“I just felt like I needed to stand up and bear witness that this is not what all Christians believe and, more specifically, that I think that those actions grieved God’s heart,” she added.

On Wednesday, Toyama-Szeto joined more than 200 Christian leaders who released a letter denouncing the faith-linked nationalism displayed at the insurrection and pledging to work toward quelling far-right extremism within evangelical circles. After the letter went public, more than 900 pastors, professors and other Christian leaders added their signatures.

The initiative was organized by Christian activist Shane Claiborne and Pastor Doug Pagitt, executive director of Vote Common Good, a faith-based voter mobilization group that spent much of the last election cycling making a Christian case against Donald Trump’s reelection. Claiborne and Pagitt convened a series of virtual meetings in mid-February among leaders from an array of Christian traditions. The letter addressing Christian nationalism emerged from those meetings.

Sociologists have been tracking the rise of Christian nationalism in America for several years. Researchers say this faith-fueled movement seeks to codify America as a Christian country by leveraging the religion’s influence in the public sphere. Christian nationalists tend to believe that America’s success is part of God’s plan and that the federal government must promote Christian values.

The signers of Wednesday’s statement ― theologians, musicians, megachurch pastors and other leaders from a range of backgrounds ― claim this is a flagrant distortion of their faith. Pagitt said Christians have a responsibility to speak up.

“In the past, the Church has responded vigorously to distortions of our faith ― holding emergency councils in order to affirm the core values at the heart of Christianity, and to denounce distortions of Christianity inconsistent with those values,” he said in a statement announcing the letter. “The dangerous rise of extremism in our communities merits this sense of urgency, and I look forward to partnering with these leaders and others to address it.”

[T]he letter explicitly called out white evangelicalism as being especially susceptible to Christian nationalism “because of a long history of faith leaders accommodating white supremacy.” It condemned Christians’ support of conspiracy theories, such as those spun by QAnon, as well as their participation in extremist groups. Some rioters were later identified as members of far-right organizations, such as the Proud Boys ― an anti-immigrant and misogynistic group whose members were spotted kneeling during a prayer for “reformation and revival” before marching to the Capitol on Jan. 6.

“We urge faith leaders to engage pastorally with those who support or sympathize with these groups, and make it clear that our churches are not neutral about these matters: we are on the side of democracy, equality for all people, anti-racism, and the common good of all people,” the letter stated.

[A] recent study from the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, found that more than a quarter of white evangelicals believe that the QAnon conspiracy theory about a cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles at war with Trump is completely or mostly accurate. In addition, according to Religion News Service, nearly half (49%) of white evangelicals believed that anti-fascist activists were “mostly responsible” for the attack on the Capitol ― a claim the FBI has debunked.

Rev. Adam Russell Taylor, president of the progressive faith organization Sojourners, told HuffPost that conspiracy groups like the Proud Boys are “antithetical to the Christian faith and values.”

This week’s statement may not reach those who remain sympathetic to the insurrection and are deeply loyal to Trump, Taylor said. But he hopes it can influence what he believes is “a far larger group” within American Christianity who may have liked or voted for Trump but who have a hard time reconciling that support with the violence displayed at the Capitol.

“Jan. 6 was a wake-up moment for many within the church about the poisonous danger of white supremacy and Christian nationalism, including among many more conservative Christians,” Taylor said.