If you are a white conservative Christian in America…

I have terrible news for you:  As much as you wish it were true, you are not persecuted.  You are not a victim.

Here is an utterly typical example of the Fake Victim mentality, taken from a vast menu of similar expressions

The “professional Catholic” crowd are like “professional” politicians. Each personally enriches themselves off the backs of those they are supposed to be helping. Not much a difference between DC Swamp and the Catholic Establishment Swamp.

— Michael Voris (@Michael_Voris) February 18, 2020

Yessirree Bob! Become a Premium Subscriber at Church Militant and get the exclusive inside story from Superstar Michael Voris, who alone can save you from the Catholic Church. He’s a bold rebel who is not making a fortune from suckers by portraying himself (just like Donald Trump) as an outsider while standing boldly against Dark Persecuting Forces even as he commands (within his Cult of Personality) a reputation for absolute infallibility the pope could never dream of. He’s a victim. An underdog.

So too, are those poor, poor heavily armed bullies threatening to kill the governor of Michigan. Victims all. Guys marching under the banner of the swastika in Charlottesville? Victims of “white genocide”. Gun nuts accusing parents whose children were murdered at Sandy Hook of being part of a conspiracy? Victims. People babbling that the Pope wants to persecute Latin Mass-goers or claiming that the New World Order is plotting against those who like communion on the tongue? They, not people sick and dead of COVID, are the true victims.

Likewise, those asking for people to wear masks out of consideration for the sick? They are nothing less than Nazis. No, seriously. Having to show consideration for somebody else is exactly like Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Russia put together. The guy who runs First Things says so, and that journal is supposedly the leader for the intellectual elite of the Religious Right.

Again and again, one demographic–white conservative Christians–who have for years bragged that they are “prolife” are suddenly hell bent for leather on seeing themselves as the heroes in a weird Protestant Fundamentalist narrative in which a sinister global conspiracy fakes (and launches in cooperation with the ChiComs) a pandemic (called a “Plandemic” by the paranoids) whose sole purpose is to persecute Real Christians[TM] by forcing them to… show a little courtesy to other people so that they don’t die.

Seriously. That’s it. That’s all. No trains hauling Christians to be gassed by the millions. No firing squads. (On the contrary, it’s the Gun Freaks threatening to shoot governors who are the ones brandishing weapons.) As apocalypses go, this is pretty low-key.

Not that Christians aren’t being persecuted. It’s just that they are brown and poor, which the selfoids in the white Christian MAGA Cult love. Christians at the border are having their children yanked from them to the delight of the white Christians in the MAGA cult. They cheer it in between braying about their liberties being taken from them. Brown Christians get murdered in cold blood while out jogging or even sleeping in their own homes and the armed white Christians pumped about their heroism for defying the gummint respond by saying “They should have complied” even though the victims did nothing wrong. It’s only they themselves who don’t have to obey the law.  Once again, the watchword of the MAGA Cult is “Sacrifice for thee, but not for me.”

Which is where the phony claims of “persecution” come from. There are real persecuted Christians around the world. Christians abroad are among the most persecuted religions on earth:

But in the US, the persecuted Christians are persecuted by other Christians, overwhelmingly white and conservative, the backbone of the MAGA antichrist cult. That cult knows that it has it made in the shade, that it doesn’t suffer persecution from the state, that America is a paradise of religious liberty, especially for the white and middle class.  And at some level, that rankles.  Because the gospel says that if they are disciples of Jesus, they will be persecuted.  So they have a choice, act like disciples of Jesus and face rejection from the Cult of Trump and similarly selfish people or go along with the selfish and live an easy life.  Like their Master in the White House, the MAGA cult chooses the latter course, victimizing others while complaining of being victims themselves. And that cult has so deeply internalized a narrative of self-pity that they have made themselves, by a long shot, the single most destructive poison to the witness of the Church and the governance of the US.

As a result, this is what the world sees:

And that appalling witness will never change until Christians learn what to fear.

Of which more tomorrow.