I was hoping that the “Trump” tag I started using last summer here would be a short-term thing — an index for a cluster of posts early in the Republican primaries that would thereafter become a forgotten category, shrinking into disuse. Kind of like the way you’ll rarely see posts here tagged “Miley Cyrus” or “John Edwards” anymore.
Alas, it seems this tag will be necessary for a bit longer than that. So let’s take a look back at some of the earliest posts here touching on this subject.
It’s tragic and probably heretical that this is how the American evangelical community decides who is and who is not an acceptable and recognized member of the community. Wallis’ long demonstration of a passionate faith doesn’t count in this calculus. Nor does his personal testimony, his church membership or of his long track record as a Bible-soaked preacher of God’s Word. All that really matters is opposition to those two things: Abortion and homosexuality. All other ground is sinking sand, all other ground is sinking sand.
Meeting that two-part standard is both necessary and sufficient for anyone’s acceptance as One Of Us by American evangelicalism. We recently saw this demonstrated yet again in the brief surge of evangelical enthusiasm for Donald Trump’s candidacy for president. Trump is a relentlessly amoral and areligious person — and he’s also loony as all get out — but he had signaled his willingness to toe the line on abortion and homosexuality, and so he received the blessing of Franklin Graham and of Tony Perkins and other evangelical gatekeepers.
That post was about Jim Wallis, not Donald Trump. The mention of Trump was simply the way Donald Trump was always mentioned — here or anywhere else prior to 2015 — as a recognizable reference point and most-extreme available example of a loathsome person.
This one is a bit more ominous. It’s a quote from linguist Geoffrey K. Pullum’s Language Log, “The assoholocracy.” Pullum wrote:
This relatively new word is really useful. Even if we ignore the whole scandal of modern banking, and the rigged election in Russia, and all the scandals in Italy (by the man who The Economist dubbed “the man who screwed a whole country”), and all the disgusting behavior and political clout of of the Murdoch press empire, there is so much else. The contest for the Republican presidential nomination illustrates as well as any other arena.
Donald Trump is famous here in Scotland. Famous for his cruel treatment of the ordinary people he has tried hard to oust from their homes so he can get control of their land, which adjoins the golf resort he is trying to build north of Aberdeen. … To see Trump trying to play a decisive role in choosing the next Republican presidential candidate even as he threatens to split their vote by running against them as an independent really interests us over here. It should be even more interesting to those of you who are on the left hand side of the Atlantic.
The thought of Trump having political power and influence convinces me that assholocracy is going to get my vote at the American Dialect Society’s voting session. … because assholocracy is a terse and valuable addition to the vocabulary.
The whole Arab Spring has been a process of bringing down assholocracies. Italy suffered under one until recently. Russia and Syria are now protesting against their own crooked assholocracies, and the only reason North Korea and Zimbabwe don’t do the same is that they daren’t, they could be killed. We in the West are going to need a term for being ruled by assholocrats, because they continue to threaten to exercise power over huge parts of the earth’s population even if not (yet) over us.
This is the last pre-candidacy mention of Donald Trump here. It’s in a post mainly focused on Franklin Graham, the soulless, perpetually aggrieved son of famous evangelist Billy Graham. I was writing a lot about Franklin Graham in 2013 because he was then traveling the country saying horrible, hateful things about Muslims and immigrants to white evangelical audiences who were cheering and lapping up every word.
And Donald Trump is in the picture because he was literally in the picture:
To his credit, Billy Graham looks uncomfortable being dragged out to offer his apparent blessing to a gaggle of dishonest strangers and charlatans that includes two racist billionaires. The scowl on the old preacher’s face may reveal his recognition that this is what has become of his legacy — that everything he did and worked for has led only to this, to the empowerment of lying hucksters and the politics of resentful privilege. Perhaps he’s even realizing that something like this was bound to happen — that the intensely otherworldly focus of his lifelong ministry meant that it couldn’t plant deep roots in earthly soil.
But just look at that horrifying photograph. Soak it in.
This is evangelical Christianity in America in 2013.
White evangelical Christianity in 2016 looks pretty similar. But today Billy Graham is completely out of the picture and one of those racist billionaires is front and center.
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