Writing as a self-declared "Jewish atheist," Paul Waldman says,

William Lindsey :toad:

"In fact, many conservative American Christians happily ignore entreaties from the Beatitudes to bless the neediest in favor of exacting punishment on them.

'What some on the hard right think is religion amounts, in many cases, to a punitive impulse: the desire to punish perceived evildoers and transgressors,'" (continued in /20)

#Trump #Republicans #MAGA #WhiteChristianNationalism #WhiteEvangelicals #WhiteSupremacy #racism
/19

William Lindsey :toad:

(continued from /19)

"Katherine Stewart, an expert on white Christian nationalism and author of the 2025 New York Times bestseller, 'Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy,' wrote to me by email."

#Trump #Republicans #MAGA #WhiteChristianNationalism #WhiteEvangelicals #WhiteSupremacy #racism
/20

JackMex

@wdlindsy

Democrats tend to go for the watered down candidate.

M.S. Bellows, Jr.

@wdlindsy "The only thing that can stop a bad man who believes in the flying spaghetti monster is a good man who believes in the flying spaghetti monster."

William Lindsey :toad:

Noting that "the nearly half of Republicans who said the Epstein files mattered at least 'a little' to how they assess Trump’s presidency in July 2025 dropped to just 36 percent by November," Kalli Hollaway says,

#Trump #Republicans #MAGA #WhiteChristianNationalism #WhiteEvangelicals #WhiteSupremacy #racism #Epstein #pedophiles
/22

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/epstein-maga-trump-morals/

William Lindsey :toad:

"For the better part of a decade, conservatives lurched from one pedophile-focused moral panic to the next, proclaiming themselves the true saviors of children. They didn’t mean all children, of course; these are the same people who gifted a white woman with $750,000 just for calling a 5-year-old autistic Black boy the n-word."

#Trump #Republicans #MAGA #WhiteChristianNationalism #WhiteEvangelicals #WhiteSupremacy #racism #Epstein #pedophiles
/23

William Lindsey :toad:

"Their concern was always reserved for the white children they saw as fully human.

The moral charade was always going to be undone by the Trump of it all. His supporters are members of a reactionary movement almost singularly animated by racial grievance."

#Trump #Republicans #MAGA #WhiteChristianNationalism #WhiteEvangelicals #WhiteSupremacy #racism #Epstein #pedophiles
/24

William Lindsey :toad:

"Trump supporters believed the racial contract — and above all, its guarantee that whiteness was the most immutable hurdle to the American presidency — had been broken. 'We haven’t felt like ourselves since Barack Obama,' Megyn Kelly said just this past September, a reminder of the imagined injury white racists sustained nearly two decades ago."

#Trump #Republicans #MAGA #WhiteChristianNationalism #WhiteEvangelicals #WhiteSupremacy #racism #Epstein #pedophiles
/25

Nonya Bidniss :CIAverified: 🇺🇸

@msbellows @wdlindsy Congress members have almost entirely been or claimed to be christians throughout our history. Through a large portion of my lifetime though it wasn't considered a necessity to frequently talk about that in the context of doing the job, and would serve as a reminder of the vaunted separation of church and state. Since moving to AL where candidates are basically required to proclaim their devout christianity to have a chance, I've become very aware of this sort of talk as a foothold for lawmakers to wedge their religion into laws that govern everyone, and I'm extremely against it.

Given two candidates with policy platforms that are at least "good enough," I will choose the one who doesn't talk about religion.

William Lindsey :toad:

"The states with the highest levels of support for Christian Nationalism are Arkansas (54%), Mississippi (52%), West Virginia (51%), Oklahoma (49%), Wyoming (46%), Louisiana (44%), and Missouri (44%). Meanwhile, the states with the lowest shares of Christian Nationalism Adherents and Sympathizers are California (22%), New Jersey (22%), New York (21%), Washington (18%), and Massachusetts (15%)."

~ Word&Way

#Trump #Republicans #MAGA #WhiteChristianNationalism
/26

https://publicwitness.wordandway.org/p/weekly-roundup-feb-20

bk

@wdlindsy
Now do levels of education…

Annie G

@wdlindsy All so true, and so depressing. I've said since the first Trump presidency that having a Black man in charge fundamentally broke many white people, men in particular; sadly, not even a particularly liberal or assertive Black man. I wish he had really "gone for broke", since the mere fact of his election broke things anyway...

llanciawn

@wdlindsy Atavism

William Lindsey :toad:

@msbellows For my part, rather than mock or feel superior to those pushing back against toxic Christian nationalism from within the Christian community, I'm going to stand in solidarity — as Paul Waldman encourages us to do, though he says he's a Jewish atheist. Not much time or energy for the superior dance given what we've up against….

William Lindsey :toad:

@JackMexa4 Not all Democrats.