They don’t want to govern. They want to rule.
A storm to the west in Alaska. A storm to the east in Puerto Rico where power is out across the island. The QAnon cult dreams The Storm will restore power to its would-be sovereign while Britain mourns the passing of one across the sea. Let’s just stop there.
Donld Trump and the extremist right are on a mission from God, and not in The Blues Brothers sense.
While Trump cultivates QAnon for the next time he needs a violent mob, Doug Mastriano, the Republican nominee for governor of Pennsylvania, is going Old Testament with his rallies. Fred Clarkson of Political Research Associates noticed that as early as July:
Some religious leaders who back Mastriano’s campaign say they are in direct communication with God, see themselves as God’s army, and see Mastriano as a general in their war for the world.
Mastriano’s core support is a fusion of QAnon, the far-right Patriot movement and the revivalist New Apostolic Reformation — which views him as a military and political leader in advancing the biblically prophesied end times. We see this in his role in the Jericho March during the run-up to Jan. 6, and more recently when he joined members of the “Shofar Army” in a ceremony of “spiritual warfare” on the Gettysburg battlefield, and as the headliner at a conference, Patriots Arise.
This is not just metaphorical warfare. Trump’s violent rhetoric primed his followers for their assault on the U.S. Capitol. The symbolism in these revival-style rallies and ceremonies suggests more of the same. André Gagné, professor of theological studies at Concordia University in Montreal, believes they potentially build “a bridge between the language of ‘spiritual warfare’ and the physical realm.”
The alt-right has been itching for a second civil war. Oath Keepers stashed weapons outside D.C. ahead of Jan. 6 to be ready for armed combat. What the religious lean of rallies since then suggests is a marriage of religion and politics.
Jennifer Mercieca re-offered several threads on the deification of Donald Trump.
As the English bury their queen, Trumpers are resurrecting the divine right of kings, Mercieca believes:
And this brings us to Trump’s current claims that he is a Forever President (President Eternal) who will always have the protections of the Executive Branch, even though he is the FPOTUS. Read @AshaRangappa_ & I on why it’s bunk:
The FBI’s Mar-a-Lago Search Was 2,500 Years in the Making | EssayDemocracy Requires Equality Before the Law—And That Includes Ex-Presidents.https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2022/08/31/fbi-search-equality-before-the-law/ideas/essay/
And I just remembered that I used “President Eternal” before 😳
When Trump is deified, is treated as being guided by God or is God-like himself, this is the “divine-right of Kings narrative” taking over a major American political party. In this narrative the king is unquestionable because he represents the authority of God on earth.
Like I said yesterday, this is pre-Enlightenment rationality in political theory. The American Revolution denied the divine-right of kings narrative, it’s anti-American. Yet, Trump claims to be the apotheosis of American exceptionalism and America itself.
Words like “Christofascism” are apt to describe what Trump, et al are up to, but I worry it seems too foreign for American ears (ears that want to hear American exceptionalism). Perhaps the “divine right of kings” language is more persuasive to folks who value American freedom.
Trump’s divine-right narrative brings him sycophants who predictably follow power. Those sycophants (& all who profit from Trump’s power) have a real interest in maintaining the fiction of Trump’s divine-right narrative. They’ll prop him up until he loses his supporters.
I’ve said for years that for all its patriotic pretensions, American conservatism contains a not-so-latent royalist strain. Even the “divine right of kings” is too abstract a phrasing. They’re not small-D democrats and not Amercans except by citizenship. They’re royalists. Royalists implies a king, divine or otherwise. They don’t want to govern. They want to rule.
Watch this carefully. The next Oklahoma City won’t come out of nowhere. Brick by brick, rally by rally, extremists are building a religious justification for it.
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