Trump and Ronald Reagan are Birds of a Feather, Except Reagan Was a Better Actor

To me at least, the fact that Trump is a Fascist in the mode of Adolph Hitler is indisputable, as clicking on the prior red links shows.  That I use the term Fascist in speaking about this President,  would no doubt have the partisan author of “Godwin’s Law“,  railing about my violation of his falsified comity.  The reality is that the Republican Party has been moving towards a Fascist model of grabbing power and governing for some time and Trump represents its’ most public iteration.

On MSNBC this week, I watched an interview with the execrable George Will,  who was fired from FOX News recently for his being critical of Trump on air.  In one respect Will might be praised for being like Pastor Niemöller without having the sobering experience of being sent to tha concentration camp.  Yet Will, in his anti-Trumpian zeal, should be held to account because he himself served Ronald Reagan as a debate prepper and sub rosa speechwriter,  while making a pretense of being an independent journalist and commentator. George Will considers himself a disciple of William F. Buckley and his  magazine the National Review, which I wrote about yesterday.  Will was himself an editor at the magazine.  Leading the  “Conservative Movement”, the NR led the way in making Ronald Reagan appear to be  “the Second Coming” of our Founding Fathers.  In fact Reagan’s Presidency marked the turning point for the Republican Party embracing Fascism as a model for governance and this sudden conversion by Will is insufficient remorse for the damage he has abetted.

Now I’m sure that my seeing the almost canonized Ronald Reagan as an antecedent to Trump and Fascism would be viewed as horror by those on the Right and as hyperbole by many Centrists and Leftists. Let’s look at some of the similarities between these two people. Ronald Reagan was a second tier movie star whose career began to fade in the late 1940’s.  Reagan was the President of the liberal Screen Actors Guild and a nominal Democrat, but worked as an FBI informant identifying communists in the film industry.  After Reagan’s divorce from actress Jane Wyman,  he met and married actress Nancy Davis.

Speed Trapping, Free Speech, Ronald Reagan, Racism and the Degradation of Policing

This piece would seem to be ostensibly about driving a car, police speed traps and protected  speech.  It is but it isn’t.  What it is about, is how a philosophical shift in the public’s thinking about government, has advanced the cause of making our country into a police state that preys upon the most vulnerable among us to finance itself.  My approach to this rather ambitious topic focuses initially upon the experience of driving a car,  which in America has become an almost universally shared experience and as such makes it easy to relate to for most.  Yet as universal as that driving experience may be for people of color the nature of the experience is quite different.

I started driving about fifty-five years ago. My big brother and my father taught me to drive, though honestly it was my brother who was the better teacher.  The process of teaching me to drive made my father too uptight.  My father assumed I also had “Driver’s Ed in school, but while I liked the teacher, what actually was helpful about it is that it got me out of classes for an hour and the teacher allowed us to smoke in the car. One also learns to drive by being driven and both my father and my brother were excellent drivers, though they also were into driving fast. My father was always getting speeding tickets, but at least in New York City he knew a Sergeant who could always fix them. My brother was a Street Drag Racer and had the distinction of being the first person in the history of Chrysler Corporation to break a rear axle from shifting an automatic transmission. At least my father said so and he was a DeSoto Dealer.

Both my father and brother passed down to me driving tips and advice on how to negotiate driving. Then too, there were certain road conventions that were well known and good drivers heeded them. For instance back then when you were about to pass a large truck, courtesy dictated that you blinked your headlights to let the driver know you were about to pass him on the left. My first cross-country trip began with a long drive through Route 80 in the Pennsylvania Hills towards Ohio. I was driving late at night and this trucker’s route was filled with large semi’s negotiating the mountains. There were few cars. I found myself using this trucker’s courtesy again and again and I was rewarded by their courtesy in return. Knowing that they were more familiar with the route I tailed along with them speeding when they sped and slowing down when they slowed down to avoid speed traps. It was a very pleasant driving experience that night and has given me the feeling of kinship with over the road truckers.

One of the other courtesy’s I learned was that if you passed a speed trap waiting for unsuspecting drivers, you blinked your headlights to warn the oncoming drivers to slow down. This was quite common back then, but is mostly forgotten today. The idea of policing speeding has always been presented to the public at large as a means to lessen traffic accidents. Speed traps were justified as a means of getting drivers on a highway to slow down and so warning someone of an impending speed trap seemed logical to me as accomplishing the same purpose. How naïve I was back then about so many things I believed about our country. Speed traps have never been really about safe driving, but about local revenue enhancement and also the ability to harass out of state drivers. Except when you are discussing morons who would drive 100mph in a 55mph zone, driving 10 to 20mph over the speed limit is rarely what causes accidents.

To my mind most accidents are caused by tailgating, weaving in and out of lanes and failure to use your turn signals. These are all examples of the most reckless driving practices and unfortunately these bad habits have been reinforced by NASCAR, where drivers tailgate each other at 200mph. Most males who drive in our country believe themselves to be excellent drivers and I don’t differ from that self-conception except in this respect: I know that as good a driver as I think I am, I have never come anywhere near the driving skills possessed by even a lesser NASCAR driver. Many men, especially young ones, don’t believe that about themselves. A while back I came across a court case involving driving yesterday whose result I agreed with, but still I was surprised that what occurred had ever gone to court.  When I first read about this case,  which is essentially about policing driving, the glimmer of the broader subject of racism and American policing came to mind, perhaps you will agree.

Trump Can Win Just Like Nixon, Reagan and Hitler

As we watch Donald Trump’s campaign unfold sane Americans take heart as he strays further and further from acceptable political pathways.  With each new supposed Trump “gaffe” we see “serious” pundits writing about how this contretemps will prove the the end of Trump’s Presidential bid.  I’m not so certain though that there is disaster in the making for Trump and I’m becoming fearful that there is really disaster in the making for America.  Back on March 3rd when I wrote the piece Godwin’s Law, Donald Trump, Rising American Fascism and Its’ Eerie Similarity to the NAZI’s.  Trump had not yet captured the Republican nomination in March.  In that piece I compared the techniques used by Trump in his rise to political dominance, to those of Adolph Hitler as he improbably became the German Führer in 1934,  after becoming German Chancellor with 34% of the vote in 1933.

What distinguished Adolph Hitler in Germany of the 1930’s was that he had stepped outside of Odevelop norms in their politics which exist by the common acceptance of their people.  In countries using an electoral system to choose leaders,  that system is workable if there is a widespread consensus believing in the system.  Hitler expressed contempt for the Weimar Republic  and its institutions,  even as he was campaigning to be its leader.   In 1933 Hitler’s NAZI Party received 34%  of the Reichstag (Parliamentary) vote,  which made them the largest parliamentary Party and so was named Chancellor. Once in power the NAZI’s began a campaign of bullying the opposition,  which aided them winning a majority in new Reichstag elections.  Once fully in power Hitler used the excuse of national crisis to have himself named dictator.

Donald Trump,  opened his Presidential campaign with a bigoted attack on Mexican immigrants calling them all criminals and rapists.  He has used his distaste for seemingly “politically correct”  attitudes like respect for diversity, to campaign in a manner only used by the most radical political demagogues in U.S. history.  Trump has destroyed heretofore observed political norms of our American political system and in doing so has befuddled his critics who are used to politics within the normative constraints of our system of politics.  Those opposing Trump are being constantly amazed by his seeming impervious reaction to attacks upon his behavior.  They are confused when rather than his retreating from harsh criticism of his outlandish attacks,  such as those upon the Khan family,  he and his supporters actually increase their attacks upon these parents, whose son died as a U.S. Officer in Afghanistan.  While the Democrats and centrist Americans are outraged by Trump’s behavior,  those that support him are gleeful at his refusal to back down.  These supporters see his not backing down as a sign of his strength and power.  All the while the Republican elected establishment like Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, weakly offer rebukes,  even as they refuse to withdraw their support for their Republican Nominee.

In Germany in 1932 ,Hitler was viewed derisively by the German elite who held power as a rude, Austrian clown.  A ruffian who presented only minor danger to public peace and who eventually would be pacified by the system.  At the beginning of the 2016 election cycle, Trump was viewed as a superficial reality TV star,  whose ambitions would be brought to heal by the power of the system and be forced into the straitjacket of normative political discourse.  To the Republican elite and their backers,  Trump would fall by the wayside during the campaign and end up as a sideshow to the serious business of getting a Republican elected President. They were wrong.

Inflaming the Delusions of Trump and the Republicans is the American Myth of “Rugged Individualism”

Almost all of the dangers now facing our country, in this Age of Trump with Republican Control of Congress, stem from the primary American Myth of “Rugged Individualism”.  Belief in this mythology is at the base of the Republican hatred of government and its’ unfounded belief that we are all better off as lone individuals without any societal protections.  This myth has been destructive to our country in the past and it may well completely destroy us in the future.  When a society conflates heroic mythology, with mundane reality, it always results in devastating danger.

“I returned to the Holiday Inn — where they have a swimming pool and air-conditioned rooms — to consider the paradox of a nation that has given so much to those who preach the glories of rugged individualism from the security of countless corporate sinecures, and so little to that diminishing band of yesterday’s refugees who still practice it, day by day, in a tough, rootless and sometimes witless style that most of us have long since been weaned away from.”–Hunter S. Thompson, Gonzo Papers, Vol. 1: The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time (1979)“

Mythology can be seen as the social glue of diverse groups. It is the accumulation of tales, beliefs, moral strictures and mores that gives a specific population a sense of homogeneity, allowing it to exist with synergy. This is true of nations, ethnic groups, religions and even political movements. One of the defining conditions in our nation is that we are one of the most diverse on this planet when it comes to religions and ethnicities. All of our original thirteen States came into existence via individual peculiarities of settlers, religious sects, slavery, climate and the spoils system of colonialism. About a third of the citizens of those thirteen colonies,  chafed under foreign domination and engendered a rebellion against the British Empire’s exploitation. Among that fractional populace, there fortunately resided a group of the colonies wealthiest citizens and greatest minds. The rebellion succeeded and a decade later a government emerged created by the novelty of a Constitution delineating how it was to be run.

As improbable as the rebellion against the world’s greatest power might have seemed, the ongoing success of this enterprise is even more of an improbability. From the beginning most citizens saw themselves as attached more to their individual states, than to the Federal Government. The subsequent history of this country is well-known, but what I think often gets missed is that the history as we know it is mostly a creation of an American mythology, which has given consistency to this diverse enterprise and served to inculcate waves of immigrants into seeing themselves as part of America. While a nation’s mythology may serve it as “social glue” it can also contain within it seeds of social dysfunction. What follows is my take on the American Myth of the “Rugged Individualist” and why though it may have had initial utilitarian value; it has become cancerous within our country and may lead to the disintegration of America as we know it.

 

Robert Becker’s OpEd at The Nation of Change which is titled “The Right’s Sham Religion of Rugged Individualism”  presents an excellent short essay on how the Right Wing today is using the myth of Rugged Individualism to attain and maintain political power. It served as my inspiration for this piece,  but rather then extensively quoting it I urge you to read it, while I spin off in a less political direction looking at Rugged Individualism from the standpoint of American Mythology. The study of Mythology in the tradition of Joseph Campbell, Robert Graves, Sir James George Frazer and Richard Slotkin has been a lifelong avocation of mine. Using Mr. Becker’s article as a kind of muse, I will look at “rugged individualism” from my synthesis of the ideas I’ve absorbed through the years and it is an insight that influences much of the way I view America’s current situation.

“Rugged Individualism definition:

The belief that all individuals, or nearly all individuals, can succeed on their own and that government help for people should be minimal. The phrase is often associated with policies of the Republican party and was widely used by the Republican president Herbert Hoover. The phrase was later used in scorn by the Democratic presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman to refer to the disasters of Hoover’s administration, during which the stock market Crash of 1929 occurred and the Great Depression began.” http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/rugged+individualism

While it is true that Herbert Hoover is given credit for the coinage and usage of the words “rugged individualism”, in my view the concept and connotation of these words goes further back into American history as a mythological theme. With the advent of the “Social Darwinist” philosophical movement, that “pseudo-science” lent credence to the concept and helped blend it into the common wisdom of the country.

One way to view history is from a conspiratorial perspective. While I do think there have been many conspiracy’s that have indeed influenced the course of human events, I think that to view them as the result of evil cabals plotting their execution is to be naive as to the way we humans act and think. It is certainly true that the NAZI’s in Germany and the Communists in the USSR, conspired to gain power and then used propaganda to create national mythologies that were ultimately destructive in nature. Similarly, FDR’s Administration used ideology, and mythology to create propaganda to defend against these foreign forces. My thinking is that propaganda and its creator’s, no matter how cynical, ultimately start out with a set of mythological beliefs, sincerely understood to be ultimate truths by the propagandists. Julius Streicher and then Joseph Goebbels of the NAZI Party really believed that Jews were an evil plague upon humanity and then created propaganda to convince others of its truth. The un-examined acceptance of mythology, common wisdom if you will, is perhaps a person’s greatest handicap in trying to understand the world they live in.

Central to American mythology is the idea of the “rugged individualist” as the driving force behind our country’s success. This myth holds that all of American progress came through the exertions of extraordinary men, going their own way, charting their own courses and bringing the rest of the populace along with them as followers of their iconoclastic natures. We have the legends of Daniel Boone, “Johnny Appleseed” and Paul Bunyan to represent how individualists helped spread the White Man in his quest to claim all of our “manifest destiny”. Like most mythology, the process of the accretion of heroic stature onto real people came from a need to find “men” the populace could emulate and follow. This need came from the loose alliance of business and political interests seeking to make this country into a world power and seeking to exploit the bounty of its natural resources, as they each pursued their selfish interests.

In the Revolutionary War we saw the creation of heroic myths used to rally people to the cause and then glorify the revolution to a population that did not overwhelmingly support it. Once the battle had been won, a national mythology was needed to make this collection of localities and populations coherent. Think of Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys in upper New England.  Remember Nathan Hale’s speech on the gallows; Sam Adams radically rousing the people of Boston; Paul Reveres’ Ride; “The Shot Heard Round the World”;  and of course the Boston Tea Party. These people and instances, along with the individual mythology surrounding the wisdom of our “Founding Father’s”, were used as a common mythology to take a collection of diverse localities and meld them into a national whole. That there was much truth to the fact of the extraordinary talents of some of these individuals does not diminish their mythological aspect, merely it enhances it.

To bring us forward in time we see the mythology of the “rugged individualist” as the driving force of the American success story throughout our subsequent history. Behind that of course, is the belief in “great men” doing “heroic deeds” as being those who impel history, leading along the rest of us who lack their stature. We see this myth-making in the “Taming of The West”; in the Civil War; in our “Industrial Revolution”, in fact this theme of individual greatness runs through the entire history of this country and to illustrate it let me just list a bunch of names and allow you to conjure the images these names produce:

Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, Sam Houston, Abraham Lincoln, U.S. Grant, George Armstrong Custer, John Jacob Astor, Eli Whitney, Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Wyatt Earp, Jesse James, Thomas Alva Edison, Henry Ford, Teddy Roosevelt, William Randolph Hearst, FDR, Dwight D. Eisenhower, JFK, MLK, RFK, Ronald Reagan, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.

I’m sure as you read these names all of them are familiar to you, but beyond that familiarity there comes to your mind a back-story that is full of detail. Though all of these were real people, they have already passed into American Mythology, because of the mental associations you have with them and the partially mythologized detail of their particular life stories. I specifically chose those names because all of them can be associated with “rugged individualism”, American History, American Progress and the belief that great “Men” impel progress. The “Great Man” theme is certainly not unique to our country; it is in fact a common thread throughout humanity. Where America has taken this theme though, in the ideals of many powerful political and economic forces in this country,  is into the sense of “rugged individualism” representing the backbone of the “great men” who drive our history and create the mythology of “American Exceptionalism”.

If you accept “rugged individualism”, as exemplified by “Great Men”, as the driving force of progress and growth of our society, then logically it is to the needs of these “great men” that we must all cater. We see the truth of this today in the popularity of the works of Ayn Rand and the pervasive influence of libertarian philosophy. Viewing issues from this perspective leads one to the conclusion that any attempt by the government (or society) to restrain the individual rights of any person, or corporate entity, creates stifling counter-productive effects upon our country. If we are all merely individuals ultimately responsible to ourselves, then we must be the sole guardians of our personal interests, without any mediation from the “nanny state”.

In this 2012 election there was a recurring theme of much Republican and Libertarian argument that is the outgrowth of the “rugged individualism” mythology. The counterpoint between the people who “produced” for our economy and the 47% of those who merely took from it, was put forth repeatedly. The idea of the entrepreneur as the modern “rugged individualist” hero creating wealth for all of us, was so common as to be a “given” in much political debate. Even the ultimate representative of collectivist bureaucracy, the Corporation, was seen from a “rugged individualist’s” perspective; since they were run by “entrepreneurial hero” CEO’s, who with their strength of leadership and wisdom provided for their workers.

I believe that the idea of the “rugged individual”, seen through the lens of American History, is not only dangerous but utterly false. I assert that it is contrary to the history of humanity from prehistoric ages unremembered. Humans are by nature “social” animals and humanity’s ascension to dominance on this planet is the result of building societies of ever greater complexity. Yes, to be sure, the actions of great individuals have spurred progress and change for better or worse, but all change occurs limned by the social structure where it occurs. We have had “great people”, geniuses perhaps, moving us forward via innovation due to their thinking outside the box. Yet this genius was nurtured in a particular social context that allowed it to grow. Michelangelo was a genius in his time, but his time included Leonardo Da Vinci and was after all “The Renaissance”. Sir Isaac Newton was a singular genius, but then too Gottfried Liebnitz was his contemporary and their time was the beginning of the “Enlightenment”. Thomas Edison was a genius electrical inventor, but his contemporary of no mean skills and accomplishments was Nikola Tesla and their time was the height of the “Industrial Revolution”.

Despite common belief to the contrary, Henry Ford invented neither the automobile, nor the “assembly line”, but he certainly helped to perfect both, again in the context of an ongoing “Industrial/Technological” Revolution. I celebrate the “individual” who has the ability to think counter to the myths they are born with and who strives to introduce new ways of looking at the world. For better, or ill, I’ve tried to act that way in my own life, so I certainly am no justifier of collective thought and action. Yet no matter how much I would like to believe that I am not the product of my heredity, my social milieu and the country of my birth, I must accept that all of those elements and many more shaped me.

The specious philosophy of “rugged individualism” has caused much ill to this country. It has lent itself to the companion myth of “American Exceptionalism”, because that thinking goes with our “ruggedly individualistic” mythology that this country has been raised above all others and it is our destiny to enforce our hegemony. This myth has actually allowed us to create a mythology similar to the mythologies created in countries with overwhelming ethnic homogeneity, like Hitler’s Aryan purity premise in Germany, French “cultural superiority” and/or the Serbs vs. the Croats and vice versa.

We humans do have a need for mythology as a means of establishing societal connectivity. At the same time though, when we allow ourselves to become blinded by the myths we live by, we lose the ability to see our world clearly enough to make logical decisions on the issues that we face. To me the scariest thing about politics in the world today is that our discussions and our debates are muddied by mythological premises to such an extent that we can’t hear other points of view, or allow ourselves to consider them. While this has been generally true throughout human history, our species has never had the power before to destroy everything and everyone. Because of that destructive ability it is imperative that we look beyond our myths to see our present world as it really is. We are on the brink of so many disasters like climate change, over-population and water shortage, that we must seek means of dealing with them. Yet due to the inhalation of various counter productive mythologies we merely talk at each other, allowing events to overwhelm us, as we remain in a state of inaction.  In our America, the myth of the “Rugged Individualist” is the most destructive myth of all.

 

Not Really About the Malicious Immigration Policies of our Racist President

Yesterday marked the sad 73rd anniversary of the date when the Gestapo arrested the brilliant 15 year old Jewish girl Anne Frank and all the other occupants of an Amsterdam attic.  They were sent to the infamous Bergen-Belsen concentration camp,  where she died months later from typhus. Anne’s family, like thousands of other Jewish families fleeing Hitler’s NAZI murderers, had been denied entry into the United States. This was because since the early 1920’s our immigration laws were written to admit as few Jews as possible to our supposed “welcoming land of freedom and opportunity”.  So Anne Frank died in agony in a hellhole created by the NAZI’s to hasten the demise of Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals and Catholics.  Unlike the millions of others who died anonymous deaths at the hands of  Hitler’s deranged fascists,  Anne’s memory has lived on due to the diary she wrote while in captivity.   Her diary was a beautifully poignant work, that fills the reader with an inescapable sadness knowing the end for this compassionate and sensitive teenager.  What follows is her last diary entry coincidentally written on August 1,  the Jewish Day of Mourning Tisha Be’av, a Jewish holiday that commemorates the destruction of the ancient Temples in Jerusalem. 

On a personal note, I am the grandchild of Jewish immigrants who entered into this country before the laws restricting Jewish immigration were enacted. My grandparents on both sides produced 9 children each, many of whom served in World War II and all of whom lived productive lives. This bastard, our illegitimate President,  seeks to ban a different class of immigrants seeking the opportunity and benefits of America. Many of these immigrants are fleeing repressive regimes and also the death and destruction of civil wars.

That Trump’s own grandparents, his mother and his wife were and are immigrants apparently makes no difference in his thinking. Then again, the Trump family’s immigrants were all White, Christian and European, just the ethnic stock he welcomes to our shores. Remembering my two illiterate grandmothers, who only spoke in Yiddish, I would be a total ass, like Trump, if I didn’t feel solidarity with and empathy for those immigrants harassed, arrested and ultimately barred from this country by virtue of their ethnicity and their religion.

Ann Frank’s Last Diary Entry – June 1st, 1944

“Dearest Kitty,

“A bundle of contradictions” was the end of my previous letter and is the beginning of this one. Can you please tell me exactly what “a bundle of contradictions” is? What does “contradiction” mean? Like so many words, it can be interpreted in two ways: a contradiction imposed from without and one imposed from within.

The former means not accepting other people’s opinions, always knowing best, having the last word; in short, all those unpleasant traits for which I’m known. The latter, for which I’m not known, is my own secret.

As I’ve told you many times, I’m split in two. One side contains my exuberant cheerfulness, my flippancy, my joy in life and, above all, my ability to appreciate the lighter side of things. By that I mean not finding anything wrong with flirtations, a kiss, an embrace, an off-color joke. This side of me is usually lying in wait to ambush the other one, which is much purer, deeper and finer. No one knows Anne’s better side, and that’s why most people can’t stand me.

Oh, I can be an amusing clown for an afternoon, but after that everyone’s had enough of me to last a month. Actually, I’m what a romantic movie is to a profound thinker – a mere diversion, a comic interlude, something that is soon forgotten: not bad, but not particularly good either.

I hate having to tell you this, but why shouldn’t I admit it when I know it’s true? My lighter, more superficial side will always steal a march on the deeper side and therefore always win. You can’t imagine how often I’ve tried to push away this Anne, which is only half of what is known as Anne-to beat her down, hide her. But it doesn’t work, and I know why.

I’m afraid that people who know me as I usually am will discover I have another side, a better and finer side. I’m afraid they’ll mock me, think I’m ridiculous and sentimental and not take me seriously. I’m used to not being taken seriously, but only the “light-hearted” Anne is used to it and can put up with it; the “deeper” Anne is too weak. If I force the good Anne into the spotlight for even fifteen minutes, she shuts up like a clam the moment she’s called upon to speak, and lets Anne number one do the talking. Before I realize it, she’s disappeared.

So the nice Anne is never seen in company. She’s never made a single appearance, though she almost always takes the stage when I’m alone. I know exactly how I’d like to be, how I am… on the inside. But unfortunately I’m only like that with myself. And perhaps that’s why-no, I’m sure that’s the reason why I think of myself as happy on the inside and other people think I’m happy on the outside. I’m guided by the pure Anne within, but on the outside I’m nothing but a frolicsome little goat tugging at its tether.

As I’ve told you, what I say is not what I feel, which is why I have a reputation for being boy-crazy as well as a flirt, a smart aleck and a reader of romances. The happy-go-lucky Anne laughs, gives a flippant reply, shrugs her shoulders and pretends she doesn’t give a darn. The quiet Anne reacts in just the opposite way. If I’m being completely honest, I’ll have to admit that it does matter to me, that I’m trying very hard to change myself, but that I I’m always up against a more powerful enemy.

A voice within me is sobbing, “You see, that’s what’s become of you. You’re surrounded by negative opinions, dismayed looks and mocking faces, people, who dislike you, and all because you don’t listen to the advice of your own better half.”

Believe me, I’d like to listen, but it doesn’t work, because if I’m quiet and serious, everyone thinks I’m putting on a new act and I have to save myself with a joke, and then I’m not even talking about my own family, who assume I must be sick, stuff me with aspirins and sedatives, feel my neck and forehead to see if I have a temperature, ask about my bowel movements and berate me for being in a bad mood, until I just can’t keep it up anymore, because when everybody starts hovering over me, I get cross, then sad, and finally end up turning my heart inside out, the bad part on the outside and the good part on the inside, and keep trying to find a way to become what I’d like to be and what I could be if… if only there were no other people in the world.

Yours, Anne M. Frank”

How many children of insight and genius will be barred from our country because a vicious narcissist racist is appealing to his racist base for electoral support? How many valuable lives will be lost? How many promising life stories will be abruptly halted by the killing and the bigotry that permeates our world? 

What indeed has happened to Ronald Reagan’s conception that: “America is a shining city upon a hill whose beacon light guides freedom-loving people everywhere”?

 

In the Age of Trump: A Short History of the Merger of Fundamentalist Christianity and Corporations

Since the election of this unstable President many have wondered about why Trump has so much rabid support from the Christian Fundamentalist community.  Logic would dictate that this person who has built a brand upon images of sybaritic luxury; who has gloried in his own history as a sexual libertine;  who seems oblivious to religious ritual and who eschews Church attendance,  would be an anathema to pious Christians,  Yet the opposite is true. Indeed in the Twitter world and on Facebook we see many Fundamentalist Christians proclaiming the Trump Presidency as  “God’s Will“.   Although it is seemingly a dichotomy that so many people who claim religious piety deem Trump a savior,  the reasons for their embrace of this  very unholy person are actually  quite obvious as this list shows:

• He promised to overturn Roe v. Wade
• He appointed a Supreme Court Justice whose history shows he usually sides with Christian Fundamentalism.
• His Vice President Mike Pence is a Born Again Christian and he styles himself:  “a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican, in that order.”^[2]
• Trump appointed as his Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos who with her strict Calvinist views is  a mission to privatize and Christianize Public Education in America.

There is in fact much readily available information to connect this Administration to Fundamentalist Christianity in America and the devotion from that venue has remained solid. From the standpoint of the Fundamentalist Christian movements that support this hedonistic President, he has and will keep delivering the aid they seek in their desire to make our country a Theocratic Christian State.  The question is how could this disturbing state of affairs have come about in a country whose founders sought to keep religion out of politics and since when did corporate capitalism merge with Christianity?

As a child I would look at things around me and assume that they had always existed, which is a common experience of humans learning about the world around them, but lacking the experience that years of living through constant change bring. As we watched the progression of the Republican Party nominating process in 2016,  we saw what an important role was played by politically Conservative, Fundamentalist Christians. It would appear to many lacking the knowledge of historical context, that this has been an eternal truth in our political system and indeed that Jesus was an early capitalist. Part of Jesus “capitalism” demands recognition that the wealthy 1% and major corporations are engaged in “God’s Work” and that government interference with that aspect of “God’s Work”, represents the policies of Satan. While throughout human history organized religion has always been intertwined with the political “powers that be”, in America we can actually trace a history of how this current merger between “Big Money” and “Big Religion” took place and was sold to an unsuspecting public.

What follows is a re-print of an Alternet selection from a book by Princeton Professor Kevin Kruse,   One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America (Basic Books, 2015). This excerpt should be quite surprising to most people, especially those born after 1960.

The following is an adapted excerpt from Kevin Kruse’s new book,  One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America (Basic Books, 2015).

“In December 1940, as America was emerging from the Great Depression, more than 5,000 industrialists from across the nation made their yearly pilgrimage to the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City, convening for the annual meeting of the National Association of Manufacturers. The program promised an impressive slate of speakers: titans at General Motors, General Electric, Standard Oil, Mutual Life, and Sears, Roebuck; popular lecturers such as etiquette expert Emily Post and renowned philosopher-historian Will Durant; even FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. Tucked away near the end of the program was a name few knew initially, but one everyone would be talking about by the convention’s end: Reverend James W. Fifield, JR.

Handsome, tall, and somewhat gangly, the 41-year-old Congregationalist minister bore more than a passing resemblance to Jimmy Stewart. Addressing the crowd of business leaders, Fifield delivered a passionate defense of the American system of free enterprise and a withering assault on its perceived enemies in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration. Decrying the New Deal’s “encroachment upon our American freedoms,” the minister listed a litany of sins committed by the Democratic government, ranging from its devaluation of currency to its disrespect for the Supreme Court. Singling out the regulatory state for condemnation, he denounced “the multitude of federal agencies attached to the executive branch” and warned ominously of “the menace of autocracy approaching through bureaucracy.”

It all sounds familiar enough today, but Fifield’s audience of executives was stunned. Over the preceding decade, as America first descended into and then crawled its way out of the Great Depression, the these titans of industry had been told, time and time again, that they were to blame for the nation’s downfall. Fifield, in contrast, insisted that they were the source of its salvation.

They just needed to do one thing: Get religion.

Fifield told the industrialists that clergymen would be crucial in regaining the upper hand in their war with Roosevelt. As men of God, ministers could voice the same conservative complaints as business leaders, but without any suspicion that they were motivated solely by self-interest. They could push back against claims, made often by Roosevelt and his allies, that business had somehow sinned and the welfare state was doing God’s work. The assembled industrialists gave a rousing amen. “When he had finished,” a journalist noted, “rumors report that the N.A.M. applause could be heard in Hoboken.”

It was a watershed moment—the beginning of a movement that would advance over the 1940s and early 1950s a new blend of conservative religion, economics and politics that one observer aptly anointed “Christian libertarianism.” Fifield and like-minded ministers saw Christianity and capitalism as inextricably intertwined, and argued that spreading the gospel of one required spreading the gospel of the other. The two systems had been linked before, of course, but always in terms of their shared social characteristics. Fifield’s innovation was his insistence that Christianity and capitalism were political soul mates, first and foremost.

Before the New Deal, the government had never loomed quite so large over business and, as a result, it had never loomed large in Americans’ thinking about the relationship between Christianity and capitalism. But in Fifield’s vision, it now cast a long and ominous shadow.He and his colleagues devoted themselves to fighting the government forces they believed were threatening capitalism and, by extension, Christianity. And their activities helped build a foundation for a new vision of America in which businessmen would no longer suffer under the rule of Roosevelt but instead thrive—in a phrase they popularized—in a nation “under God.” In many ways, the marriage of corporate and Christian interests that has recently dominated the news—from the Hobby Lobby case to controversies over state-level versions of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act—is not that new at all.

***

For much of the 1930s, organizations such as the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) had been searching in vain for ways to rehabilitate a public image that had been destroyed in the Great Depression and defamed by the New Deal. In 1934, a new generation of conservative industrialists took over NAM with a promise to “serve the purposes of business salvation.” The organization rededicated itself to spreading the gospel of free enterprise, vastly expanding its expenditures in the field. As late as 1934, NAM spent a paltry $36,000 on public relations. Three years later, it devoted $793,043 to the cause, more than half its total income. NAM now promoted capitalism through a wide array of films, radio programs, advertisements, direct mail, a speakers bureau and a press service that provided ready-made editorials and news stories for 7,500 local newspapers.

Ultimately, though, industry’s self-promotion was seen as precisely that. Jim Farley, chairman of the Democratic Party, joked that another group involved in this public relations campaign—the American Liberty League—really should have been called the “American Cellophane League.” “First, it’s a DuPont product,” Farley quipped, “And second, you can see right through it.” Even President Franklin D. Roosevelt took his shots. “It has been said that there are two great Commandments—one is to love God, and the other to love your neighbor,” he noted soon after the Liberty League’s creation. “The two particular tenets of this new organization say you shall love God and then forget your neighbor.” Off the record, he joked that the name of the god they worshiped seemed to be “Property.”

As Roosevelt’s quips made clear, the president shrewdly used spiritual language for political ends. In the judgment of his biographer James MacGregor Burns, “probably no American politician has given so many speeches that were essentially sermons rather than statements of policy.” His first inaugural address was so laden with references to Scripture that the National Bible Press published an extensive chart linking his text with the “Corresponding Biblical Quotations.” In a memorable passage, Roosevelt reassured the nation that “the money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore the temple to the ancient truths.”

When Roosevelt launched the New Deal, politically liberal clergymen echoed his arguments, championing his proposal for a vast welfare state as simply the Christian thing to do. The head of the Federal Council of Churches, for instance, claimed the New Deal embodied basic Christian principles such as the “significance of daily bread, shelter, and security.” When businessmen realized their economic arguments were no match for Roosevelt’s religious ones, they decided to beat him at his own game.

That’s where Revered Fifield came in. Nicknamed “The Apostle to Millionaires” by a friendly writer, Fifield took over the elite First Congregational Church in Los Angeles in 1935. The minister was well matched to the millionaires in his pews. Politically conservative but doctrinally liberal, he crafted an interpretation of the Bible that catered to his congregation. Notably, Fifield dismissed the many passages in the New Testament about wealth and poverty, and instead assured the elite that their worldly success was a sign of God’s blessings.

Soon after his arrival in Los Angeles, Fifield founded Spiritual Mobilization, an organization whose mission was “to arouse the ministers of all denominations in America to check the trends toward pagan stateism, which would destroy our basic freedom and spiritual ideals.” The organization’s credo reflected the common politics of the millionaires in his congregation: Men were creatures of God imbued with “inalienable rights and responsibilities,” specifically enumerated as “the liberty and dignity of the individual, in which freedom of choice, of enterprise and of property is inherent.” Churches, it asserted, had a solemn duty to defend those rights against the encroachments of the state.

Fifield quickly brought the organization into national politics, gaining attention from leading conservatives across America who were eager to enlist ministers in their fight against the New Deal. Former President Herbert Hoover, deposed by Roosevelt and disparaged by his acolytes, advised and encouraged Fifield in personal meetings and regular correspondence. “If it would be possible for the Church to make a non-biased investigation into the morals of this government,” Hoover wrote the minister in 1938, “they would find everywhere the old negation of Christianity that ‘the end justifies the means.’” In October 1938, Fifield sent an alarmist tract to more than 70,000 clergymen across the nation, seeking to recruit them in the revolt against Roosevelt. “We ministers have special opportunities and special responsibilities in these critical days,” it began. “America’s movement toward dictatorship has already eliminated checks and balances in its concentration of powers in our chief executive.” Finding the leaflet to his liking, Hoover sent Fifield a warm note of appreciation and urged him to press on.

Within a few years, the minister had the support of not just Hoover but an impressive array of conservative figures in politics, business and religion—“a who’s who of the conservative establishment,” in the words of one observer. As Spiritual Mobilization’s national ambitions grew, Fifield searched for more sponsors to finance the fight. In the mid-1940s, he won a number of powerful new patrons, but none was more important than J. Howard Pew Jr., president of Sun Oil.

Tall and stiff, with bushy eyebrows, Pew had a stern appearance that matched his attitude. He had previously been involved in anti-New Deal organizations like the Liberty League and now believed the postwar era would witness a renewed struggle for the soul of the nation. Looking over some material from Spiritual Mobilization, Pew decided the organization shared his understanding of what was wrong with America and what needed to be done. But to his dismay, the material offered no agenda for action whatsoever, merely noting that Spiritual Mobilization would send clergymen bulletins and place advertisements but ultimately “leave details” of what to do “to individual ministers.” Pew thought this was no way to run a national operation. “I am frank to confess,” he wrote a confidant, “that if Dr. Fifield has developed a concrete program and knows exactly where he is going and what he expects to accomplish, that conception has never become clearly defined in my mind.”

If Pew felt Fifield’s touch had been too light, he knew a more forceful approach would fail as well. In February 1945, famed industrial consultant Alfred Haake explained to Pew why NAM’s own outreach to ministers had failed. “Of the approximately thirty preachers to whom I have thus far talked, I have yet to find one who is unqualifiedly impressed,” Haake reported. “One of the men put it almost typically for the rest when he said: ‘The careful preparation and framework for the meetings to which we are brought is too apparent. We cannot help but see that it is expertly designed propaganda and that there must be big money behind it. We easily become suspicious.’”

If they wanted to convince clergymen to side with them, industrialists would need a subtler approach. Rather than treating ministers as a passive audience to be persuaded, Haake argued, they should involve them actively in the cause as participants. The first step would be making ministers realize that they, too, had something to fear from the growth of government. “The religious leaders must be helped to discover that their callings are threatened,” Haake argued, by realizing that the “collectivism” of the New Deal, “with the glorification of the state, is really a denial of God.” Once they were thus alarmed, they would readily join Spiritual Mobilization as its representatives and could then be organized more effectively into a force for change both locally and nationally.

***

Reverend Fifield worked to make Spiritual Mobilization out of the ranks of the clergy. The growing numbers of its “minister-representatives” were found in every state, with large concentrations in industrial regions like New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Illinois. They were overwhelmingly Protestant, though a scattering of priests and rabbis allowed the organization to present itself as part of the new spirit of “Judeo-Christianity.” In the previous decade, this innovative “interfaith” approach had taken shape as a way for liberal clergymen to unite in common social causes. Now, in the postwar era, conservative organizations such as Spiritual Mobilization shrewdly followed suit.

The organization grew rapidly. In February 1947, Fifield reported that in three years he had expanded the mass of their minister-representatives from an initial 400 members to more than 10,000 in all. He set them to work spreading arguments against the “pagan stateism” of the New Deal. “It is time to exalt the dignity of individual man as a child of God,” he urged. “Let’s redouble our efforts.”

Clergymen responded enthusiastically. Many wrote the Los Angeles office to request advertised copies of Friedrich Hayek’s libertarian treatise The Road to Serfdom and anti–New Deal tracts by Herbert Hoover and libertarian author Garet Garrett. Armed with such materials, the minister-representatives transformed secular arguments into spiritual ones and spread them widely. “Occasionally I preach a sermon directly on your theme,” a Midwestern minister wrote, “but equally important, it is in the background of my thought as I prepare all my sermons, meet various groups and individuals.” Everyday activities were echoed by special events. In October 1947, for instance, Spiritual Mobilization held a national sermon competition on the theme “The Perils to Freedom,” with $5,000 offered in prize money. The organization had more than 12,000 minister representatives at that point, but it received twice as many submissions for the competition—representing roughly 15 percent of the entire country’s clergymen.

Pleased with his progress, Fifield’s backers doubled the annual budget. Pew once again set the pace, soliciting donations from officials at 158 corporations, including longstanding supporters of Spiritual Mobilization such as General Motors, Chrysler, National Steel, Firestone Tire and Rubber and Gulf Oil. “A large percentage of ministers in this country are completely ignorant of economic matters and have used their pulpits for the purpose of disseminating socialistic and totalitarian doctrines,” Pew wrote in his appeal. “Much has already been accomplished in the education of these ministers, but a great deal more is left to be done.”

The success of Spiritual Mobilization brought increased funding, but also scorn from progressives. In February 1948, the Nation ran an acidic cover story. “A major battle for the minds of the clergy, particularly those of the Protestant persuasion, is now being waged in America,” it read. “For the most part the battle lines are honestly drawn and represent a sharp clash in ideologies, but now and then the reactionary side tries to fudge a bit by backing movements which mask their true character and real sponsors. Such a movement is Spiritual Mobilization.” The article detailed the scope of its operations, noting its high-rent offices in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, as well as the hundreds of thousands of pamphlets by pro-business authors it distributed for free. But no one knew who was funding the operation, the Nation warned. In this withering account, Fifield came off as a charlatan who prostrated himself before the “apostles of rugged individualism” to secure his own fame and fortune and, in return, prostituted himself for their needs.

In response, Spiritual Mobilization redoubled its efforts, taking an even more aggressive approach to public relations. In 1949, it launched The Freedom Story, a 15-minute radio program consisting of a dramatic presentation and brief commentary from Fifield. In the original scripts, Fifield made direct attacks on Democratic programs at home, but his lawyer warned him they would lose the “public service” designation that gave them free airtime if he were “too plain spoken” with partisan attacks. Instead, he advised, the minister should make use of foreign examples to illustrate the spreading menace of “creeping socialism” at home. Fifield’s financial backers helped secure free airtime for these programs across the nation. In 1950, The Freedom Story was broadcast on over 500 stations; by late 1951, it aired on more than 800.

Meanwhile, Spiritual Mobilization launched a monthly magazine, Faith and Freedom, showcasing the work of prominent libertarian authors, including Ludwig von Mises, leader of the Austrian School of economics; Leonard Read, founder of the Foundation for Economic Education; and Henry Hazlitt, a founding member of the future American Enterprise Institute. Even though laymen dominated the pages of Faith and Freedom, the journal purposely presented itself as created by ministers for ministers. Spiritual Mobilization had long operated on the principle that clergymen could not be swayed through crude propaganda. “The articulation should be worked out beforehand, of course, and we should be ready to help the thinking of the ministers on it,” Haake noted in one of his early musings, “but it should be so done as to enable them to discover it for themselves.”

Faith and Freedom thus presented itself as a forum in which ministers could disagree freely. But for all of its claims about encouraging debate, the journaldid little to hide its contempt for liberal ministers. The magazine repeatedly denounced the Social Gospel and, just as important, clergymen who invoked it to advocate for the establishment and expansion of welfare state programs. In a typical article, Irving Howard, a Congregationalist minister, darkly noted the “pagan origin of the Social Gospel” in 19th century Unitarianism and Transcendentalism, claiming it was part of a larger “impetus to a shift in faith from God to man, from eternity to time, from the individual to the group, [from] individual conversion to social coercion, and from the church to the state.”

With the Republican gains in the midterm elections of 1950, the forces behind Spiritual Mobilization felt emboldened. In an upbeat letter to Alfred Sloan, the head of General Motors and one of his ardent supporters, Fifield reflected on the recent returns. “We are having quite a deluge of letters from across the country, indicating the feeling that Spiritual Mobilization has had some part in the awakening which was evidenced by the elections,” he wrote. “Of course, we are a little proud and very happy for whatever good we have been able to do in waking people up to the peril of collectivism and the importance of Freedom under God.”

For Fifield and his associates, the phrase “freedom under God”—contrasted with what they saw as oppression under the federal government—became an effective new rallying cry in the early 1950s. The minister pressed the theme repeatedly in the pages of Faith and Freedom and in his radio broadcasts of The Freedom Story, but he soon found a more prominent means of spreading the message to the American people.

***

In the spring of 1951, Spiritual Mobilization’s leaders struck upon an idea they believed would advance their cause considerably. To mark the 175th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, they proposed for the week surrounding the Fourth of July a massive series of events devoted to the theme of “Freedom Under God.”

To that end, in June 1951, the leaders of Spiritual Mobilization announced the formation of a new Committee to Proclaim Liberty to coordinate their Fourth of July “Freedom Under God” celebrations. Despite its apparent spiritual emphasis, the true goal of the Committee was advancing political conservatism. Its two most prominent members had been brought low by Democratic administrations: Hoover, driven from the White House two decades earlier by Franklin Roosevelt, and Gen. Douglas MacArthur, removed from his command in Korea two months earlier by Harry Truman. These conservative icons were joined by military leaders, heads of patriotic groups, conservative legal and political stars, right-wing media figures and outspoken conservatives from the realm of entertainment, such as Bing Crosby, Cecil B. DeMille, Walt Disney and Ronald Reagan. But the majority came from corporate America. J. Howard Pew was joined by other business giants, including household names such as Harvey Firestone, Conrad Hilton, James L. Kraft, Henry Luce, Fred Maytag and J.C. Penney, as well as lesser-known leaders at giant corporations including General Motors, Chrysler, U.S. Steel and Gulf Oil.

The committee’s corporate sponsors took out full-page newspaper ads to promote a pinched version of the Declaration. Dropping the founding fathers’ long list of grievances about the absence of effective government in the colonies, the sponsors reprinted just the preamble alone. This approach allowed them to reframe the Declaration as a purely libertarian manifesto, dedicated solely to the removal of an oppressive government.

The San Diego Gas & Electric Company, for instance, encouraged its customers to reread the preamble, which it presented with its editorial commentary running alongside:

These words are the stones upon which man has built history’s greatest work—the United States of America. Remember them well!

“ … all men are created equal … ” That means you are as important in the eyes of God as any man brought into this world. You are made in his image and likeness. There is no “superior” man anywhere.

“ … they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights … ” Here is your birthright—the freedom to live, work, worship, and vote as you choose. These are rights no government on earth may take from you.

“ … That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men … ” Here is the reason for and the purpose of government. Government is but a servant—not a master—not a giver of anything.

“ … deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed … ” In America, the government may assume only the powers you allow it to have. It may assume no others.

The Committee to Proclaim Liberty also enlisted the nation’s ministers to promote the “Freedom Under God” festivities. Those on Spiritual Mobilization’s mailing list received a prefabricated press release that merely needed clergymen to fill in the blanks with their personal information (“‘The purpose of the Committee,’ the Reverend _________ declared, ‘is to revive a custom long forgotten in America—spiritual emphasis on the 4th of July’”). The committee also established a sermon contest, modeled on the wildly successful “Perils to Freedom” competition of 1947. The 17,000 minister-representatives of the organization were encouraged to compete for cash prizes and other rewards by writing an original sermon on the theme of “Freedom Under God” and delivering it to their congregations on “Independence Sunday,” July 1, 1951.

These sermons were amplified by a program broadcast that same evening over CBS’s national radio network. Cecil B. DeMille worked with his old friend Fifield to plan the production, giving it a professional tone and attracting an impressive array of Hollywood stars. Jimmy Stewart served as master of ceremonies, while Bing Crosby and Gloria Swanson offered short messages of their own. The preamble to the Declaration was read by Lionel Barrymore, who had posed for promotional photos holding a giant quill and looking at a large piece of parchment inscribed with the words “Freedom Under God Will Save Our Country.”

The broadcast featured choral performances of “America” as well as “Heritage,” an epic poem composed by a former leader of the US Chamber of Commerce. Gen. Matthew Ridgway interrupted his duties leading American forces in Korea to send a keynote address from Tokyo. He insisted that the founding fathers had been motivated, in large part, by their religious faith. “For them there was no confusion of thought, no uncertainty of objectives, no doubt as to the road they should follow to their goals,” he said. “Theirs was a deep and abiding faith in God, a faith which is still the great reservoir of strength of the American people in this day of great responsibility for their future and the future of the world.”

The “Freedom Under God” festivities reached a crescendo with local celebrations on the Fourth of July. The Committee to Proclaim Liberty coordinated the ringing of church bells across the nation, timed to start precisely at noon and last for a full 10 minutes. Cities and small towns across the country scheduled their own events around the bell ringing. In Los Angeles, for instance, the city’s civil defense agency sounded its air raid sirens in the first test since their installation, resulting in what one newspaper described as “a scream as wild and proud as that of the American eagle.” As bells chimed across the city, residents were encouraged by the committee “to open their doors, sound horns and blow whistles and ring bells, as individual salutes to Freedom.” After the bell ringing, groups gathered in churches and homes to read the preamble together. Both Mayor Fletcher Bowron and Gov. Earl Warren, like their counterparts in many other cities and states, issued official proclamations that urged citizens, in Warren’s words, to spend the day reflecting upon “the blessings we enjoy through Freedom under God.”

That night, 50,000 residents attended a massive rally at the Los Angeles Coliseum. Organized under the theme “Freedom Under God Needs You,” the night featured eight circus acts, a jet plane demonstration and a fireworks display that the local chapter of the American Legion promised would be the largest in the entire country. Fifield had the honor of offering the invocation for the evening ceremonies, while actor Gregory Peck delivered a dramatic reading of the Declaration’s preamble.

In the end, the Committee to Proclaim Liberty believed, rightly, that its work had made a lasting impression on the nation. “The very words ‘Freedom Under God’ [have] added to the vocabulary of freedom a new term,” the organizers concluded. “It is a significant phrase to people who know that everybody from Stalin on down is paying lip service to freedom until its root meaning is no longer apparent. The term ‘Freedom Under God’ provides a means of identifying and separating conditions which indicate pseudo-freedom, or actual slavery, from those of true freedom.” Citing an outpouring of support for the festivities, the committee resolved to make them an annual tradition and, more important, keep the spirit of its central message alive in American life. The entire nation, its members hoped, would soon think of itself as “under God.”

And indeed, it did. The Christian libertarianism that propelled this religious rhetoric into American politics proved short-lived, but its slogans thrived long after it was gone. Ironically, language designed to discredit the federal government was soon used to sanctify it instead.

Throughout the 1950s, a new trend of what the Senate chaplain called “under-God consciousness” transformed American political life. In 1953, the first-ever National Prayer Breakfast was convened on the theme of “Government Under God.” In 1954, the previously secular Pledge of Allegiance was amended to include the phrase “under God” for the first time, too. A similar slogan, “In God We Trust,” spread just as quickly. Congress added it to stamps in “1954 and then to paper money in 1955; in 1956, the phrase became the nation’s first official motto.

As this religious revival swept through American politics, many in the United States began to believe their government was formally and fundamentally religious. In many ways, they’ve believed it ever since.”

I apologize for the length of these excerpts, but I believe that the time taken to read it will provide the reader with insights about the fact that a large majority of American Christians have been propagandized into believing that the teachings of Jesus include obeisance to the wealthy oligarchs of the United States. One doesn’t have to be a religious scholar to conclude that the  Jesus portrayed in the Gospels had love and compassion for ALL people, particularly those most vulnerable.  Equally obvious is that Jesus felt the wealthy needed to work extra hard to gain salvation, that violence should be avoided and that we should not put ourselves above our fellow humans.  It seems almost unimaginable, if it were not so true that Conservative Republican belief is antithetical towards what Jesus taught in the Gospels.  Yet what has falsely resolved this dichotomy is that many Preachers have led their flocks astray by conflating a variety of non-Gospel sources to weave a fabric  patterned by ultra-Conservative beliefs.  Like the “root of all evil” funding from Billionaires and their corporations has flooded into the coffers of Ministers and Churches to pervert what is good and noble about Christian beliefs.