Think elderly woman on Dr. Phil when she is shown concrete proof the the man to whom she has sent her entire life savings\u00a0does not exist.<\/p>\n
In this fog, I ventured out again for the third presidential election: Thirty days, twenty nine\u00a0cities, roughly a\u00a0hundred and twenty interviews, three rallies and eight bowls of green chili stew.<\/p>\n
Much of what I experienced was unchanged. \u00a0People deprived of safe venues at home or work, eager to share their election thoughts. \u00a0I limited my taped questions to their feelings, needs and hopes, but off mic and tape, it was remarkable\u00a0to explore their concerns and reasoning in more depth. It was in those later conversations that shared values and devastating divides could be found.<\/p>\n
But even as\u00a0I made it through California’s\u00a0central valley\u00a0before turning left onto\u00a0Route 66, something was off. \u00a0A marked\u00a0increase in people citing easily disprovable misinformation as part of their reasoning. \u00a0And if I referenced equally easily verifiable data… \u00a0 Trucked. \u00a0There was a consistency to these moments\u00a0what demanded exploration. \u00a0Or looking away. \u00a0I really wanted to look away.<\/p>\n
Instead, by the time I hit the California border, I took to auditing the FM radio stations. \u00a0Looking for conservative and Christian talk radio, I committed to finding and listening to what was said as I drove. \u00a0Slowly, over the next month, there emerged a landscape\u00a0behind which Donald Trumps inexplicable behavior came into focus.<\/p>\n
Some unofficial and statistically insignificant observations…. \u00a0The FM band, especially in rural areas, is unrecognizable. \u00a0In many areas in the south, talk radio accounted for more stations than music. \u00a0Christian talk radio led the pack, followed by Christian music and then Conservative Talk. \u00a0I was stunned by the miles I traveled when I could not located NPR and it was not until I was outside of Chicago that I stumbled on one progressive talk radio station.<\/p>\n
But the real difference\u00a0was in the content. \u00a0It was among the hardest things that I have done on these journeys. \u00a0To make myself listen as very authoritarian sounding voices alternating between extreme fear mongering (a letter written from a dying woman who contracted AIDS from her HIV+ dentist because our PC nation allowed him to practice dentistry fully aware that she would die as a result) to protracted historical manipulations to prove that America was founded as Christian Nation and that the Obama administration had led and sanctioned an attack on Christianity.<\/p>\n
I would like to examine the phenomena and how I experienced it on the road through the lens of the most commonly referenced issue. \u00a0Immigration.<\/p>\n
While many people cited immigration as informing their Trump vote, it was also heavily featured in both Conservative and Christian talk radio. \u00a0Moreover, it was at the root of my personal ‘trucked’ moments. \u00a0Let me explain.<\/p>\n
As a Christian, and having read the bible twice (full disclosure, the first time probably does not count because I was 16 years old and\u00a0only had a\u00a0King James\u00a0edition), \u00a0I could not reconcile my biblical understanding with the faith-based proponents of ‘strong’ borders. \u00a0Even at a young age, I looked for patterns and repeated themes. \u00a0One of the first I recognized was regarding\u00a0Sojourners<\/a>.<\/p>\n When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord<\/span> your God. \u00a0Leviticus 19:33-34<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Allow me to be clear. \u00a0In my reading, there is no grey area as it regards the immigrant. \u00a0No conditions on him being worthy or his reasons for fleeing his land. \u00a0Eighty Two direct calls with no ambiguous language. \u00a0Care for the stranger as you would care for yourself. \u00a0Period. \u00a0For the record, the second most referenced theme in the Bible is love with 300 calls. \u00a0Homosexuality has 3 and two of those\u00a0are ambiguous as hell.<\/p>\n (in case you were wondering, the number one issue<\/a> in the Bible with a whopping 2350 verses is… \u00a0wait for it… \u00a0Money)<\/p>\n How is it that white Evangelicals could vote for Trump in record numbers? \u00a0No single Christian group voted in such a high percentage for any recent candidate. \u00a0How could it be that the most literal Christians could overwhelmingly support the most antithetical candidate?<\/em><\/p>\n Turns out that they had help. \u00a0The American Family Radio, Jerry Falwell Jr of Liberty University and James Dobson of Focus on the Family all figured heavily. \u00a0How could it be that immigration would even be presented as a moral issue? \u00a0Well, it takes some of the aforementioned ‘truckworthy’ mental gymnastics mixed with denial. \u00a0 It looked something like: \u00a0‘illegal immigrants are lawbreakers’ who ‘sneak into our country’ making it tougher for the real ‘good’ immigrants who are first in line. That this is\u00a0biblically disingenuous is an understatement. \u00a0But the frequency\u00a0of Christian Trump supporters highlighting immigration is a proof point that this message is getting through.<\/p>\n Finally, while there are many other subjects and issues that were noted in my interviews, in order, Obamacare, Muslims and the ‘attack on Christianity’, it is almost more important to note what was not<\/strong> addressed. \u00a0Not once. \u00a0In thirty days and more than 120 interviews (30 of which were conducted over 6 hours at a Trump rally) not one Trump supporter\u00a0mentioned jobs or the distribution of wealth. \u00a0The ‘rigged’ economic system of the Bernie campaign was morphed into a targeting of immigrants, Muslims and, for the religious, LGBTQ.<\/p>\n Trump has not simply tapped into white anger over an economy that has left them behind. \u00a0No, these were seeds thrown onto a soil that was prepared by Fox news, enriched by the ‘end-times’ Christian pulpit and radio, and fertilized by Alt-Right compost. \u00a0This was the fruit of a full scale campaign by the conservative and Christian right to discredit all public institutions and redirect the justified anger of millions of disenfranchised Americans onto people and causes that had nothing to do with it. \u00a0More about that in posts to follow.<\/p>\n So what happens next?<\/p>\n America, you are about to get flowers. \u00a0In this case, really crappy flowers. \u00a0Branded ‘Trump’. \u00a0The wall becomes a fence that will be presented as though it has magic powers that keeps people from getting in a boat and sailing around it, or a plane from\u00a0flying over it, but you are going to feel validated\u00a0and safe as it accomplishes nothing.<\/p>\n Obamacare will either be 1. \u00a0repealed completely (to hell with the weakest among you) or 2.\u00a0re-branded with modifications that would have happened anyway (this option comes with a victory dance and stomach turning self congratulations) or 3. \u00a0handed over to a “Martin Shkreli” led free-market system where your very life is conditional on your ability to pay.<\/p>\n Oh, and be ready, like the trains in Italy post WW1, there will be at least one tip of the hat to real change – \u00a0most likely in the form of term limits. \u00a0This\u00a0will enable the new administration to claim the mantle of legitimacy.<\/p>\n Finally, from every corner of talk radio (I’m looking at you Dennis Prager), the internet and the\u00a0Republican Party Platform, they are coming for public education. \u00a0Straight out of the totalitarian playbook, they need to re-write science, history and above all, civics, in order to ensure that truth\u00a0is secondary to ideology. \u00a0Welcome to the new American Madrasa.<\/p>\n Make no mistake America, you got played.<\/p>\n And if you start to act up, if you start to question what the heck is happening… well let’s look to history. \u00a0What do strong men do? \u00a0Putin, Un, Amin? They ensure\u00a0the threat from outside pales in comparison. \u00a0You just gave weapons to a guy with the ethics of a Nigerian prince, the ego of Kanye West, and the competence of a drunk toddler driving a golf cart. A man whose\u00a0only ability to hold onto power will be\u00a0creating a ‘them’ that is even worse.<\/p>\n And that, we must never accept.<\/p>\n So this is what I know. \u00a0People of faith and Americans who still believe in our democracy and the institutions that support it need to fight for both. \u00a0Because for every ‘trucked’ moment, there were pauses. \u00a0Moments with the Beaseley’s, Tyra and even Calvin Craig when there was a silent stare of recognition. \u00a0Water over stone, this can change.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Eight years ago I wrote about the clicking noise I could hear in my brain when encountering arguments so devoid of reason that the resulting cognitive dissonance was paralyzing. \u00a0This year, we saw that clicking noise manifest on the faces of journalists trying to wrestle ideologues and surrogates who abandoned reason in the most confounding … Continue reading “Evangelicals and Immigration: Suspending Belief”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[62],"class_list":["post-265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-discouraged"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hwireroad.org\/2016\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hwireroad.org\/2016\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hwireroad.org\/2016\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hwireroad.org\/2016\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hwireroad.org\/2016\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=265"}],"version-history":[{"count":38,"href":"https:\/\/www.hwireroad.org\/2016\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":355,"href":"https:\/\/www.hwireroad.org\/2016\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265\/revisions\/355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hwireroad.org\/2016\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hwireroad.org\/2016\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hwireroad.org\/2016\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"ft_16-11-09_relig_exitpoll_religrace\"](\"https:\/\/www.hwireroad.org\/2016\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/FT_16.11.09_Relig_ExitPoll_ReligRace.jpg\")
<\/p>\n