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   From: nowomr@protonmail.com   
      
   'New Moses' Is the Latest Sign of the Christian Right’s Trump Confusion   
      
   Blasphemy, sacrilege, or both? Photo: David Dee Delgado/Getty Images   
      
   Back when he first captured the hearts of Republicans generally and   
   conservative evangelicals specifically, it became fashionable for   
   Christian Right leaders to compare Donald Trump to Cyrus the Great, the   
   pagan Persian king who unwittingly served the will of God (according to   
   the Hebrew Scriptures) by liberating the Jews from the Babylonian   
   Captivity. It was a clever rationalization that enabled these holy   
   warriors to dismiss all the evidence of Trump’s heathenish belief system   
   and sinful behavior and make him God’s (and their) vehicle for the   
   redemption of America. Being King Cyrus also relieved the 45th president   
   from any inconvenient obligation to change his evil ways or beg for a   
   forgiveness he explicitly didn’t think he needed.   
      
   After Trump thrilled many conservative Christian activists by stacking the   
   Supreme Court in a way that produced the reversal of Roe v. Wade and the   
   expansion of the “religious liberty” to discriminate against the wicked,   
   some of his churchy fans began to view him not as a disposable instrument   
   of God’s will — and thus as an replaceable ally — but as an indispensable   
   leader of their cause. In part that’s because they have internalized his   
   fury over the “stolen election” of 2020 and hence the necessity of a Trump   
   comeback to prove the divine plan cannot be thwarted. Worse yet, some   
   conservative Christians have conflated Trump’s struggle with the eternal   
   struggle between the heavenly hosts and their demonic enemies.   
      
   We’re witnessing a pop-culture moment exemplifying this confusion of   
   religious and secular conservatism. Actor Jim Caviezel, best known for his   
   portrayal of Jesus in Mel Gibson’s 2004 movie The Passion of the Christ,   
   made it known on Fox News that he regarded Trump as “the new Moses.” He   
   made this pronouncement while flogging his latest flick, Sound of Freedom,   
   which, much like The Passion of the Christ, has become a counter-Hollywood   
   phenomenon heavily promoted by ticket-buying churches and church   
   organizations. As Rolling Stone’s Miles Klee explains in his review, the   
   new movie is the perfect vehicle for Caviezel, who has been flirting with   
   QAnon-ish conspiracy theories for a good while:   
      
       [Caviezel] has become a prominent figure on the conspiracist right,   
   giving speeches and interviews in which he hints at an underground holy   
   war between patriots and a sinister legion of evildoers who are harvesting   
   the blood of children. It’s straight-up QAnon stuff, right down to his use   
   of catchphrases like “The storm is upon us.” Here, he gets to act out some   
   of that drama by playing a fictionalized version of Tim Ballard, head of   
   the anti-sex trafficking nonprofit Operation Underground Railroad   
   (O.U.R.), in a feature film that casts the operator as a Batman-style   
   savior for kids sold into the sex trade.   
      
   Caviezel pulled Trump into his story by asserting that he’d be the leader   
   who would “go after the traffickers.” And he also revealed that he had   
   provided Trump with a private showing of Sound of Freedom at the former   
   president’s Bedminster resort. Trump unsurprisingly responded with a Truth   
   Social post vowing to administer the death penalty to human traffickers   
   and blaming Joe Biden’s border policies for this terrible danger to   
   children.   
      
   Now if you are a QAnon believer, this all fits together: America is   
   controlled by the pedophile satanists of the Democratic Party. Trump will   
   liberate their victims (presumably in chains awaiting their destruction by   
   blood-drinking global cabalists) and with them their country. And the 45th   
   president has never lifted a finger to disabuse these people of their   
   dangerous and psychotic delusions.   
      
   But even among the uninitiated, the Trump-trafficking nexus can be   
   seductive. Human trafficking has been a major preoccupation of   
   conservative evangelicals in recent years, perhaps as an undeniably worthy   
   target of those whose all-purpose sexual puritanism is no longer   
   fashionable. So Trump’s identification of trafficking with lax Democratic   
   policies and promises to save children resonate, making this cruel man a   
   liberating “Moses” figure.   
      
   Before Trump and his conservative evangelical fans get too comfortable   
   with this idea, they might want to read their Bibles (or in Trump’s case,   
   have someone read to him from their Bibles) and recall Moses’s ultimate   
   fate. After leading the Israelites out of the bondage of Egypt, Moses was   
   barred from entering the Promised Land because of his willful defiance of   
   an edict from God. Instead a younger successor, Joshua, took over   
   leadership of his people. Lord knows Trump is a willful defier of every   
   godly law, and right now younger MAGA conservatives (e.g., the 44-year-old   
   Ron DeSantis and the 37-year-old Vivek Ramaswamy) are bidding to succeed   
   him. Maybe King Cyrus is a safer role model for the former president after   
   all.   
      
      
   https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/07/new-moses-is-new-sign-of-   
   christian-rights-trump-confusion.html   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)