-by Frank SchaefferWhite evangelicals grew up on a theology that trains people to be those who can’t tell the difference between reality and make-believe. They then opt for make-believe again and again because fantasy is kinder and more malleable than reality. No wonder they embraced Trump’s lies.White evangelical Trump supporters are now addicted to their ignorance, doubling and tripling down on it, digging in their heels, unwilling to surrender their inner fantasy-land and clinging to fantastical certainties utterly unarmored from any verifiable reality.Here’s what is at stake in beating back Trump’s supporters’ anti-reality: Our instinct to survive and thrive in the real world is being attacked by the evangelicals’ instinct to dismiss the real world as the enemy of their magical thinking that thrives only by branding facts as ‘fake.’Evangelical Trump supporters’ dissociation from reality is the enemy of civilization that depends on orienting citizens to a common fact-accepting reality. American civilization circa 2018 is thus fighting an uphill battle against white evangelicals’ tendency to choose make-believe as a self-justification for their well-honed ignorance.Civilization used to be a bulwark that kept us from rolling faster and faster toward self-justifying ignorance of the kind evangelicals now have perfected in order to believe the unbelievable about everything from the universe, to Trump, to sexuality, to climate change.What drives evangelical Trump supporters’ magical thinking is self-insulation from hard truths and an appetite for pretending they are “dealing with” political problems by saying, “Only people who don’t believe as we do have those problems! You must become like us or burn forever! Convert!”Evangelical Trump supporters’ personal burden of inner proof gets lighter and lighter through a vicious cycle. Evangelicals’ theological make-believe magical thinking bolsters their general ignorance which, in turn, liberates them to… indulge in more make-believe magical thinking. As such they are the greatest threat to American civilization we face.Proof?Without white evangelical voters’ support:Trump is just another mobster crook whoremaster con-artist selling gold-plated failure as success to the gullible.With white evangelical support:Trump is the president of the United States of America, busy tarnishing our country forever.
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