How do we explain the following phenomena of American life in the past months?
- Death threats against responsible election officials who maintained the integrity of elections in states which Trump won in 2016 and lost in 2020?
- Threats against responsible public health officials who insisted on the use of masking and supported the use of vaccines to fight covid-19?
- The fight against scientific knowledge about covid-19 in general, including the pursuit of dangerous, unproven treatments?
- The insurrection of January 6 2021 and valorization of its perpetrators?
- An embrace of violent fantasies among partisans of Donald Trump?
Efforts to 'make sense' of these things--of partisan embrace of election conspiracies, of opposition to public health measures and medical knowledge, of a last ditch effort to undo the results of a fair election, of an embrace of violence--these efforts fail. These things do not 'make sense.' They reflect not rational considerations but rather flow from faith.
For many, Trump plays the role of a religious figure. For them, he is a savior--a god.
Adherents of a god love what the god loves and hate what the god hates. They love whom the god loves and hate whom the god hates. They know what the god knows and know not what the god knows not. If the god says it is true, it is true. "It is a lie," it is a lie.
For these adherents, there is no neutral zone between the blessed and the cursed.