Are evangelicalism and Trumpism the same thing?

 Interesting news from Pew:

Contrary to what some may have expected, a new analysis of Pew Research Center survey data finds that there has been no large-scale departure from evangelicalism among White Americans. In fact, there is solid evidence that White Americans who viewed Trump favorably and did not identify as evangelicals in 2016 were much more likely than White Trump skeptics to begin identifying as born-again or evangelical Protestants by 2020.

Additionally, the surveys do not clearly show that White evangelicals who opposed Trump were significantly more likely than Trump supporters to drop the evangelical label. The data also shows that Trump’s electoral performance among White evangelicals was even stronger in 2020 than in 2016, partially due to increased support among White voters who described themselves as evangelicals throughout this period.

I'm tempted to think this isn't sustainable, if only for reasons of tactics. Evangelicals tend to be a bit mission-oriented, believing that they're called to share "the good news" of Jesus Christ. Trumpism, on the other hand, is fairly insular -- more interested in cultivating the base than expanding its appeal. Trump and Christ aren't the same thing, of course, but there's a difference in mindsets -- and if evangelicalism and Trumpism become closer to being the same thing, I suspect it's evangelicalism that will lose its character.

Update:

We got our Child Tax Credit check today...

 ...but neither me nor my wife quit our jobs. 

One more thought about the Woodward book

John Adams said we have a government "of laws and not of men." But reporting on the late Trump era suggests that it's both, actually. When lawful governance was teetering under Trump's assaults, it was a few individuals -- a Mark Milley here, a Dan Quayle(!!!) there, a lone Michigan Republican  voting for the truth and not his party's inclinations  -- who provided the nudges needed to preserve the system, and perhaps even the country. Occasionally (as with Milley) they had to do it in ways that -- on the surface, at least -- seemed to contradict the rule of law, and of civilian control of the military. But what was the alternative?

The real villains of the Woodward book? Mike Pence and Mitch McConnell.

It was clear then -- and clearer now -- that Trump should have been removed from office after Jan. 6. Pence could've led the 25th Amendment option. He didn't. McConnell could have sped up the impeachment process. He slow-walked it. That forced a group of people worried for their nation into apparently extra-legal maneuverings to ensure that Trump didn't destroy everything. When the responsible people aren't responsible, bad choices are the only option. 

Rod Dreher plays dummy, again.

Photo by Nikolett Emmert from Pexels

I've previously expressed my feelings about Rod Dreher in this space, but dammit I can't quit him. So of course I read the latest New Yorker profile of Dreher and his dalliance with Hungary's right-illiberal Orbanistas. 

He mounted his usual defense of Viktor Orban:

Quite quickly, in the course of his dinners and meetings and observational trips on Budapest’s convenient public-transit system, Dreher began to form a dissenting opinion of the political situation in Hungary. “I was there about ten days before I realized that eighty, ninety per cent of the American narrative about the country just isn’t true,” he told me recently. He had heard Hungary described as an authoritarian state, but in Budapest he saw everyone seemed free to speak their mind. Dreher noted that he had appeared at a conference with an opponent of Orbán, who was critical of the Prime Minister. What’s more, Orbán, Dreher came to think, had a keener grasp of the “crisis—political, even civilizational” facing traditionalists than nearly any American conservative. Dreher liked how openly nationalist Orbán was, picking fights with his partners in the European Union when it grew too progressive, and how he had often set aside free-market principles in order to promote conservative social values—offering state subsidies to women to stay home and have more Hungarian children.

Needless to say, however, I wasn't surprised when I got to this section: 

When I asked about Orbán’s campaigns against the Roma—his government refused to pay court-ordered compensation to Roma children who had been confined to segregated schools, and his political party blamed George Soros when pressed about it—Dreher, who does not speak Hungarian, told me he had heard that many Roma supported Orbán, but “I don’t know much, to be honest.”

If you follow Dreher's blog at The American Conservative, you'll probably notice this is a fairly frequent thing he does. Americans don't understand what Hungary's really like! It's so much better than you heard! But when pressed on specific critiques about the regime, Dreher suggests he doesn't really understand what Hungary's really like either. I don't know much, to be honest. 

My conclusion: Dreher wants a strongman to punch his enemies in the mouth, but doesn't want to think too much about what happens when people start bleeding as a result. 

Exercise and mental health

Photo by Vlad Chețan from Pexels

It never ceases to amaze me: I get cranky and depressed, unable to see anything good about the day or my future. All the good things are over in my life. It's just a matter of playing out the string until I die, to be forgotten and legacyless.

And then I go to the gym and move.

I am no paragon of fitness -- overweight and broken. I will never be beautiful again. But I don't exercise to be beautiful, or really even in the hopes of extending my lifespan. I do it to feel a little better about life, right now.

Bag O' Books: 'The Constitution of Knowledge'

When I first started Jonathan Rauch's "The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth," I was preparing to arm myself with information and thinking to battle with Trump-style con artists and their followers, the kind of people who believe the 2020 election was stolen and that COVID vaccines are deadly. I got a tiny bit of that. But I also came away with a bit more sympathy for the people who believe that the 2020 election was stolen and that COVID vaccines are deadly.

It's not that I think they might be right. They're emphatically not. But as Rauch tells us in this book, there is a lot of research telling us that human beings -- not just conservatives -- have a tendency to filter knowledge through the lens of their tribes. And once a view is adopted by the tribe, it's hard to make its members accommodate contrary facts. "Once a belief becomes important to the way we think about ourselves or important to the group we identify with, changing it becomes very costly," Rauch writes, citing the psychologist Dan Kahan. "Humans are equipped with some of evolution’s finest mental circuitry to protect us from changing our minds when doing so might alienate us from our group." When people believe stupid things and keep believing stupid things because all their friends believe stupid things, that's profoundly human.

Honestly, it makes me wonder what I believe fervently because the people around me believe it too.

This isn't to say that Rauch lets the Trumpian grifters off the hook. The book exists in large part because of them. "Trump and his media echo chambers were normalizing lying in order to obliterate the distinction, in the public realm, between truth and untruth." But it also exists in large part because of Rauch's concerns about progressive "cancel culture," citing a number of incidents on college campuses. "Are the organizers recruiting others to pile on? Are you being swarmed and brigaded? Are people hunting through your work and scouring social media to find ammunition to use against you?" he asks. "The Constitution of Knowledge relies on independent observers; cancel culture relies on mob action."

This book works best as a primer on liberalism and its achievements. (One caveat: Rauch repeatedly refers to the informal structures of knowledge creation and debate as "the Constitution of Knowledge" -- hey, that's thename of the book! -- a punchy but ultimately tiresome rebranding that becomes an overused tic.) Rauch celebrates the virtues of truth-seeking, fierce debate, free speech, thick skins and keeping an open mind to the possibility that you might be wrong about stuff -- and that somebody else might be right. And yes, it would be nice if we could return to the days of "I may not agree with what you say, but I'll defend your right to say it."

But Rauch's weakness comes when offering ideas about what to about the present crisis of disinformation and epistemic closure. The bulk of his "what now" chapter focuses on countering cancel culture and sticking up for your right to explore controversial ideas on campus. There's nothing wrong with that, but from where I'm sitting the more urgent threat to liberalism comes from the Trumpist right. "There are state and local local laws in Republican-led states and communities on the books and being passed RIGHT NOW that are restricting what can be taught and what ideas can be discussed in schools," Nikole Hannah-Jones observed on Twitter recently. Those laws aren't being passed by woke undergrads. Readers probably come to Rauch's book already convinced -- more or less -- of the merits of truth and liberalism. They'll leave even more convinced those ideas and institutions are worth saving from the forces that most endanger it. I'm just not sure they'll have much of an idea how.