The American Idol

Trying to get below the surface in thinking about MAGA, Christian nationalism, and a palpable "hate virus."

“We humans generally do not solve the problems we have; we solve the problems we understand.”

— Rachel Lene Anderson and Thomas Bjorkman, The Nordic Secret

A couple of months ago I posted a link to an article about Joe Biden’s environmental policy on Facebook. As I sometimes do, I wrote a couple of paragraphs explaining what I thought was significant about the article, and I concluded by saying that I thought Joe Biden was a good choice for president. And one of my Facebook friends, a Trump supporter, went off like a bomb.

I’d not heard much from this person in years. We been in the same graduating class in high school, but we’d not known each other. This person had friended me years ago, and we’d occasionally had political discussions through the years. They’d send me something from conservative media and ask what I thought about it. I’d usually say that I thought the claim was sketchy and explain why. They’d change the topic. Repeat. Over the years, it got pretty heated at times, but since 2020 we’d communicated very little.

Then about a month ago, I posted about Biden and this person suddenly went wild. They posted one meme after another on their Facebook feed over the course of an evening, calling me a pedophile, saying I was indoctrinating the youth of America, posting images of the devil looming in grade school libraries. They tagged me in each post.

I sent them a private message about this, asking them to stop, and saying I thought I had presented a pretty balanced argument, and I was entitled to my opinion. Surprisingly, they utterly recanted and earnestly apologized. We started having a civil conversation. They sent me a number of videos and asked for my opinion. “I think I’m often going to have the same response to things like this,” I said. “Is this the only way to look at it? Is the narrative a reasonable interpretation of the facts?” More than anything, I was curious about the mind-set that of person I was talking to. Unlike years before, I felt compassion, and I wanted to understand.

Videos started to accumulate in Messenger. It was impossible to keep up. And unfortunately, the civil exchange did not last. The comments that appeared on my posts got more and more numerous, and more and more angry. I tried to respond candidly, and kindly, but it didn’t stop the anger. One night there was a particularly large salvo of particularly vicious responses to something I’d posted, and the next morning three friends reached out to me privately suggesting I block the person. I thanked them for the advice, and I did block the person.

That’s a tale of very recent events, and it involves someone who’s clearly not in the best place in their life. I certainly wouldn’t feel great about someone writing at length about things that I’ve done when my mental health hasn’t been the best. But I bring it up because it seems obvious to me that this isn’t about one person — at all. It’s actually about something that thousands, perhaps millions of people are experiencing.

It should be noted that Trump supporters are a diverse group. (And Rusty Bowers isn’t crazy.) But also, there’s a phenomenon that’s surprisingly homogenous.

One of the videos I received from this now ex-Facebook-friend was from a show Mark Levin did on Mother’s Day. “Do Democrats even celebrate Mother’s Day?” he asked, casually, early on in the segment. I couldn’t really get my head around that. How could a prominent American media figure ask that question?

Unmistakable notes of this kind of hatred haunted the exchange I wrote about recently between Boris Sanchez and Louisiana State Representative Lauren Ventrella, when Ventrella subtly attacked Sanchez for making too much money.

Stronger notes could be detected in this exchange on PBS News Hour a few days later, between Stephanie Sy and Oklahoma School Superintendent Ryan Walters, about the new requirement that Oklahoma teachers teach the Bible.

STEPHANIE SY: Superintendent Walters, the Bible is not banned in any schools. It's allowed to be taught already in Oklahoma schools. And yet your own Constitution says the schools should be open to all children and free from sectarian control. Given the Oklahoma Supreme Court's recent decision against publicly funding a religious charter school, do you think this policy will remain, or are you just making a political point?

RYAN WALTERS: Yes, the left, they can be offended, they can be mad, they can be upset, but what they can't do is they can't rewrite history. We are going to show the countless citations. The Bible was cited more than any other document in the 1600s, 1700s' political writings. It is clearly a momentous historical source. We will bring it back to our schools.

And, look, we will continue to battle. We feel very confident in President Trump's nominees to the U.S. that, if we can -- if we get sued and we get challenged, we will be victorious, because the Supreme Court justices he appointed actually are originalists that look at the Constitution and not what some left-wing professor said about the Constitution.

The left. Some left-wing professor. (Do Democrats even celebrate Mother’s Day?)

The exchange continues:

STEPHANIE SY: For the record, the Constitution itself does not mention God or Jesus or Christian in its text. But going back to your memo, you also say immediate and strict compliance. Immediate and strict compliance is expected. What do you mean immediate? Is every teacher expected to understand how to teach what trained theologians like Dr. King spent their lives trying to interpret? Are you going to have Bible classes for teachers? And what if they don't comply What happens?

RYAN WALTERS: Well, first, you made an absurd assumption there, which is the Declaration of Independence and our rights come from our creator. That was a distinct change in a world history there . . .

. . . We will make sure that our kids in Oklahoma understand American history. We will not be censored by left-wing extremists who don't want the Bible mentioned in our classroom.

Sy’s ideas are absurd, Superintendent Walters says, with a somewhat incoherent rebuttal. Also “we” will not be censored by “left-wing extremists . . .” The left-wing extremists don’t want the Bible even mentioned.

To be clear, this type of rhetoric is not entirely the exclusive domain of the political right. In 2019, Ilhan Omar was asked whether she would issue a statement against female genital mutilation, and Omar, evidently frustrated that the two female Muslim members of Congress had been asked questions like this so often, replied that she found the question “appalling,” that she was “disgusted” by it, and that it was a “waste of time.” She received a round of appreciative applause, but I found that exchange a little chilling, too.

But I think it’s fair to say though that there’s a type of rhetoric — and thinking — has become cultural on the right in a way that’s far more significant than any isolated incidents on the left. There’s a particular mindset. A particular set of talking points. A particular rhetorical style. A particular vibe. It’s so distinct, it’s almost a solid object.

Donald Trump just accepted the Republican nomination for president, promised to be a president “for all Americans.” Then, minutes later, launched into a typical narrative of how Democrats are intolerable and ruining the world. He’s continued in that vein.

My point is this: the rhetorical culture is monolithic and unmistakable, and it’s beginning to completely define the way the political right encounters the political left. When even a news interview, which could be a relatively uninflected exchange of information, is simmering with a barely-controlled hatred, something significant is going on. It’s not just political. It’s psychological. And it’s not just a cultural quirk. I think is has an unmistakable quality of illness to it. It’s like a viral epidemic — the spread of hate virus.

The American Idol

I’ve been digging a little bit into Tim Alberta’s work on the MAGA phenomenon — in particular, the peculiar merger of MAGA-themed hatred with right-wing Christian evangelicalism. In this interview, Alberta talks about returning to Michigan to attend the funeral of his father, whom he loved and admired, and who had pastored a large church. Alberta had already written against Trump at this point, and he had recently been criticized by Rush Limbaugh for it on Limbaugh’s show. At his father’s funeral, instead of being consoled by his father’s congregation, many of whom he had known for years, Alberta found himself sharply criticized. One close friend of his fathers handed to him a long screed the day after the eulogy, prompting Alberta’s wife to exclaim, “What the hell is wrong with these people?”

There’s a gentler way to ask the question. But it’s not hard for me to understand what’s being asked. Alberta eventually wrote a book about the American religious right: The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism. I’ve not read this book (it’d be a better Substack if I had), but in interviews, he’s said that his main thesis is that Evangelicals are fired up because they have made an idol out of America. Seeing themselves besieged by barbarians, they’ve come to believe they need a barbarian to save them, he says. And, by extension, one presumes, any barbaric tactic that is effective.

It’s clear that he’s onto something. I also think he’s onto something when he suggests that, for Christians, the solution is to turn away from the idolization of America, and to turn toward the teachings of Jesus. I think that’s a good idea. It’s particularly worth admiring those first three centuries, when Christianity was a persecuted, underdog faith. And a number of folks — like, notably, Rod Dreher — are tuning into this idea.

But, also, I think to just stop there overlooks something important — which is that, if you get down to it, I’m not sure that idolization of America is actually too hard to understand — and there might be some lessons all of us in there, whether we look faithfully to Biblical scripture for truth or not.

Echoes of the Davidic Kingdom

One of the central Biblical stories is David’s rise to be the most esteemed king of ancient Israel, and the celebration of the prosperous, righteous, and temporary golden era that resulted. And America at its apex (particularly, say, mid-20th century) really bears a striking resemblances to this kingdom in some ways. Or, let’s say, there’s a mythical American story (which bears some nonzero amount of connection to historical reality) that echoes Israel’s ascent in David’s day (which may also bear some nonzero amount of connection to historical reality).

If you have the time, I’d encourage you to read about the rise of the Davidic Kingdom in 1 and 2 Samuel, and to think of it in the context of America. There’s a similar scrappy, virtuous underdog story. A not-totally-dissimilar revolution. A similar radiant story of righteous success — as represented in the Biblical story, among other things, by the construction of a temple next to the palace. Importantly, to me anyhow, the vibe is very similar. Overall the themes of success, virtue, wealth, and God-invocation in the story of the Davidic kingdom are very similar to the same in the American mythos. It’s easy to understand how those who look to the Bible for truth, might see that America is a sort of analogue of a sacred form of society indicated in scripture. The Davidic kingdom is one of the civilizational pinnacles of the Biblical Judaism, and America is one of the civilizational pinnacles of Christendom — in similar ways.

But I think we needn’t stop there. If you’re over the age of thirty or so, I suspect you have some sense of what it it’s like to feel that, in whatever social station you have happened to have lived, that you have lived in a high civilization. If you’re over forty or so, I would suspect that feeling is even more pronounced. And, if you have that feeling, or have had it, I would guess that you also have the experience that that feeling is fading. As it fades, we begin to realize that America’s cultural knowledge about the establishment and maintenance of high civilization is actually pretty limited. We tended to think that the culture we lived in was just going to be something that continued to happen. Our thinking has progressed significantly as we have noticed that that light appears to be fading away.

For most thoughtful people, it’s not practical to think of any new enlightened civilization in purely Judeo-Christian terms. We need something else, something new, to comprise the spiritual aspirations of people today. But if you think of the story of Davidic kingdom as a representation of a high, virtuous civilization altogether — perhaps even a high spiritual civilization — I think the story becomes more resonant. And the loss Christendom becomes more resonant. We can think not only in terms of whether or not we can jump-start Christian civilization again, we can think about what Christian civilization teaches us about any functional civilization — including what the Bible teaches us.

Sir John Glubb points out that upward civilizations are often virtuous. And it’s easy to see that, historically speaking, at the societal level that virtue has often been rooted in spirituality, in metaphysics — either a spiritual tradition or a metaphysical philosophy. As we try to solve problems, the contours of reality have had a way of guiding humanity in particular directions. We move toward complex societies, and these complex societies have had some similar features. And among these features, across cultures and time, is that these societies have tended to have a spiritual, metaphysical underpinning. If you don’t resonate with Judaism or Christianity, it’s worth thinking about how story of the Davidic kingdom can be generalized.

I think it’s worth considering that the idea of a high, spiritually invocational civilization is actually a deep archetype. And so are the stories about rise and fall. They are ideological goals, but they are also deep stories about the shapes ideological goals actually take when they’re pitted against the difficult contours of reality.

Rise, Fall, and Rise in ancient Israel

So back to the Bible: After David comes Solomon, and after Solomon comes the a difficult time for Israel. Kings become increasingly corrupt and exploitative. This is the age of the prophets, who are fiery voices calling for a return to the pursuit of virtue and, essentially, for the re-establishment of social justice. As the story goes, these cries appear over hundreds of years, and they don’t gain a lot of traction. Israel splits into two kingdoms, both of which are conquered by larger surrounding empires. The people of Israel are eventually exiled to Babylon for seventy years, and then they are permitted to return. Then, as detailed in 2 Chronicles, there is s a spiritual revival, under King Josiah. (We’re in the 7th century BCE now.)

As the story goes, Josiah’s high priest finds a Torah scroll and from it, the entire pattern of the Jewish nation is reconstructed. A new temple is built, woefully meager compared to the previous one, but eventually another proud Jewish society emerges.

It’s worth noting that a close reading of scripture on its own, let alone a deeper historical-critical critique, fairly quickly debunks the idea that Torah had been extinguished from Israel, and that it was wholly revived from the discovery of a scroll. But it does seem likely that some kind of revival did occur, and it seems to have been in done with the revival of the Davidic kingdom in mind.

Flash forward to today: Christian nationalists in Louisiana pass a bill requiring the Ten Commandments be displayed in every public classroom — up through the post-secondary level. Christian nationalists in Oklahoma pass a law requiring all teachers to teach the Bible. Again, the parallels are obvious.

It’s easy to imagine that there are preachers out there who have noticed these parallels, and who are invoking them directly in their sermons. And you might think this is just a case of fundamentalist literalists mapping a story about a tiny group of iron-age people onto a modern society of more than three hundred million. But again, I think it’s worth considering that something deeper may be at work.

The story of the Davidic kingdom, and the revival under Josiah aren’t just entertaining stories of victory for people partial to Judaism and Judeo-Christianity; they emerge as meaningful artifacts that can meaningfully help anyone understand the problems that are emerging into view as current generations of Americans realize that certain civilizational victories are not won once and for all, and that our understanding of what makes a healthy civilization last are rudimentary — perhaps due to neglect.

And all of this helps explain, I think, why folks who are really into Christianity get tempted to think about Christian nationalism. I'll want to say this over and over: This is not to say that Christian nationalism is justified. It isn’t.

But it is to suggest that Christian nationalists are actually trying to grapple, in distinctly unsophisticated ways, with complex problems — and that in some ways, they may be “grokking” the dynamics of these problems as effectively as anyone is today. And in some ways, perhaps, better than others. It may be destructive and futile to use xenophobic, authoritarian means to try to establish and/or preserve a more spiritual form of society, but I don’t think it’s completely unreasonable to want to.

Also, it become possible to see why this so-called Christian effort, in our current era, might be associated with that intense, saturated quality of negativity. Because if we use the Biblical model not simply as an indication that America must return to Judeo-Christian values forcibly, under the gun of some “handmaids” like theocracy, but as a study of the arc of virtuous civilization generally, we can’t overlook the fact that the loss of high, spiritual civilization, the kind of civilization we’re talking about, is traumatic.

The literature that we have from the period of Babylonian exile simply writhes with lament. What’s happening in America is perhaps not happening to quite that degree, but Christendom does seem to be ending — at least in the West. And to the extent that we’re in the interregnum of between Christendom and whatever comes next, that period is obviously fraught. There is genuine loss occurring, and I think it’s easy to appreciate that it would be accompanied by genuine trauma — particularly in some people.

But more on that later.

There’s that’s been unpacked already, and there’ more to unpack. I feel like this might be a good place to pause, somewhat abruptly for now. (Continues here.)