With Trump Win, Cognitive Dissonance Strikes the Religious Right

Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 06:57 pm

Read: Kristi Noem Is Banned From 20% of South Dakota.

Donald Trump has a hard road ahead of him. Hillary is leading and as things stand, would win the election easily if held today. Trump can try to mend fences, but that will be no easy task. The one group you would think he could appeal to by waving his Bible around, unfortunately sees him as Satan’s tool.

That’s right: It’s that time again when belief comes into direct conflict with reality, and the Religious Right is thrown into a tizzy trying to understand how God could be giving them the high hard one yet one more time.

Iowa talk radio’s Steve Deace has already ditched the GOP, lamenting that in choosing Trump, America is “crying out to be spanked” by God.

How could it happen? Where is God’s will in all this? Of course, the whole thing is easily explained once it is understood that God’s will was never anywhere to be found, but rather mere mortals pretending to speak God’s will.

God never chose Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz and his father chose Ted Cruz, and made the very human decision to cloak their grasping desire for worldly power in sanctity. Being unable to see things as they really are, the Religious Right is forced into some very painful “intellectual” contortions.

For example, our old friend Bryan Fischer was forced to spend his day Wednesday trying to rationalize away the victory of Donald Trump and the unwholesome choice for evangelicals between Trump and Hillary Clinton. As you can imagine, the process was a painful one.

Why God, why?

It’s not enough to vote for the lesser of two evils because even the lesser of two evils is still evil. Never mind that in Fischer’s inverted world, good things like actual freedom are evil and evil things like religious tyranny are good.

According to Fischer – now at least – Trump is the lesser of two evils, presumably because Hillary Clinton is a woman. Trump, whatever the truth of his hand size, presumably has the correct tackle to assume the job of chief executive (we can’t know for sure unless he is caught trying to enter a men’s room in the South).

Fischer reminded his equally befuddled audience that he has “repeatedly speculated” that “there is something supernatural at work to prop that guy [Trump] up because there is no way in the world that guy should still be viable at this point, given the things that he’s said and the things that he’s done.”

It is unclear exactly what Trump has done to offend Fischer since in truth, there isn’t a lot of difference between Trump’s positions and those of Ted Cruz, or indeed, with Fischer’s own positions. They hate the same people, after all.

But if Trump is a tool of Satan, what is Hillary if she is the worst of two evils? And how does an evangelical vote for any tool of Satan?

If Sanders supporters think they’re in a tough spot, they should stop and think about evangelicals, who have spent years arguing themselves out any viable alternative to a messiah figure, because you can’t vote against a messiah.

And Ted Cruz was that messiah, or so many of them believed, leaving them to wonder now if God chose Cruz, how he could have failed to defeat Trump. It’s the sort of question that conservative Christians have been forced to confront for 2000 years, and one that might well neutralize them as a voting bloc in 2016.

This was supposed to be their year. Instead, you will find wondering how Trump won and why America doesn’t get that spanking it so richly deserves.

Hrafnkell Haraldsson

Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.