re: #201 freetoken

Mostly those on my Facebook who are Drumpfskind fans appear to have de-friended me, or gone silent. I know some are still there, just not posting.

Anyway, I’m not really surprised at how easily Drumpfskind found his marks. This is the same phenomenon we see over and over. Like all those people who go to hear creationist lecturers ramble on about creationism - it doesn’t really matter what modern science has discovered, as that’s not what is important.

My feeling is that many people in this country are angry because they feel left out. Perhaps they are. But I don’t know who they would have to blame but themselves. While we can readily see how the hate-talkers on AM radio, or several of the Fox News shows, or any of a million websites, can easily feed into this feeling of being a victim of some conspiracy by “elites”, the choice nevertheless to whom to listen. or to read, or to watch, lay with the individual.

I am sticking with my assertion that what lay beneath so much of what we see in the contemporary American public discourse is an existential crisis resulting from two centuries of very rapid change. Change that has swept away the religious foundations of our society - and our society was definitely influence early on by intense religiosity.

Intense religiousity? All those deists that signed the Declaration of Independence? Or the Muslims who fought in the Revolution (yes, there were Muslims in the Continental Army)?

Jefferson’s prototype for the I Amendment in the Province of Virginia guaranteeing freedom of religion and banning public support for churches?

Evangelicals throughout the history of the USA felt that politics was not an appropriate sphere, until such hucksters as Jerry Falwell and Ralph Reed came along and wedded themselves in an unholy alliance with Ronald Reagan.

I am old enough to remember in most political discourse that religion was a verboten topic in debates.

Though I am not old enough to remember President Kennedy, he was specifically questioned over being Catholic as there was concern his loyalty would be to the Church and not the nation.