Appreciate The Unfaithful

When Faith ‘Trumps’ Facts

Words by Chris O’shea | December 21 2020

“In 2016 Donald Trump angered the people of Haiti. This was dangerous, because you can make a good voodoo doll of Donald Trump, by rolling a doughnut around a Labrador’s basket.” - comedian Frankie Boyle, 2016. I remember it, because it was the last time I found Trump funny.

At the other end of the scale, the most sickened and afraid I felt, was a week before the 2020 election. I had the misfortune of going outside during a vehicle rally for Trump, in Big Bear, California: The men in camo-gear, the MMA beards, the religious country-music. I’d have made fun, but you’d be surprised how much visible weaponry sucks the humor out of a situation.

At the beginning, the situation had seemed so ridiculous and cartoonish: this fat, orange, TV host is all of a sudden a born again Christian, who won’t disavow The Klan? You couldn’t write it. Everyone will see through it won’t they? But they didn’t. And once they’d voted him in, that was it. Once power had happened, the joke wasn’t funny anymore. It reminded me of an old rhyme I came across while at university, studying 17th Century England. The author writes about a Puritan “hanging of his cat on Monday/ Because it killed a mouse on Sunday.” It wasn’t the rhyme that caught my eye, it was what the historian had written underneath: “Of course, Tyndale wouldn’t have dared write this four years later, when the Puritans were in power.” You see, they’d found it funny too. In the days of the Maypole, the idea that, within four years, these zealots would revolt, kill the king and force their brutally banal way of life on everyone, would have been absurd. Thankfully the Puritans left England on the Mayflower in 1620, I can’t remember, off-hand, where it dropped them off… Fast forward 300 years and, I’m standing, watching a heavily armed political rally in California, afraid to make a joke.

Looking at the participants, it struck me that the men at the rally (and it was 80% men,) with their beards, rifles and trucks, looked a lot like white versions of the Taliban. How terrifying it would be, I thought, if the fundamentalists of the world suddenly realized they had quite a lot in common, and that their real enemy was modern, secular, humanism.

The problem is that we’re tending more extreme. These days, it’s not enough for a Republican politician to be a religious conservative- you win primaries by being the most religious conservative. Seeing these Trump supporters, in California, rifles over their shoulder, I couldn’t help wondering if a Taliban candidate wouldn’t be a solid shout, for the Republicans, in a close run-off in Tennessee? You think you don’t like divorce? You think you don’t like gay people? Once they got over the language barrier, I think a Taliban candidate would run a moderate Democrat quite close.

On the day of the Trump rally, I parked in a Gelson’s, next to a truck with flag on it that said: “Trump 2020, No More Bullshit.” The smart-ass in me wanted to point out that, since he’d been President for four years now, didn’t that make it his bullshit? But that felt a bit like mopping the floor of the Titanic. I looked in the window and saw a baby seat and a guy having lunch with his wife and kid. Considering the extremism of the outside, the inside looked so normal.

The great American physicist and Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg famously said that “without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.” Trumpism has become a religion, complete with fanatics, high-priests (Rudy Giuliani?) and an infallible deity. It is leading otherwise good people to do, say and think terrible things. My mum wrote to me the other day, to ask if I’d heard that “the Democrats had stolen the election?” She’d seen a video on YouTube. She’s not from America, is politically central and not given to conspiracy theories. It took the best part of an hour to walk her back.

For its own part, puritanical, televangelized religion has taken an “if you can’t beat them, join them” approach. With a couple of exceptions (I’m thinking of the “Christianity Today” editorial) the evangelical community has had a look at Trumpism and seen an ally not a competitor. The fact that Trump is clearly not a Christian, is a problem everyone can overlook. Belief in God isn’t a dealbreaker. Trump, ironically, has demonstrated that when it comes to what he will say and do for support, nothing is sacred. This has led to hilariously awkward episodes, like the one where he’s asked to name his favorite passage from the gospels and declines because the question is “too personal.” Wish I’d thought of that during my exams…

In 1959, in a rare recording of the philosopher Bertrand Russel, he was asked what advice he had for future generations. “Ask yourself only “what are the facts of the matter?” Never let yourself be diverted by what you wish to believe…” At the moment, “truth” is a matter of where your allegiances lie. I was in a makeup trailer at a studio once, when a makeup artist I was working with announced that she doesn’t listen to a certain radio host: “I don’t like that stuff- I’m a conservative.” About what? I thought. On what specific issue? The words “liberal” and “conservative” aren’t the names of tribes, they’re labels we give to groups of opinions. When the great journalist and polemicist Christopher Hitchens was asked what the most over-rated virtue was, he simply said “faith.” Looking around, it’s hard to disagree.