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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]NP. I despise the man, and think he is extremely harmful to the good of the nation, but correctly predicted his wins in spring of 2016 and again in 2024, so you know where I am coming from.

This is my take: Trump is popular because Trump gives room and structure for many people to reject quasi-religious beliefs that have been presented as fact, but are not fact, by the dominant new faith-based groups in our society (political groups). He allows space for heresy, and he does not apologize for his own heresies. In a world where the wrong words (e.g. heresies to the newly dominant religions) can and have caused people to lose jobs, friends, etc., this is enormously appealing. Trump says wrong words all the time.

The background of this is that with the decline in organized religions, we as a society have replaced organized religions with allegiance to political parties and ideologies. And with that religious fervor comes a religious fundamentalism that freely mixes fact with belief but presents that to the world as fact.

I actually believe that the sharp rise in mental health issues in young people is related to this dissonance. They have been presented with what are essentially faith-based beliefs as though those are fact, but not with the structures to deal with apostasy. The religions of old do the same (present faith as fact), of course, but they accompany those religious tenets with a structure to enable faith and manage heresy. So, a Christian child raised in a Christian household might reach teenhood and declare there is no God, but when that happens, churches have structures for managing that apostasy. A Catholic child might be sent towards the sacrament of Confirmation, a fundamentalist child might be encouraged to talk to a pastor who does a baptism, etc. I’m not saying that it’s not rife with abuse, of course, but just that there are organized structures for dealing with apostasy and a failure to believe what is faith as fact.

The religion of political movements doesn’t have any such structures, however. You’re just a heretic if you disbelieve, and cast out of the tribe. And both parties are asking people to believe a lot that’s effectively religious in nature as fact, without any organized mechanism for addressing doubts and skepticism.

Trump walked into this and what’s remarkable is that he’s such a liar, but he lives his own truths and gives space for others while doing that. That’s an extremely unusual political quality right now: both Democrats and Republicans demand belief allegiance from their leaders. Trump is perceived as rejecting orthodoxies, in contrast. And he never apologizes, never backs down from a perceived heresy, never gives an inch to the party monitors tasked with keeping political heretics strictly inline.

That’s what is appealing: he allows people to reject beliefs that the party priest classes have declared untouchable tenets. And that is a freedom of religious thought that Americans on all sides of the political spectrum crave. Hence, his popularity. [/quote]Old sins have been replaced by new sins.[/quote]

Pretty much.  [/quote]

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