Donald Trump Superstar

Well, I hope we're not too messianic 

Or a trifle too satanic . . . 

We love to play the blues. 

Mick Jagger and Keith Richards

Not to be content with hawking Bibles with Lee Greenwood, the worst country singer of all time (and the Michael Bolton of country and western), Donald Trump has made himself out to be a modern messiah out to save the Union, fashioning himself not in comparison to Abraham Lincoln but to Jesus Christ.

Trump has never come out and said he is a Christ-like figure, but, through insinuations both subtle and obvious, he's let his MAGA supporters believe that.  He's insisted that the multiple indictments against him are not actually directed at him but an effort by the Deep State to neutralize his power as part of an effort to go after ordinary Americans, and he's suffering the slings and arrows on their behalf, almost as a human shield for the little guy (a human shield who actually lives in a gold-plated castle in Florida).  His supporters actually talk about how Donald Trump is suffering for them, how he's sacrificing himself for them, leading them to revere him like, if not like Christ, at least like an Old Testament prophet.

So it shouldn't seem so surprising that MAGA folks hold their index fingers up in a prayerful mood at Trump's rallies, which is actually a QAnon gesture.

I can think of another finger I'd like to give to Trump.

And so this is why so many evangelicals support Trump.  Even as they acknowledge his sins - while Trump doesn't acknowledge his own, bragging how he has nothing to apologize for or confess to - they reason their support for him as an example of how the Lord works in mysterious ways by sending them a flawed hedonist to save Christianity, or at least their nationalistic version of it, which sees America as a citadel of Christian civilization.   They fear the citadel is under attack from forces of depravity, Islam, non-heterosexual culture, Islam, tree-hugging pagans, Islam, secular humanism, Islam, Taylor Swift, Islam, vegans, Islam, abortion, Islam. and of course, loudmouthed Puerto Rican and potty-mouthed Palestinian congresswomen.   

Did I happen to mention that they also fear Islam?

The idea that America is a citadel of Christian virtue is nothing new.  The Reagan administration played up the idea of the U.S. as a moral beacon in the 1980s, and many Americans concurred with that sentiment.  "God intended for us to have the highest moral country in the world," an Oregon nurse told a newspaper reporter in the early nineties.  But while Ronald Reagan believed that God intended that he be spared and live virtuously after being nearly killed by a deranged would-be assassin in 1981, he, as his son Ron noted, "accepted that as a responsibility, not a mandate."  Nor did Reagan accept that as a messianic mission, as opposed to Trump's insinuation as "the chosen one."

If Trump is a savior, why didn't he save this country from COVID?  Why did he suggest injecting ourselves with bleach instead?  And would a modern savior put out a social-media post like this on Easter Sunday?

Even Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who has repeatedly mocked Christianity for making its holiest day a moveable feast for lack of a permanent date ("I know what day my leader died") and secularizing it with rabbits and eggs (because rabbits don't lay eggs), has shown more respect for Easter than this.

And while President Biden, a devout Roman Catholic, was offering best wishes to the nation on Easter Sunday, March 31, he also put out a proclamation acknowledging March 31 as Transgender Visibility Day.  This offended MAGA Republicans who charged the President of placing the honoring of "depraved" transsexual culture over the solemnity of Easter.  But unlike Easter, Transgender Visibility Day, which was first observed in 2009, has always been on the last day of March, and has only coincided with Easter twice - in 2013 and in this year - since then.

Next year, when Trump could be President again and his administration could be transforming the country into a fascist police state along the guidelines of the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, Easter Sunday falls on April 20.

Adolf Hitler's birthday.