The Mutually-Assured Destruction of the GOP

The recent flood of the denial of reality – and in many cases outright lies – by both former president Donald Trump and many of his followers deeply concerns me for the future of both my nation and its church.

Let’s start with the politics.

There’s always been SOME level of lying and denialism going on in politics, especially with regard to the 2020 election and January 6th 2021, but it seems to have taken a sudden turn for the extreme in the last couple weeks, especially since Vice President Kamala Harris chose Governor Tim Walz as a running mate, and the right wing has begun to use every possible vile attack on their persons, their record, and their intentions for governing.

As a few examples:

The very first things said about Governor Walz were to attack his military service and accuse him of “stolen valor.” Plenty of proof has been given against these charges, but they continue from the highest levels of the Republican party.

Attacks on Walz’s policies have included some demonstrably false claims of things like forcing schools to put tampons in boy’s bathrooms. The more outrageous the claims, the more loudly they’re repeated.

While it’s hardly unusual for right-wing rhetoric, there is a fresh explosion of claims that the Democrat candidate wants to overthrow the entire democratic political system and institute socialistic communism. It hasn’t happened any previous time that a Democrat won, and it won’t now. But the lies and exaggeration continue.

Beyond the politics, other counterfactual claims continue to appear:

There is Trump’s insistence that he was in a helicopter emergency landing with former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown, despite vehement denial by Mr. Brown. Trump seems to be conflating a real 2004 helicopter emergency on which Willie Brown did fly, but not with Trump onboard, with a helicopter trip that he did take with former California governor Jerry Brown in 2018. Yet despite being challenged with verifiable facts, Trump continues to insist on his false story.

There is the fake news about Algerian Olympic boxer Imane Khelif, who Trump and many right-wing pundits and influencers continue to insist is a transgender woman or even just a man pretending to be a woman, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary.

Trump and many right wing pundits and influencers shared a photo from the Detroit airport hangar as Kamala exits Air Force Two to greet a massive crowd, claiming that the photo was AI-generated to hype her crowd size – despite hundreds of other photos and videos showing the event from hundreds of different vantage points and all agreeing on exactly what the photo in question clearly shows. Similar false claims have been made about every Harris/Walz rally.

Also, Trump continues to spout lie after lie in stump speeches. His keynote at the Republican National Convention in late July was fact checked to find at least 20 clear falsehoods. Worse yet, his news conference on August 11th contained no less than 162 lies and distortions iwikin just one hour.

These are just a few examples of many.

As I’ve been poking around my social media sites, I’m seeing something perhaps more concerning than Trump or right wing pundits or influencers lying: most right-leaning voters seem to be utterly convinced that these falsehoods are true. If they’re not actually convinced, they’re certainly willing to APPEAR to be convinced.

It’s one thing for politicians to lie. It is a worse thing when their entire constituency fully accepts and repeats their lies.

It occurred to me that we may be looking here at a form of mutually-assured destruction (M.A.D. or MAD).

As Wikipedia says, “The strategy of MAD was fully declared in the early 1960s, primarily by United States Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. In McNamara’s formulation, there was the very real danger that a nation with nuclear weapons could attempt to eliminate another nation’s retaliatory forces with a surprise, devastating first strike and theoretically ‘win’ a nuclear war relatively unharmed. The true second-strike capability could be achieved only when a nation had a guaranteed ability to fully retaliate after a first-strike attack.” As a result, the only way to prevent nuclear war was to have so many nation-destroying weapons that using them would be unthinkable because it would guarantee mutual destruction of both antagonist nations – if not the life-sustaining ability of the planet itself.

And it looks to me like that’s what is going on in the Republican Party: the cycle of lying is so pervasive that to admit it would result in the destruction of the very party – so more and more party-destroying lies are produced to sustain the first lies.

Consider that there’s a nasty cycle going on with Trump himself: he lies. Then the pundits and influencers participate in the lie to support Trump. Then the people buy into the lies and because they trust him they assume the lies are truth. But Trump cannot afford to repent when he’s shown to be wrong, because that would destroy his followers’ trust in him. So Trump lies again, even doubling down on his lies.

And similarly the followers – especially the influencers and pundits – are unwilling to challenge Trump’s stories, because then he would cut them off, just like he turned on Vice President Pence for refusing to participate in overturning a lawful election in 2021, and recently attacked Georgia Governor Kemp for not going along with the lies. So the influential followers lie along with Trump.

And the people, Trump’s followers, must lie to themselves to sustain their confidence in him, and to remain part of the “in group.” They willingly repeat the lies, despite any twinges of conscience they may have – the more vocally and loudly, the better.

So Trump cannot afford to repent. The influencers and pundits who depend on Trump for their livelihood cannot afford to challenge Trump. Trump’s followers cannot mentally afford to doubt Trump. Trump sees the apparent total devotion to his leadership, and doubles down, and the level of truth continues to plummet.

That’s the “mutually-assured” part of MAD.

As to the “destruction” part: if unchecked, this lying is going to destroy the Republican party and ultimately the foundation of the American political system.

For one thing, not everyone is willing to continue buying or repeating the lies, and a non-trivial number of Republicans are starting to bail out. It’s not the party that they grew up with, and they’re becoming unwilling to stay onboard. There is a trickle increasing to a flow of Republicans starting to see – and more importantly say – that Trump is lying. The list is not short, including six current Republican senators, five representatives, two state governors, and a number of significant Republican organizations.

Aside from those in his own party who already have decided Trump is untrustworthy to inhabit the Oval Office again, and those who are trapped in this lie/repeat cycle, the rest of the world clearly sees what is going on. Spend just a few minutes browsing news stories from around the world, and it becomes clear that pretty much the only people being fooled are Trump’s supporters in the United States.

But here’s why I call it MAD: the Republican Party, aside from those few party detractors, has so thoroughly wedded – or perhaps welded – itself to Trump’s candidacy that even though his dishonesty or confusion are obvious, they’re willing to give a pass or even fully commit to the untruths, rather than do anything to pull support from Trump.

But the bill WILL come due. And it’s going to be utterly devastating to the party, and potentially to the political stability of the United States of America itself.

The problem is that it’s impossible for such a gross level of untruth to persist forever. Aside from – or perhaps just like – a truly mentally-unstable fabulist like former congressman George Santos, it takes a particular kind of crazy to lie like Trump. And Trump won’t be around much longer. If his clearly-declining mental acuity trends like most other elderly people, he likely won’t be a factor in the 2028 presidential election season – maybe not even the 2026 mid-term elections.

And in all likelihood, if he does lose this election, the party will turn away from him in disgust, and be forced to look in the mirror and ask what just happened. And I suspect they won’t like what they see. At that point, if Trump does lose, I see two possible outcomes.

One, the Republican party will at some point realize just how badly they’ve erred. But it will be too late – they will have lost literally all credibility in the eyes of the world watching them. Conservatism will be set back by decades.

Or two, and I think more likely, they will refuse to see, and they’ll double down on the Great Lie, as Adolf Hitler described in 1925 in “Mein Kampf,” saying that one could fool people with a lie so massive that nobody would believe they “could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously”. They’ll go on convincing themselves that Trump won but it was stolen – twice now, in both 2020 and 2024 – and the country will erupt in violence as they try to steal it back. America’s election system only works because the people trust it, and when the trust in elections disappears in at nearly half of the voters, the system will die an abrupt and shocking death.

Here’s the larger context of that quote from Hitler’s book: “All this was inspired by the principle – which is quite true in itself – that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying. These people know only too well how to use falsehood for the basest purposes.”

If Trump does win in November 2024, then we risk forgetting this lesson at the expense of truth, just like George Orwell wrote in “1984” saying “And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed – if all records told the same tale – then the lie passed into history and became truth. ‘Who controls the past’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.'” (https://files.libcom.org/files/1984.pdf, pg 19)

Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, the rest of the world is watching the United States, and the Big Lie is not so big as to succeed in fooling the rest of the world, but only the 80 million or so Americans who unwaveringly support Trump and believe that Big Lie along with all the smaller ones. So while America’s future as a liberal democracy in the form of a representative republic is very much in doubt, history will undoubtedly show exactly how the supporters of Donald Trump were willing to submit themselves to a massive and extensive web of untruth, for the sake of political power.

But now we come to the church.

Even more than the politics, I’m concerned because the strongest base of support for Donald Trump and his cycle of lies comes from the evangelical wing of the American church. For an institution which considers itself the true representative of the Kingdom of God here on earth, to use the name of Jesus and of God in their support of Trump, and to regularly repeat his lies as if they were truth, is the most unchristian kind of taking the name of the Lord in vain that I can imagine. The very God of Truth should not be defamed by associating God’s name with easily demonstrable lie after lie after lie.

So even more than to the Republican party, history will be especially unkind to the American evangelical establishment, which as a harlot has whored itself out to achieve its political goals, at the exceedingly costly expense of its very soul.

“Whored” and “harlot,” I say? Dare I use such words? Yes, it’s incredibly pointed and toxic and harsh, and I mean it exactly so. I think it’s a shockingly Biblically-accurate description, in fact.

I’m no longer so evangelical as to believe that The Revelation of Jesus as given to John is a very specific and detailed prophecy about an exact “End Times” yet to come, but I do nonetheless believe that it very accurately identifies some very typical human tendencies when religion and empire become entangled. Let’s read all of Revelation chapter 17 together:

17 Then one of the seven angels who have the seven bowls came and spoke with me, saying, “Come here, I will show you the judgment of the great harlot who sits on many waters, 2 with whom the kings of the earth committed sexual immorality, and those who dwell on the earth were made drunk with the wine of her sexual immorality.” 3 And he carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness; then I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast, full of blasphemous names, having seven heads and ten horns. 4 And the woman was clothed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls, having in her hand a gold cup full of abominations and of the unclean things of her sexual immorality, 5 and on her forehead a name was written, a mystery, “BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.” 6 Then I saw the woman drunk with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the witnesses of Jesus. When I saw her, I wondered greatly. 7 And the angel said to me, “Why do you wonder? I will tell you the mystery of the woman and of the beast that carries her, which has the seven heads and the ten horns.

8 “The beast that you saw was, and is not, and is about to come up out of the abyss and go to destruction. And those who dwell on the earth, whose name has not been written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, will wonder when they see the beast, that he was and is not and will come. 9 Here is the mind which has wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sits, 10 and they are seven kings; five have fallen, one is, the other has not yet come; and when he comes, he must remain a little while. 11 And the beast which was and is not, is himself also an eighth and is one of the seven, and he goes to destruction. 12 And the ten horns which you saw are ten kings who have not yet received a kingdom, but they receive authority as kings with the beast for one hour. 13 These have one purpose, and they give their power and authority to the beast. 14 These will wage war against the Lamb, and the Lamb will overcome them, because He is Lord of lords and King of kings, and those who are with Him are the called and elect and faithful.”

15 And he said to me, “The waters which you saw where the harlot sits, are peoples and crowds and nations and tongues. 16 And the ten horns which you saw, and the beast, these will hate the harlot and will lay waste to her and make her naked, and will eat her flesh and will burn her up with fire. 17 For God gave it in their hearts to do His purpose both by doing their own common purpose and by giving their kingdom to the beast, until the words of God will be finished. 18 And the woman whom you saw is the great city, which has a kingdom over the kings of the earth.”

Note that “sexual immorality” is also alternately translated “spiritual adulteries.” Restating Revelation 17 in that context, and recalling that earlier in Revelation 12 the woman is described as the people of God, one can readily see a picture of the church, now apostate, drunkenly committing spiritual adulteries with the kings of the earth, seeking great earthly wealth and power in return for her spiritual favors. The church, which once sat faithfully on the seven mountains – identified by many evangelicals as the core systems of government and culture – and who once had dominion over many peoples and groups, has prostituted herself for power and glory, and is despised by the whole earth and now lies with her nakedness exposed and eaten alive and burned with fire.

And as the last two verses indicate, God directly triggers and oversees this fall from grace, of the arrogant and greedy church.

As Jesus asked in Mark 8:36, “For what does it profit them to gain the whole world, and forfeit their soul?“

And lest anyone say “my denomination wasn’t part of that evangelical church,” I would respond: did your denomination vocally stand up against the evangelical harlotry? If not, it was deeply complicit by its very silence.

As I said, I don’t believe that Revelation 17 has one perfect, singular interpretation – but I do believe it’s an accurate depiction of what cyclically appears in human history, and in this particular season, I see America, and particularly a specific but large and potent portion of the American church, reflected in that ancient story.

It’s long been my assertion that God will not suffer any other to share God’s glory, and that this means that even the United States, in all its self-perceived glory, must also some day be utterly humbled. No human form of government, no human system, can possibly outshine the Kingdom of Heaven; I don’t think God will permit that, and besides, every human system will naturally pale as the true Kingdom is finally revealed. Worse still, it’s the height of American arrogance to assert that the United States is in fact the necessary beginnings of that very Kingdom of God, as do many American evangelicals – even as evangelicals from any other nation rightfully laugh at such an assertion. The other nations of the world see us more clearly than we do, and we are not and never have been nearly as great or Godly as we have told ourselves.

And God does not suffer human arrogance for long. Many times in history, a great empire has fallen dramatically and suddenly; why would we be any different? God has given the United States about 250 years of grace, of unmerited favor, despite many failings. And hence comes the rallying cry of Donald Trump’s campaign: Make America Great Again. In their view, America was truly great, and should be so again. Yes, we have done some great things – just as we have done some horrible things – but I personally suspect that the time of American prominence is drawing to a close, when we are shown clearly for what we are, in the eyes of the whole world. Unless things change quickly, history will not be particularly kind to the United States of America, even though conservatives firmly believe in its foundational greatness.

Well, in my view, what made America as great as it was, despite its many flaws, was humility and truth-telling and its willingness to welcome “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” Most of what I see from Donald Trump and his followers these days is exactly opposed to all of those things. Instead, much like that woman in Revelation 17, they crave riches and power and control over many nations and peoples, especially over fellow Americans. What goodness did exist has been overrun by lies and hatred and oppression and a studied pursuit of authoritarian fascism painted over with a thin coat of Christian symbolism.

And so I mourn for my nation. I’m not gleeful about what I see coming. Rather, I accept it with resignation and sadness, and I’m willing to speak clearly and without flinching, in the hopes that just a few people will read words like I write here, and reflect on what we’ve abandoned to chase after Trump and glory and power and control, and instead choose to stand up and say, “no, I will not vote for that one more time. Even if I disagree with every policy of his opponent, I would rather take back our witness as truth-tellers and a reflection of the righteousness of God, than continue to support this cycle of lies and deceptions.”

I say this with full repentance as one who voted in 2016 and 2020 for Trump, fully believing at the time that he was God’s man for this hour, to change the Supreme Court, to make America great again, to take back the nation for Jesus. But today, I see that perhaps God had a different purpose for Trump: yes, he may be God’s man – but not in the sense of King Cyrus, but instead in the sense of Revelation 17:17, “For God has put it into their hearts to carry out his purpose by agreeing to give their kingdom to the beast, until the words of God will be fulfilled.” (NRSVUE)

I dearly hope I’m wrong. I hope enough people will turn around before the election that Trump’s dominion over an entire wing of the American church will be finally broken. I hope those who then lose will realize that the death of the entire American political system isn’t worth continuing to promote the Big Lie that the election was again stolen. I hope that the evangelical church will then humble itself, and for the first time in eight years truly seek God’s face, and be healed. I hope the Republican party will realize its error, and repent for whoring itself out after such an inveterate liar. I hope the deep, deep damage done to the reputation of Christianity will be healed and people will once again seek to follow the true Jesus, not the lies.

But I’m not optimistic. There’s a lot of hope there, but not much likelihood.

And so with sadness I agree with Jesus, in saying “Father, may Your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven“, even when that might well be an ending of a thing that once seemed good in my eyes.

I’m sorry this had to be such a negative post today, but I feel very deeply about this horrible cycle of lies I see each day, and felt it was important to bring it to attention.

Be blessed, and may we all remain deeply connected to the God of Truth, and may we all be deeply humble and repentant before the Holy Spirit.