As GOP leaders get in line, the outlook for democracy looks grim—in Ukraine, and even in America.
In 2016, Republicans could profess some uncertainty about the kind of president Donald Trump would be. Maybe the office would change the man? Maybe the party elite could bend Trump to its will?
But in 2024, there’s no uncertainty. Trump’s party is signing up for the ride, knowing exactly what the ride is. Pro-Ukraine senators are working to elect a president who will cut off Ukraine, knowing that he will cut off Ukraine. Pro-NATO senators are working to elect a president who will wreck NATO, knowing that he will wreck NATO.
Many top Republicans have been hoping for a way out of their Trump dilemma. That’s why Nikki Haley has raised tens of millions of dollars and Ron DeSantis has raised hundreds of millions. It’s why, even now, more than half of the Republican senators have not endorsed a primary candidate. And that’s why so many conservatives get twitchy when told that the 2024 presidential race is already a binary choice between Trump and Joe Biden. It’s also why the lopsided nomination contest will continue its fictional progress for some while longer.
But the exits are blocked. The many criminal and civil legal processes against Trump were too slow to rescue his party from him. The thesis that Trump might be disqualified under the Fourteenth Amendment awaits a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. The Republican contest will be over within weeks.
Counterpoint: evangelicals do believe he’s the antichrist and actually want him to bring on the end times in order to trigger the rapture so they can check out early and reunite with all the dead believers “in the clouds, to meet the lord in the air”
They’re an accelerationist death cult, and their scheme only works if we all go down with them. They know how bad trump is, they know he fits the bill as their antichrist, and they’re gambling our entire planet and life as we know it on their little fairytale stories. Not to mention all the non-believers that even within the evangelical belief system would just be fucking smited I guess or go on living in the apocalypse if their rApTuRe were to ever happen.
It’s very similar with the climate. There’s that certain subset of religious accelerationist zealots who are well aware as to what’s happening with the climate and want it to happen, because that’ll bring back Jesus or something. Just ignore that those same people would end up lynching Jesus for being brown.
Yep, that’s what I was trying to touch on with the “gambling our entire planet” bit.
Anyways, I’m calling it now. The rapture is going to be nuclear holocaust and their “uniting with dead believers and the lord” is just going to be everyone on the planet fucking dying and receiving whatever final judgement they believe in.
At least that’s what I imagine some dude in a desert 2000 years ago, who thought he was receiving divine images and words from god, that were actually just regular old premonitions of a Donald Trump-like figure bringing in the end-times via some sudden catastrophic event, could only comprehend as a divine culling. I also imagine that if quantum physics and wormhole theory have any merit in this discussion, the energy spent by a nuclear holocaust and subsequent death of humanity could conceivably send those visions/experiences back in time to that dude 2000 years ago. I’m not a physicist or anything though, so I suppose my guess is as good as the fundies’ lol