I must have written several times about bizarre events within American life under President Trump. The most recent example of the current craziness washing over much of American society are the daily outpourings from the White House on the topic of the coronavirus. Trump himself tells the world about the progress of the ‘fight’ against the coronavirus and sometimes what he says appears to be based on fantasy and hope rather than reality. Alongside him, for these briefings, Trump has included an international expert on infectious diseases, Dr Anthony Fauci. While wanting to have such scientific expertise around him, Trump has also been subtly undermining Fauci’s work by failing to stamp out some outrageous conspiracy theories directed against the doctor. Fauci apparently once said, in an email, something favourable about Hillary Clinton when she was Secretary of State under Obama. This, in the minds of the right-wing conspiracy theorists, who support Trump, renders him a stooge of the Democratic Party bent on destroying Trump politically. In a single moment, all Dr Fauci’s expertise is devalued and trashed and his motivation for urging the American public to take the virus seriously is called into question. One person could stop the dangerous onward march of these irrational conspiracy ideas. That person is the President himself. He, however, has no apparent desire to see the present coronavirus crisis as anything other than part of a war against his political opponents. The claims of truth and scientific rationality can be sacrificed if that gives Trump political advantage.
The wild and unsubstantiated claims about the coronavirus that circulate currently in America are not just irritating; they are often profoundly dangerous. Those who try to direct the country’s policy in helping victims, as well as leading the research to find vaccines and treatment, must be deeply frustrated by all the irrationality and incoherent management that is coming from the top. The problem about any ideas that originate in irrationality is that they cannot ever be properly debated. A person who thinks with his ‘gut’ as Trump does, is never going to be amenable to a calm consideration of scientific evidence and factual material. Reason and unreason have very little to say to each other.
Where does Trump’s dangerous irrationality come from? It seems to come from two main sources. The first source may be attributed to Trump’s own personality. We have spoken before about the temperament of an individual like Trump who appears to suffer from full blown malignant narcissism. When somebody suffers from such a pathology, they will have created a world inside their head that will automatically reject all ideas, people and thoughts that challenge their need to satisfy an overwhelming narcissistic hunger. There is, inside the mind of such a sufferer, an insatiable appetite which demands to receive flattery, soothing and gratification at every opportunity. So, to understand the lack of rational discourse that afflicts the Trump administration, we can in the first place point to his extraordinarily distorted and corrupted narcissistic thinking.
While an individual like Trump can exist in a delusional bubble completely of his own making, it is easier for him if his fantasy thinking is shared by others around him. Trump of course has his political allies, especially those who see him as a means to enhance their wealth. New laws and tax breaks can all be manipulated to favour the business interests of the very wealthy who are close to a compliant President. Such individuals can always be relied upon to pander to gratify Trump’s narcissistic needs. But there is a further larger group who remain steadfastly loyal to Trump, the American Christian Right. Trump has always been able to count on this significant section of the population, white self-styled evangelical Christians. They see his presidency as furthering their anti-abortion, anti-LGTB priorities. These play an extraordinarily significant part in their deliberations and rhetoric. To summarise these priorities, the conservative Christian right hanker after a more Christian ‘biblical’ society after Rushdoony. They believe that Trump is, by promoting their interests, helping them to achieve this aim. The way that traditional Christian conservative causes about abortion and LGTB form part of this agenda is not our concern here. These topics are well explored elsewhere. What concerns us here is the way that irrationality has been allowed to flourish over the coronavirus struggle. What happens in the States in this area matters to the whole world. If the world economy and people’s lives are being undermined by crackpot Christian ideas, that matters a great deal. Christian irrationality should not be allowed to creep into the mainstream of society and politics to threaten us all.
It is not too great a generalisation to say that a large segment of American Protestant Christianity has always had a problem with pure science and the technology that has grown out of it. In Britain in the 19th century, we too had fierce resisters to the implications of Darwin’s ideas concerning evolution. Many Christians defended the strict notion that the world was created in six 24 hour days. But by the end of the 19th century most of these ultraconservatives in Britain had retreated to the margins of society and were not generally found in the denominational churches. Among many American Christians, by contrast, the literal reading of Genesis is a widely held notion. Typically, this is translated into antipathy and irrational hostility towards science and scientists. When such hostility is projected on to doctors and scientists working to find a way forward with the coronavirus, such a belief system can be the cause for people dying unnecessarily. The horror of our world collapsing into an economic depression, such as we witnessed in the 30s, is also too awful to contemplate
Religious irrationalism, whether in the States or elsewhere, has the power to further exacerbate the coronavirus epidemic. Our first example from the States is to be found in the words of a megachurch leader, Guilermo Maldonaldo, based in Florida. He called a meeting on March 15 and insisted that all his flock be there in person. He asked the question. ‘Do you think that God would bring his people to his house to be contagious (sic) with the virus? Of course not.’ Guildremo, according to his website, is due to be present in London for a rally in June. We expect it will be the virus that causes this visit to be postponed. Even if there was no ban on such a mass gathering as he was planning to hold, we might hope that the Home Office might decide that allowing Guildremo to enter the country was not in the public interest.
A second evangelist Rodney Howard Browne, again based in Florida, has ridiculed members concerned about the virus by calling them ‘pansies’. As an antidote he has handed out anointed handkerchiefs which he believes will protect them from the disease and the fear that may accompany it.
It is a matter of deep irony that one of the first people to die from coronavirus in Virginia was a Christian pastor, Landon Spradlin. He had described the pandemic as ‘mass hysteria’. Spradlin had returned prematurely from a preaching trip to New Orleans after becoming ill. In each of these three examples there is a dangerous juxtaposition between faith and irrationality. The word dangerous needs to be emphasised again and again. As long as the Trump government is infiltrated by this kind of irrational thinking promoted by ‘orthodox’ American Christian leaders, the world and its economies are in severe peril.
Irrationality and faith are unhappy bedfellows. I have pointed my readers to three examples among Christian Americans but there are many others. When one believes that faith takes precedence over everything else, even rationality, we have a toxic, dangerous situation. Like many conservative beliefs, the precedence of faith is a principle which does make some sense within a Christian worldview. But it needs to be combined with wisdom, with nuance rather than as an all-conquering principle of a Christian attitude. Above all, faith must never be the prelude to a dangerous irrationality which can swamp the minds of Christian believers as it appears to be doing in America. No belief system can ever be allowed to endanger, even destroy, others simply because it never exercised the spirit of caution and care.
Many thanks for this. It might also be said that the contest between religion and science in late nineteenth century America was also resolved in favour of the latter, but in the sense that Asa Gray’s argument that the theory of evolution was an affirmation of theism trumped Louis Agassiz’s belief in intelligent design (it might be said that this was a more decorous equivalent to the contest between Thomas Huxley and Samuel Wilberforce). However, whilst it was resolved in the mainstream denominations in New England, and parts of the Middle West and Pacific Coast, it was not in the South; though a Nebraskan, William Jennings Bryan drew much of his political support in the 1900 and 1908 elections from the South, and he was the prosecutor in the Scopes trial.
Why did Darwinism make such little headway in the South? Why did the principal of Biblical inerrancy and sola scriptura remain dominant in that region? I have much to read on this topic, but I would reduce it to several causes: (i) the visceral impact of defeat in 1865 and reconstruction to 1877; (ii) the absence of major universities and the dependence of state universities on funding by local legislatures dominated by conservative interests; (iii) the institutional arrangements of the Baptists and the organisation of their seminaries; and, above all (iv) the urgent need to preserve or restore ante-bellum social structures and habits of mind against the threat of racial equality. All these (and other) factors worked in symbiosis.
The period since Brown v Board of Education has been characterised by the strong antipathy of conservative whites towards civil rights and the racial dilution consequent to rapid non-European immigration after Hart-Celler, a tendency amplified by the reduced economic circumstances of non-college educated whites. Long ago Richard Hofstadter identified a ‘paranoid style’ in US politics; yet bigotry is often allied with a certain insight: white fears about the challenge of other races to their sense of self-esteem have to some extent been vindicated. Trump (easily the worst president ever) has reasoned, perhaps accurately, that a critical mass of his base would prefer a gotterdammerung to a world of racial harmony and unity; the progress of the virus, and the ability to project blame upon an external ‘other’ (i.e., China) is a useful instrument in that prospectus. The 1970s megachurch was a reaction against the reforms instituted by LBJ: a place in which whites could cocoon themselves against a rapidly changing society in which their claims to superiority were being challenged. If elsewhere politics is nine-tenths economics, in the US it is race, and much religion is racial prejudice at prayer.
Trump is, of course, everything you characterise him as being. As Thomas Edsall has argued in the NYT, Trump wishes to restore the white Queens of his youth; we should not underestimate his will to do so, even if his failure is almost certain.
Sorry, Bryan was also of course the Democratic nominee in the 1896 race (his best shot), but in his subsequent two attempts his backing was overwhelmingly in the former slave states once bimetallism became far less of an issue; his support in the silver states of the West declined proportionately and in the Mid-West he was outflanked on the left by Debs.
I last visited the States when the exchange rate was $2.40. But even so long ago , the place and its people had a profound effect upon me.
Everything was big, from cars to people, from buildings to pizzas. We visited a church there, and the size of the Sunday collection plate, and its contents was staggering. No loose change. Notes. Stacked high, almost overflowing.
I changed my opinion of Americans then, and continue with a fascination with a culture that diverges considerably from the U.K.
U.S. political culture has been deliciously portrayed in “The West Wing”, whose characters I have savoured and episodes I have returned to again and again. Wistfully I sometimes long for a Jed Bartlett, who could save us from all this.
It’s largely phantasy of course, an unconscious dream of largely good wholesome (albeit quirky, cranky at times and intellectually snobbish) leaders. The contrast with Trump couldn’t be more pronounced.
I do think we should lift off our “filter” when viewing the USA. Yes, we are very different. They will have their own views on us, and with some justification. I’m not just talking about the hilarious Brit parody Lord John Marbury.
Having lifted off the filter we use, still how irrational are the Americans for voting for DT? Hands up here, I admit to being the first to chuckle at ridiculous hairstyles and fake tans, but we must look much deeper into ourselves too to understand what’s going on.
There’s an important reciprocity in narcissism. It cannot exist in isolation. Every narcissist needs a supplier. This could be a partner, a family, a community or a nation. The queen bee needs an army of workers to supply and feed her, the drones need the queen bee to guarantee their futures.
I argue that the people want a Trump for the belief of what he can provide them. An outsider would say it is irrational. Unreality.
Actually we all live in a world to some extent of our own making. If we refuse to let the outer reality in, then yes we will fall down sooner or later. Pretending there is no virus is a pertinent example of this, in some congregations, and misnaming it faith.
Faith is prominent in Americans, but they are primarily an economic people. Those bucks in the collection plate came from commercial pragmatism, as well as generous hearts.
Can crass decisions from Pennsylvania Avenue destroy the world economy? Certainly there will be terrible loss of life. Tragically this will happen whatever he does. Unreality is not a permanent state. The intrusion of real loss cannot be avoided in a democracy like this, despite attempts to control the media. I’ve no doubt the interventions will be far bigger than they would have had to have been, but they eventually will be made.
And the people will forgive him / turn a blind narcissistically-supplying eye.
There will be shocks to come. Reality is beginning to kick in though, and when recovery does eventually come his people will probably…
Cliffhanger! I can’t wait to hear what Trump’s people will probably think or do, or what will become of them? Not least because most of my family are Americans.
Stephen, I think there’s an unwanted ‘not’ in this sentence: ‘Even if there was no ban on such a mass gathering as he was planning to hold, we might hope that the Home Office might decide that allowing Guildremo [Guillermo] to enter the country was not against the public interest.’
I believed I was well short of the 3000 characters limit. When I saw it had truncated my final sentence it did cross my mind to finish it. I generally try to write briefly because I’m not sure anyone gets further than the first line anyway!
Will Trump get a second term?
Perhaps we could all suggest endings?
I smiled while reading this, but I watched Trump’s latest statement. He was struggling to read his script. Hundreds of thousands will die because he had a hunch it would all be over in two weeks. But. Did you see that doctor in Italy, all scrunched up in a crowd to get into church? You can’t get infected in a church, she said, it’s a sacred space! My jaw dropped.
Thanks for all your comments. Janet the extra ‘not’ was a piece of last minute editing which went wrong. Thinking about the future, I believe that the mood among Trump-supporters in the church will change when they see the outcome of so many following a blind man into the ditch. The church in general will change but that may be for financial factors. I will perhaps bore you with my gloomy prognostications about the UK at some point. Steve the 3000 limit is not mean to be draconian. It is meant to concentrate your mind to ask whether what you are saying could be be said more briskly. If it is worth saying,you will simply start another comment anyway. If I think that you are talking too much I shall hint at it. The only person who has the right to spout opinions uninterrupted is your editor. That is the privilege of a blogger!
Thanks Stephen!
The matters raised are often of great significance here, if we care about the church for example, or about vulnerable people who are likely to suffer, in this particular example.
Generally I contribute an opinion in the hope that I am wrong. The evidence I have seen so far with respect to Donald Trump is that it doesn’t seem to make much difference how bad he is as to what the electorate thinks of him. At best this is a sort of “decision inertia”: We chose him, he was anointed by God; we’re sticking with this decision. I know good Christian people who voted for him despite the character evidence against him. Women too.
Trump still represents the “side” supporting the conservative right views you cited.
His difficulties in reading from a prepared statement could be simple vanity over not wearing reading glasses. Or dyslexia- recalling the “covfefe” debacle. I’m probably wrong, but I think these minor frailties actually endear him to the electorate. Moreover his distance from the political mainstream with a background in business, such a it was, also bought him many votes. His ability to talk big, with sweeping, sometimes blundering ideas, is perhaps unfortunately what people seem to want.
Will the American churches turn against him? I doubt it, particularly when you look at the alternatives.
All that said, notwithstanding his apparent overall power, I do suspect there are strong mitigating influences behind the scenes.
I’d love to read your prognostications about the UK. As a native of the Eden Valley, I’d love to read them in particular about the church in that area.