On Christian Manchildren, Strong Daddy Love, God Putin and Daddy Muscular Jesus Fetish

Male supremacist, white supremacist, homophobic and transphobic Christians have been fantasizing about the kind of violent show of power Putin exhibited this week for some time. Over the course of the past week, I saw many of the same Catholics who uncritically jumped on the Trump pro-life trolley, walking back their tacit support of Trump-Putin on social media; this, as I researched a misogynist grifter preacher ( #dearBrian) who revealed a few demons of his own, last week, in the course of twitter histrionics whereby he chastised women he characterized as “whores” for their yearning to drag him into the “tarpits of sin.” Whatever kinds of Christians they are, the man-children who believe strong Daddies should run everything, crave safety themselves, but they also want to safeguard the male supremacy and white supremacy that preserves their privilege, and they see a Christian theocratic government in which men are men and women; women, women; and LGBTQ are celibate and chaste, converted, or invisible as their best shot at retaining that political, economic and psycho-sexual potency.

One thing that is now clear to anyone looking at the rise of Trump in the United States is that when it comes to right-wing politics in the United States, no mountain is too high for Catholics like Steve Bannon — who has been running with Putin and the oligarchs in public view since they helped him kick-start Donald Trump’s presidential campaign — and conservative Evangelical Christians to surmount, together, in unity, as long as the prize at its zenith is a white majority Christian world run by strong filthy rich men. In this “City of God” of their dreaming, public education no longer exists, laissez faire capitalism thrives unchecked, taxes are low, and women are at home wearing dresses, baking, home-schooling and spawning annually; and LGBTQ people are disappeared or converted.

United States Roman Catholics and conservative Evangelical Christians set aside their differences to collaborate in installing Trump and (indirectly) his puppet-master Putin in the White House. Many (perhaps most) would like to do that again. “Liberal” Catholics might protest such a characterization, but the truth is all Catholics who drop money into the basket on Sunday have been supporting this project unofficially, whether knowingly or not, because the Putin/Russian Orthodox Church/ Traditional Values side is the side the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Liberal Catholics, the liberation theology crowd, and much of Jesuit fandom are in denial about this and the extent to which the pope is complicit, to some extent. But as Hunter Thomson wrote in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, “There’s no use telling him about the bats.” (They’ll “see them soon enough.”)

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