One must admire the sheer, brassy architectural integrity of the modern conservative movement. It takes a special kind of craftsmanship to build a cathedral out of gold-plated ego and then insist the Carpenter would have picked out the drapes. We find ourselves living in an age where the “Blessed are the meek” crowd has been replaced by the “Harass the help and stiff the caterer” set, and the irony is so thick you couldn’t cut it with a silver cake knife.
Our current political landscape is less of a “shining city on a hill” and more of a gated community with a “No Trespassing” sign written in Ancient Greek that no one inside can actually read. The elite 1% have draped themselves in the borrowed robes of Christian mythology. They have turned wine back into water, and then charged the thirsty for the privilege of a sip.
The spectacle of Dear Leader, a man who treats the Ten Commandments like a buffet where he’s only interested in the shrimp cocktail because its the youngest, is particularly illuminating when he encounters a woman with a microphone and a functional neocortex. Woman. I’ve noticed a charmingly consistent bit of theater: when a female reporter dares to ask a question that isn’t a scripted invitation for him to admire his own reflection, he experiences a sudden, violent allergy to the truth. Well more so than usual.
He calls them “nasty.” It’s his favorite vintage, really. A “nasty woman” is, in the vernacular of the New Right, any woman who refuses to treat his deranged ramblings as the Sermon on the Mount. These women have the gall to notice that the emperor isn’t just naked; he’s actively trying to sell them the invisible suit at a 400% markup.
It is a fascinating bit of cultural identity theft. The conservative movement uses Christianity as a sort of decorative hedge to hide the fact that their actual deity is a spreadsheet. They preach the sanctity of life while JD Vance, a man who possesses the charismatic warmth of a damp basement, shuttles about like a ventriloquist’s dummy, blowing up diplomatic negotiations to ensure the fires stay lit and the missiles fly. They claim to follow a Man who said to give everything to the poor, yet they spend their Sundays figuring out how to tax the air.
The greed is not just a policy; it’s the liturgy. The hatred is the choir. And the selfishness? That’s the communion wine. They have taken a mythology centered on radical love and self-sacrifice and weaponized it to push women back into a subjugated silence, preferably one where we don’t ask why the “negotiator-in-chief” is more interested in his golf handicap than in preventing a global conflagration.
Being a man in this era is a strange business; one is expected to nod along to this burlesque of faith. But any man with a shred of sense can see that the “Christianity” being peddled at rallies is nothing more than a brand-integration deal for narcissism. They don’t want a savior; they want a bouncer. And until the “nasty women” stop asking questions, Trump will keep trying to kick them out of the room.
It’s not that the truth hurts; it’s just that it’s so terribly unfashionable in the current administration.