Trump as Savior

 The book "When Prophecy Fails" is a classic work of social psychology that examines a UFO doomsday cult waiting for the end of the world. Of course, the special day arrives, and the world does not end. How do the cult members respond to this failure? By becoming more convinced that the prophecy is correct.

Donald Trump is at the center of a similar pseudo-religious cult prediction as well. His most loyal followers truly believe him to be a type of divine, messianic, and all-powerful leader. In reality, there is nothing divine or messianic about Donald Trump. He is a mere mortal who has been credibly accused of many serious crimes. Nevertheless, right-wing Christian evangelicals and Christofascists (to the degree those two groups are distinct and separate from one another) have rationalized their support of Donald Trump (and Trumpism) through the biblical myth of Cyrus. The belief is that God uses a wicked man as a tool of divine destiny and will.

Donald Trump is not a practicing Christian; moreover, he looks very uncomfortable in church and at other religious gatherings. In reality, Donald Trump is a pathological malignant narcissist and compulsive liar who is the God of his own personal religion and self-contained universe. Trump views right-wing Christians in a transactional way. They are a tool to help him get and keep more power.

Still, white right-wing Christian evangelicals' faith in Trump the prophetic figure was rewarded grandly. While president, Trump enacted a range of policies that furthered the creation of a white Christofascist theocracy in America. The white right views him as a revolutionary leader, a force of destiny and history, a Destructor who will force a new age where diversity, pluralism and globalism are destroyed and replaced by a White Christian empire where white men rule unopposed over all things. The QAnon conspiracy cult with its apocalyptic obsession over Trump's retributive act of destruction known as "the Storm" is one example.

-Chauncey Devega in Salon.com