Thursday, September 19, 2024

Evangelical Conservative Hypocrisy In Backing Trump

When I was much younger, evangelical conservatives around me would elaborate on how evil Bill Clinton, a Democrat, is for the likes of adulterous behaviors.  Now, logically and Biblically (adultery requires actual sex according to Biblical passages like Leviticus 20:10), what is supposed to have really occurred is not adultery, though of course I cannot know from historical records and other hearsay what actually took place; it was extramarital oral sex, with Bill being separately married.  Regardless, I was told that he and those like him are so immoral that they should never hold office.  Some of the same people, starting in 2016, told me exactly the opposite: they said that their Republican candidate Donald Trump should be voted into the presidency either because his televised and alleged declarations and behaviors (such as extramarital affairs)  were irrelevant to being worthy of office or because he was the way to stop Hillary Clinton, Bill's wife, from becoming president.

What incredible hypocrisy!  On one hand, some of the same types of sins are being excused on Trump's part by evangelical "Christians" because we allegedly "need" a strong leader, not a correctly moralistic leader, despite the outrage at Bill Clinton's scandals.  On the other hand, Trump was irrationalistically elevated in the 2016 election period by many people in my life because voting him into office would prevent Hillary--the wife of the man the same conservatives objected to on moral grounds--could not take power.  Even more stupid was the insistence by some that morality does not have the same significance as pragmatic strengths in leadership, when, by nature, if moral obligations (rather than feelings) exist, what is obligatory should be pursued and enacted and what is evil should be shunned.

There is no monopoly on conservative or liberal politicians having affairs or engaging in any other sin, of course.  It is not as if either party is ideologically aligned with Christianity beyond very specific points either.  Donald Trump is far from Christian, and the same is true of the Republican party and its conservatism that he has spearheaded.  If he did commit adultery, he would deserve death (Deuteronomy 22:22), yet many conservatives I know identifying as Christians are eager to overlook his real or likely offenses to scream out about sometimes lesser or non-existent offenses of Democrat politicians.  Hypocritical philosophical stances will be indulged in whenever convenient if they benefit an irrationalist who bases their worldview on unwavering allegiance to an immediate political movement, instead of accepting particular tenets of a given political philosophy if they are true by logical necessity or rejecting them if they are false or unverifiable.  

The same act which is by nature righteous, permissible, or evil would by necessity be righteous, permissible, or evil for everyone, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, and Donald Trump included.  There would not be exceptions when the opposition is worse and it is logically impossible for anything morally obligatory to be optional for those in power.  Indeed, betraying morality for the sake of upholding morality is hypocritical and thus irrational, and both Republican conservatism and Democrat liberalism are irrational wholly aside from moral matters.  Now, since the necessary truths of reason cannot be false, they are the heart of reality and its only inherent part; only philosophically delusional insects base their worldview off of appeals to subjective appeal or cultural trends or political authorities or news sources or any other thing that is either untrue/irrelevant or unverifiable [1], unlike reason, as Trump supporters have to do to believe in his illusory greatness and that of his conservative worldview.

It is only all the more irrational for them to think that he in any consistent, intentional, or deep way lives out Christianity, only to then dismiss any matters where he has and does deviate from vital Christian tenets.  As for the issue of rationalistic truth and verifiability I have just mentioned, remember, I am a probabilistic Christian; I am committed to living for the worldview, to what it really entails, because it has evidence supporting it, but I do not actually believe all of its components are true because not all aspects of its philosophy are true by logical necessity.  Thus, I cannot know.  None of what I am saying here conflicts with Biblical doctrines themselves or, more importantly, with the necessary truths of reason.  Conservatism does, since logical truth is not grounded or revealed in the societal norms or stability that conservatism requires the preservation or at most slow alteration of.  Evangelical conservatism has the added layers of utterly contradicting Biblical obligations regarding social justice (Leviticus 19:33-34, Deuteronomy 15:1-3, and so on) and criminal justice (Exodus 21:16, 28-30, and so on) as well as reason, which is true either way.

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