Several times, Scott Galloway has commented that the MAGA cult, and possibly a larger swath of the public, have come to equate cruelty with masculinity. I think he absolutely nails it. Trump’s indifference to the suffering of others, often females, is sometimes bordering on sadism. It is longstanding and continues in innumerably consequential ways today. His cult is surely a disparate group of misfits, gun nuts, illiterate conspiracy theorists, sociopaths, and yes, citizens who rightly feel unheard and left behind. I want to explore the 80% of evangelical Christians who voted for him, and thus endorsed the indifference, the inhumanity, the cruelty, and ultimately their grotesque vision that Trump symbolizes what a man should be.
Like many of us, I’ve been following the Epstein/Trump/Maxwell horror with renewed interest, always keeping in mind Trump’s “grab ‘em by the pussy” boast, the almost 30 women who have accused him of various assaults, and of course the creepy giddiness he expressed when recalling his right to inspect young women in their backstage dressing rooms at his beauty pageants. I don’t think the public has fully absorbed the life-shattering psychic trauma that these girls and young women have endured. Their suffering surely continues.
And yet so many in the MAGA cult are self-righteously devout evangelical Christians! Are they unacquainted with the Gospel of Matthew and its instruction to show compassion to the poor, the homeless, and the stranger (foreigner)? Perhaps they see these tenets as coming from an unworthy, feminized version of Jesus, not one fit for a 21st century, kick ass, deport ‘em on demand, America! Instead, they envision a warrior Jesus, also from the Gospel of Matthew, THAT’S 10:34-36 for those of you who are following along, bibles open). I’ll wager that these pious, authentic “real “Americans absolutely relish the biblically sanctioned oppression of females. Perhaps they prefer the passages that clearly subjugate women:
Timothy 2:12
“But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.”
Ephesians 5:22-24
“Wives, be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church.”
Corinthians 14:34-35: “Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak. And if they will learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in church. “
You don’t have to have a daughter, a sister, or a wife, in order to care about the suffering of women. You simply have to be a decent human being. Misogyny of course didn’t begin with MAGA, nor with the bible, but it’s a toxic contagion in the minds of the cult. It equates manliness with the exertion of raw political power in order to achieve the greatest possible human suffering.
I’ll conclude with a quote I heard today. It’s from another country that also had a sick, and dangerous vision of what a man should be, and how inflicting unprecedented cruelty was the measure of a true man.
“America was waking up, as Germany once did, to the awareness that one-third of our people will kill one-third of our people while one-third of our people watches.”
Peter. T.
