monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

No, they do not see the man’s dangerous character defects, or, if they see it they deny it or the significance of it.

It's obviously difficult for many people to shift away from a deeply felt partisan allegiance. It's very much like leaving a cult, I think. Some are fortunate and manage the task somehow but others cannot and go to their graves believing there is a spaceship hiding behind the comet or that the Marharishi has developed a technique that permits you to defy gravity and float in the air or that God put Trump in the white house but was napping when Obama sneaked in.

No doubt there is real concern for the economic and health consequences of an extended shutdown. But Republicans, and Trump in particular, are also thinking about November. If the president knows anything, it’s that his fate rises and falls with the state of the economy. And if he loses his campaign for re-election, then in this polarized environment of nationalized politics, he’s likely to take congressional Republicans down with him.

But I think there’s another element underlying the push to reopen the economy despite the threat it poses to American lives, a dynamic beyond partisanship that explains why much of the conservative political ecosystem, from politicians and donors to activists and media personalities, has joined the fight to end the lockdown.

...If the electoral danger for the Republican Party is that voters will blame the president for high unemployment and mass death — a reasonable fear, given how Trump loudly denied the threat in the face of warnings from inside and outside his administration — then the ideological danger is that it undermines the ideological project that captured the state with President Ronald Reagan and is on the path to victory under Donald Trump...

Home meetings are fine. I'm a definite fan of tech that permits us to remain at home and still be connected to care facilities and expertise.

But given the incredibly high rate of pandemic infections at seniors' care facilities, until a robust vaccine is discovered, those facilities are when none of us will want to be (if we ever did want such a thing).

Thousands of people are preparing to attend protests across the US in the coming days, as a rightwing movement against stay-at-home orders, backed by wealthy conservative groups and promoted by Donald Trump, continues to take hold.
[...]
Yet while organisers claim the protests are grassroots- and people-driven, a closer look reveals a movement driven by traditional rightwing groups, including one funded by the family of Trump’s education secretary, Betsy DeVos.

The rallies have drawn comparisons to the Tea Party movement, which sprang into life in 2009 following the election of Barack Obama and was driven in part by Americans for Prosperity, a group founded by rightwing donors Charles and David Koch.

As with the Tea Party, the anti-stay-at-home movement has been promoted by a rightwing media eager for the economy to reopen, including Fox News which on Friday aired a segment on protests in Virginia, Michigan and Minnesota. Two minutes later, Trump tweeted to his 77.4 million followers the need to “liberate” those states.

A majority of Americans support the lockdowns, with a Pew Research Center poll finding that 66% are concerned state governments will lift restrictions on public activity too quickly. But protests, helped by media coverage, have spread around the country.

The two groups behind the “operation gridlock” rally in Michigan on Wednesday have ties to the Republican party and the Trump administration.

The Michigan Freedom Fund, which said it was a co-host of the rally, has received more than $500,000 from the DeVos family, regular donors to rightwing groups.

The other host, the Michigan Conservative Coalition, was founded by Matt Maddock, now a Republican member of the state house of representatives. The MCC also operates under the name Michigan Trump Republicans, and in January held an event featuring several members of the Trump campaign.

“Absolutely the Michigan event was a huge inspiration and it was a huge success,” said Evie Harris, organizer of a ReOpen Maryland protest planned for the state capitol on Saturday.

“That was the model for our event.”
... ... ...

So evangelicals are about three times as likely to defy restrictions on their worship as non-evangelicals. And the researchers think evangelical traditions and leadership have a lot to do with that defiance:

Quote:

Evangelicals have been preparing for this moment. In a 1998 book, sociologist Christian Smith famously referred to evangelicals as “​embattled and thriving,”​ and we can see that embattled mentality on display here. But this view is also currently being stoked by religious elites, with a number of evangelical leaders calling for active resistance against state orders. Christian right legal groups such as Liberty Counsel are ​spoiling for fights;​ other Christian right think tanks are urging resistance, supporting the few individual clergy who are quite open about their mission.

The Rev. Tony Spell, the Louisiana pastor who has been charged with a misdemeanor for keeping his church open, told R​euters​: “The church is the last force resisting the Antichrist. Let us assemble regardless of what anyone says.”

Lord have mercy.

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