One of the features of fascism and other authoritarian, Dear Leader-devoted movements is a renewed lurch into pseudoreligious zeal as a means of convincing the masses that the obviously corrupt power-obsessed lawbreaking psychopaths claiming unilateral power over the nation's every twitch and detail are not, in fact, corrupt power-obsessed lawbreaking psychopaths but Messengers of God Himself, because shut up that's why. Biff Hitler's various hangers-on were quite keen in polishing this mythology-laced justification for his rule and his violence. There's no easier way of ending an argument than by declaring that you are right because God Himself said so, and that to oppose your latest farting whim is to oppose God Himself. (The effectiveness of this argument is increased tenfold, at least, when accompanied by a loaded gun.)
And that is why America has always been ripe ground for authoritarian-minded leaders. There is a contingent of Americans, currently called White Conservative Evangelicals, both gullible enough and ambitious enough to believe that particular bullshit, no matter whom it is meant to prop up.
Donald Trump, tax-evader, serial assaulter, bearer of false witness during his every public pronouncement, pardoner of prisoner-torturers and war criminals, compulsive adulterer, and so forth, the nation's One True Leader chosen by and doing the works of God Himself? Sure, why not? Slap a little butter on it and call it a meal: So long as the criminal can be aimed in the direction of harming the movement's enemies rather than its friends, the religious right would declare a snapping turtle the One True Leader Chosen By God.
Here's Secretary of Energy Rick Fluking Perry spouting this bullshit to Fox & Friends, which is the lead paint of news. He might actually believe it, because Rick Perry is the sort who would follow Biff Hitler into his bunker and hold his canteen if it would get Rick off Dancing with the Stars; or he might be playing to the Fox News crowd. It's difficult to tell, and in the end, it doesn't make a difference.
"I actually gave the president a little one-pager on those Old Testament kings about a month ago and I shared it with him. I said, Mr. President, I know there are people that say you said you were the Chosen One and I said, ‘You were.’ I said, ‘If you’re a believing Christian, you understand God’s plan for the people who rule and judge over us on this planet and our government.’"
Trump is obviously not a believing Christian, for fluke's sake, but that is beside the point: Rick Perry helping to cement in Dear Leader's head the notion that Dear Leader's every brain-fart notion can be attributed to his Chosen One status and comes from GOD HIMSELF is absolutely assured to nudge Dear Leader to doing, and justifying, ever-crazier things. We are to believe God Himself wants American murderers of civilians not just spared, but feted? We are to believe that it is God, acting through Rudy Giuliani, that wants to sabotage Ukrainian independence and endanger its people for a smattering of thin fortune-cookie claims against a single election opponent that may or not be of the slightest bit of use?
Yes. Yes we are, if you believe the nation's many, many protofascist evangelical frothers, especially the ones with their own television shows and special phone numbers for giving your money to God Himself: God Himself wants whatever Donald Trump, pervert billionaire, says.
Oh, but if He doesn't, then there's an out for that as well. Donald Trump furiously doing manifestly evil things proves even more that he is the Chosen One. He was "sent by God", says Rick Fluking Perry, to "do great things." "God’s used imperfect people all through history. King David wasn’t perfect, Saul wasn’t perfect, Solomon wasn’t perfect."
Oh Dear God shut up shut up shut up shut your glassy-eyed mayonnaise-chewing face-hole you crumpled paper bag of decaying neurons, you human event horizon of all competence, you transcendental git.
You should be angry about this. Whether you hold to any religion or to none, the notion of an American administration or its allies claiming, under any circumstance, that Dear Leader has the backing of the Supreme Being, thus nullifying his incompetence, malevolence, and crimes while putting the stamp of infallibility on his every edict—it was not Donald who woke up one morning wanting to purchase Greenland in a bizarre new real estate deal, ‘twas Jesus Christ who developed that portfolio—should make you furious. It is another instance of malevolent conservatism throwing broken glass down on the path of public discourse, the crudest possible attempt to dissuade both criticism and consequences for their would-be idiot king.
It is grotesque, and you should be furious, and you should not do anyone the politeness of hiding it. This is a movement that is corrupt in its every detail, and anti-American in its every impulse, and it has its own television program called Fox & Friends.