It does not take much more than one of our five human senses to see the latent hypocrisy in the right-wing Christian and evangelical support of Donald Trump. However, there are many other Christians in the country that haven’t been hoodwinked by false idols, and one group, Patriotic Christians for a Better America (PCBA), is doing its part to highlight the incongruity of a Christian mission and support for Donald Trump. The Seattle Times’ Brandan Kiley has a very nice profile on the Seattle-based group and a new set of “comic booklets” it is promoting. Following the story of a protagonist named Dickie Glitz and drawn to look like Donald Trump, each page of the comic offers up some very easy to understand parables of a spoiled rich kid who grows up to become the president of the United States.
That’s the basic narrative arc of “I’m Rich!,” a roughly 3-by-5-inch comic-book tract printed on cheap, newspaper-grade paper and lightly sprinkled with gallows-humor wit and relevant Bible verses: “You cannot serve God and money” (Matthew 6:24), “Everyone who is arrogant is an abomination to the Lord; be assured, he will not go unpunished” (Proverbs 16:5), “Beware! Keep yourselves from covetousness” (Luke 12:15).
The art and concept are based on a somewhat ubiquitous right-wing series of similarly styled pamphlets called Chick Tracts. Started decades ago by religious illustrator Jack Chick, they became some of the most widely distributed comic books in the world. Stories using religious-style propaganda told people everything from how Allah and the God of the Bible were not the same, evolution was false, and even explained that God had to wage a holy battle to get the King James Bible made.
The PCBA is not promoting that kind of ignorant division. The group is mostly interested in pushing a resistance message by leaving the pamphlets all over areas considered “swing” states.
The group who created the tracts had been anonymous, with a satellite group of friends leaving the little booklets at gas stations and grocery stores in places like Pennsylvania and Florida. Kathryn Rathke, the pamphlet’s artist, and a man who would only go by the first name Barry, came out of anonymity to tell the Seattle Times that part of the inspiration was the blunt idiocy of the Trump administration: “The Trump administration feels like a Chick tract. It’s all so loud.” To this end, the final page of the pamphlet quotes John 11:35, “… Jesus wept.”
The two have flown to different places across the country and dropped the pamphlets off at gun stores and airports, deep in Trump country, and along the edges of swing voter areas that voted from Obama before voting for Trump in 2016.