Yeah, the religious right has always been doing that, even as they very successfully managed to exert a hugely disproportionate degree of control over the country - owning the Republican party and effectively being a veto for mainstream cultural output. (When the religious right made a fuss, it could get tv shows canceled, movies altered in production or blocked from wide release, music and books taken off the shelves…)
I always thought it was part of Christian mythologizing about their own history and trying to connect themselves with these (mostly fictional) Christian martyrs - that seeing themselves as a beleaguered outsiders was an important part of group identity that was about keeping in-group coherence and political motivation. But more recent years have shown that it is so much more than that, as their broader control over the country has been so visibly slipping - they’ve turned it into a weapon against out groups as well.
It’s a death cult, so… not necessarily better…
I keep thinking about how Republicans, projecting, are absolutely sure that “the left” want to murder them all, and I keep thinking about how the left actually want to give them health care and jobs with living wages and social support and a functional, equitable criminal justice system, and an environment that’s not going to kill them… and maybe, as a side effect, they’ll realize that their lives aren’t precarious - or actually shit - because of scary brown people, but because of Republican policies.
I keep wondering, would they actually articulate their position as “Give me no health care and no living wages and a police state and climate disaster… or give me death!”? Because it sure seems like those are death…
