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This site is a record of responses to a friend of mine, a fellow Christian, who asked me how I could be supporting Donald Trump, given a number of negative things about him.

My response comes in five parts, the first of which is below. I think you will find that my answers are far from what is typically stated by Trump supporters, though when enunciated, they resonate strongly with Trump voters.

You may find it interesting that in all these five essays, which comprise just over 11,000 words, you will not find a single negative word about Hillary Clinton. She is mentioned once, and for something positive. I totally annihilate just about everyone else, though.

I begin with a narrative of how I perceive the American church and politics. I think the second half of this essay will surprise you, and the end of it will shock you. Enjoy.

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Essay 1: The Last 60 Years of Christianity and Politics

For better or for worse, people’s votes are now part of their identity. Many cast their vote the way they do because they are Republicans, or Cuban-Americans, or gay, or pro-gun, or anti-global-warming. It would be easy to condemn this fact, but I find myself in a similar boat. I cast all my votes motivated primarily by the fact that I am a Christian. I want to do good and honor God with my vote.

But how do I best do this? I choose to be very intellectually engaged in studying the power structures and dynamics of our government, so that I know what works and what doesn’t. This is no small or easy task, and involves quite a bit of complexity. So I hope you will consider indulging me in establishing a background of Christianity and politics over the last few decades. In the end, defining and expressing the milieu in which we live is extremely instructive. More important than any ear-tickling set of facts, it allows me to set forth a vision of where we, as Christians, can go, a vision for the future to bring Glory to God.

In the 1960’s and 1970’s, Christians disengaged with politics and perhaps even culture at large as they saw both turn away from and reject the basic assumptions and goals that orthodox Christianity has traditionally espoused. Scandals involving Vietnam, assassinations, and the White House cemented this wall between religion and politics in the mind of Christians. Jimmy Carter, a fervent and outspoken Christian, began to chip away at that barrier, but then the failures of his presidency, real or perceived, actually added reinforcing re-bar to that structure, further encouraging Christians to divorce politics from their life.

I grew up in the 1980’s, and I specifically remember, as a child, my fellow churchgoers and my parents, in the mid-late 80’s, telling me that politics was dirty, and no place for Christians. We were not encouraged to participate or engage in that world. This did not change until the very late 1980’s and early 1990’s, as the alarm bells were going off that Christians were really losing a grip on our remaining cultural influence. The Religious Right movement grew as a reaction to Bill Clinton and abortion and sexual promiscuity. The Republican Party leaped to co-opt this newly re-engaged waking giant, and they succeeded for more than a decade in conflating protestant Christianity with Republicanism, much to the detriment of Christianity.

By the mid 2000’s, many Christians realized that something was Wrong. War followed war, and the Constitution was, out of nowhere, under attack from the Right and the Left. The African American community, inside and outside the church, was an interesting leader in this. They had learned, from many decades of betrayal, to be very skeptical of the government in a way that white Americans rarely were. They were used to being shortchanged and persecuted by those in power. But now, even for whites, it increasingly became an ongoing debate within Christian circles whether one should leave the Republican party and the Democratic party. Rarely did anyone in my social group move to a major party, except perhaps as a protest vote. Mostly, people moved to Ron Paul style libertarianism or classical liberalism, both of which offered a poignant counterpoint to the sold out, shallow wedge-style politics espoused by the two major parties. Many Christians just shook their heads, and apathy set in again.

Then Snowden happened. This woke many people up from that apathy into a bewildering, dystopian horror. What was previously a conspiracy theory in the dark corners of the internet was now completely confirmed. Our government did see us as their masters. They did not see us even as children to be protected. They saw us as a threat to be monitored. They saw us as targets to be blackmailed, or to be spied upon for profit. The great hope became that one could be innocuous and small enough for the government microscope to ignore. The relationship between the American Government and its populace was shown to be very antagonistic, very dark. Privacy is an illusion, and therefore free speech is an illusion. The right to no search or seizure without due process is an illusion. Due process itself in any context was shown to be an illusion to some extent: an inconvenience to be circumvented, rather than an ancient right to be defended at all cost. As if to reinforce this, President Obama, the Constitutional Law Professor, not only went after Snowden; but he actively prosecuted four times as many government whistle blowers as ALL OTHER PRESIDENTS COMBINED. And he did so cheered on by most of the Republicans in congress.

The few voices in the wilderness that had been warning of this, such as Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, Noam Chomsky, and Chris Hedges, were all completely vindicated. People listened to them on YouTube and The Intercept and Rolling Stone. Those that did this were awoken to the broader evil. One of the United States’ biggest exports is actually weapon sales. In 2014, US weapons exports topped $110 billion. With a B. The cartoonish caricatures of the US as a warmonger who fomented wars across the globe no longer seemed quite so cartoonish. What happens when one follows the money? Why would Raytheon and Lockheed Martin give hundreds of millions of dollars to lobby federal politicians, when the contracts with the US military are fairly secure, and there are gentlemen’s agreements to split contracts, or have the contractors take turns in winning subsequent large contracts? One possible answer is that there is more at stake than just US military spending. There is access to foreign markets, and the influence to “create” new foreign markets for these weapons.

Similar concerns come to light when you don’t just follow the money, but you follow the control of information. In this age of mass surveillance, there is such a huge potential for things like blackmail, parallel construction (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction), and stock profiteering via covert information (http://www.cbsnews.com/news/congress-trading-stock-on-inside-information/). Do you know what corporation spent the most money lobbying Washington D.C. the last few years? It was Google, who literally has weekly meetings at the White House.

At home, we have seen the destruction of the African American family. It is shocking to think that slavery did not destroy the African American family. Neither did Jim Crow or Separate But Equal. But the Clinton-Republican crime bill of the mid 1990’s did. It led to insane numbers of young black men being incarcerated for very minor drug offences. And the associated felonies ruined lives, and precluded many of these young men from being able to get good jobs and provide for a family. The Incarcerated Generation is a crime against humanity. Combine this with abortion rates being twice as high among African American women as white women, and you have a gutting of the African American community in 25 short years. It is truly amazing that this community is so varied and vibrant as it is, given all that has been engineered against it.

What does this have to do with Christianity?

Everything.

Parts of our government, with the collusion of the Republican and Democratic parties, have become nexuses of considerable evil, as seen through a Christian lens. The US does a lot of good, but we also cause a lot of suffering and increase tyranny around the globe in many places, and at home. As Christians, we are to be Salt and Light, and help root out whatever evil is being done in our name as Americans.

Now to begin answering your question instead of pontificating:

There are many parts to follow, but many of them flow from this set of statements above.

Reason #1 I am voting for Donald Trump:

I want to destroy the Republican Party.

More on this in my next essay.