I write a great deal about Christian Nationalism and the women who keep alive political/religious movements like this, movements that do nothing to help women but that pervert women’s roles and damage their causes. This morning, I want to look more closely at women’s support for malicious movements. Without women in the board rooms, bedrooms, council chambers, church pews, kitchens, podcasts, and pulpits of organizations that empower white Christian male supremacists, the organizations would fall apart. Absolutely collapse. Who are the women who fund, serve, and scaffold these organizations? Why do they do so at the cost of their own families and personal freedoms?
First, every woman should learn to recognize the men – and the women – who lead right wing movements, conservative organizations, religious cults, criminal and extremist enterprises.
1 The Fixers and Saviours They claim their message, calling, role, cause, goal, or importance is unique. They alone can heal the illnesses and end the suffering. They alone can light the way, lead the march, orchestrate the right kind of family, church, or government. They alone received the calling, bear God’s endorsement, recognize the dangers, have the answers.
They hide their narcissism and fraud behind well-developed charms. They hone and practice deceit. Lies and manipulation are as easy for them as accepting your donations. Think about sexual predators and serial killers – Hyperbole you say? Today’s revelations about the Epstein-Maxwell international sex trafficking and pedophilia network strongly suggests that sexual predation thrives among people with wealth, power, and right-wing political views. Successful sexual predators, pedophiles, serial killers, thieves, financial fraudsters are successful because they know how to manipulate others, how to lie to get what they want.
When a preacher says, God has promised me…, when a politician says, I can make America great again…, a new lover says, I’ll be the best you ever had…, a spouse says, You can’t do this without me…, an evangelist says, God told me to tell you…, You are hearing the lies of a con artist, a shyster, a deceiver. But suppose this person believes in their own words. If they do believe in their own words, they are mentally depraved. Their lies are meant to convince their target audience; however, in deceiving themselves, they’ve created a sociopath. They will lead an organization that enables criminal behavior, or at the very least enables profiteering.
2 The Jesters, Dons, and Mistresses They claim only what their leaders tell them to claim. Their messages are as retractable, misdirected, untrustworthy, flimsy, puffy, unrefined, silly, and absurd as we hear from any carnival barker. The closer the individual is to the organization’s authoritarian leader, the more obvious their biased and irrational views. The authoritarian leader controls the jesters, dons, and mistresses. However, the authoritarian leader cannot shape a biased, ridiculously in love, ludicrous, self-righteous fool into another strong leader.
First, fools reveal themselves too easily; they are uncontrollable because they willfully ignore rationality and let their passion for the movement or leader be their emotional guide. I think of the small circle of fools in the Church of Our Saviour where I worshipped in the 1970s and early 1980s. While we hung onto faith in our pastor and his teachings, we also learned by experience to question the pastor’s closest relationships, to ignore the fools who created trouble thinking they alone righteously protected the pastor and his teachings. Many of us witnessed or personally experienced the trouble those fools caused. A few of those fools are still with Fred Drummond in Florida.
Today in politics, the MAGA and Trump fools are people like Marco Rubio, J D Vance, Kristi Noem, Pete Hegseth, Pam Bondi, Laura Loomer, Moms for Liberty, ICE, and many white evangelical churches. Donald J Trump himself is a fool for Vladimir Putin and for the billionaires who use him. MAGA is the mistress organization for America’s right-wing oligarchs. They clash with each other for status, attention, power, and a share of the profits; however, they loosely cling to each other knowing their power is transitory, their moment to seize wealth and commit atrocities in the name of white Christian male supremacy passes with each year.
What kind of people become jesters, dons, and mistresses of authoritarian leaders?
Uneducated or very narrowly educated people. There’s no doubt that a person can earn a degree in an Ivy League school and still have an uneducated mind. Cult mindset and willful ignorance permeate every demographic in America. People choose how to think; the whys and wherefores are for another essay. Those who graduate from America’s Bible colleges, colleges that conservative think tanks fund and control, have no chance of being critical, problem-solving, creative thinkers. No chance. On top of the ‘lousy education’ pile is the person who simply purchased their degree. Someone churns out a long paper or narrow thesis, submits it with a credit card payment, and receives a diploma. Not least among the uneducated are the millions who ‘do their own research’ and despise educational efforts that require scientific, critical thinking and challenge their beliefs.
Self-gratification, instant gratification Americans. We have professional sports and online gambling; social media; credit cards; Amazon shopping that sends a package to the shopper in one day or same day; excessive AI-created marketing for healthcare, beauty, and fashion products; country clubs and vacation resorts. We do not have to shop for groceries and cook in our own kitchens. We despise bicycles and bicycle lanes, journalism, business and industry regulations, vaccines and inconvenient science, and long relationships built on trust. Sometimes, we who love science, appreciate trustworthy journalism, keep tight personal budgets, despise corporate power and marketing propaganda, and work extremely hard for many years to hone our skills feel outnumbered. But we are not. We simply inadvertently empower the fools by maintaining our silence. Shame on us.
Self-loathing, desperate, or naïve people. The ‘Mara Lago Face’ is a genuine trend among right wing men and women, especially those who cling to MAGA extremism. Yet there is no better proof of self-loathing than a person’s willingness to undergo gender-enhancing surgery to please their cult friends. Some churches consistently post on YouTube, and these videos reveal how far cult-minded folks will go to mirror and please their leaders. That willingness to change one’s entire look, blend in with one’s peers, put aside personal taste, and wear ‘the uniform’ speaks directly to the person’s lack of self-respect and immature belief in people’s roles and identity. An exemplar of self-loathing and misplaced identity is ICE. Their outlandish uniforms, masks, weaponry – all of which are meant to intimidate and create fear – are what immature, small-minded, scorned, resentful, angry men do to justify their supremacist beliefs.
In conclusion, Our mother and her twin sister were judgy women, the kind who prayed in church, gossiped, and had few close friends. They would point to a person and diagnose that person’s problem, strangers, and fellow worshippers alike. A bicyclist was a thief scouting open garage doors. A woman in strapless kitten heels or braless under a casual hippie-style dress or in black skin was looking for trouble. Their bigotry and absurdity came from 1930-40s Texas; their self-loathing was a product of religious Fundamentalist teachings and willful ignorance about the worlds around them. But could they spot a genuine shyster, conman, or sexual predator? No. They gave unconditional allegiance to their pastors. They defied their husbands’ reluctance and went to their Baptist churches alone. They believed in the MAGA movement. The sent money to television evangelists and shysters like Joyce Meyer.
The antidote to raising willfully ignorant, self-loathing, gullible, naïve women upon whom shysters, grifters, conmen, rapists, thieves, and abusive men prey is Education. Women instructing other women. Women teaching their daughters, nieces, sons, nephews, students, readers, and friends to recognize evil in men and women. Fairytales, myths, legends, and cultural stories did this best. Then Disney came along and storytellers turned away from showing that evil exists in people, that the true monsters are not in our closets but are walking among us in nice uniforms, in our families, standing behind podiums, and charming their audiences. We must revive the old stories and storytelling strategies that teach the vulnerable to be careful, to think critically about others, to be aware of evil and recognize where it resides.