Are We Seeing the Rise of a Fundamentalist Dictatorship?

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Kliska said:
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there are large chunks of people, “evangelical” I guess, and non-evangelicals, that are angry. They are mad and want change at any price.
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Exactly. I’d say it’s not so much about being evangelical/fundamentalist, or even Protestant, but about people being reactionary. They are angry at, let’s say, “Politician X” and they like “Politician Y” because he embodied those feelings well, even though he offers little in terms of making things better.

It was much the same when “Politician X” got elected 8 years ago: People were angry at, let’s say, “Politician W” and they found that “Politician X” embodied those feelings well, even though he offered little in terms of making things better, so they voted for him.
 
😉
Son_of_Niall said:
VERY good article that makes my point even more clear:

A strange but accurate predictor of whether someone supports Donald Trump

washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/02/01/how-your-parenting-style-predicts-whether-you-support-donald-trump/?tid=hybrid_experimentrandom_3_na

Fundamentalists have always been attracted to ‘authoritarians’.
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“You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be servant of all.”
  • Jesus
 
Peter_J said:
Just trying to be trendy (hence the ;). You know it’s very popular now to talk about somebody repeating himself. 🙂
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Statistically speaking…

😃

On one of the satire sites I frequent there was a “story” about how Rubio demanded to see Trump’s baptismal certificate. It made me think of this thread… and lol.
 
Kliska said:
Gratefully none of the people I’m friends with on social media seem to be going nuclear over Trump. I have seen the reports elsewhere though.

I just realized I missed the main question; the title of the thread; are we seeing the rise of fundamentalist dictatorship? I have to say no, even if he gets the presidency, because he’s not a fundamentalist. A dictatorship? Maybe… but not a fundamentalist one. Trump is for himself, not for evangelicals or fundamentalists. He’ll take their support, but has even made it clear there is no one he answers to.
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Hi Kliska, Don’t we have a “Liberal” dictatorship now ? Anyways, even if T wins he will definitely have to answer to a congress, somewhat too. .Unfortunately , do not think the other true conservatives can win,anymore. As a news panelist noted with glee while looking at the blue/red board of our country last presidential election, “the demographics have changed” . The only hope I see is to maintain a republican house and senate , let them bring conservative agenda/bills to the president, and I think Trump will sign. I do not trust him to bring the conservative agenda to Congress however. I also think more Sanders voters will end up voting for trump than say a Cruz or Rubio.

By the way, did you see or has it been talked about, how when Trump was asked after the debate why the IRS audits him so much he answered because he was a Christian ? The reporter(Cuomo) laughed a little and asked again but got the same answer.
 
benhur said:
Hi Kliska, Don’t we have a “Liberal” dictatorship now ?
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Notice that I doubt we will have a dictatorship is Trump makes it or not, so I don’t think we have a liberal dictatorship now either. Part of the issue I have is that we, meaning those in the USA, have not experienced a true dictatorship. I do think the term is thrown around a bit much at this point. Can I see it happening at some point? Sure, anything can happen and we are headed more in that direction because of our move away from the Constitution.
By the way, did you see or has it been talked about, how when Trump was asked after the debate why the IRS audits him so much he answered because he was a Christian ? The reporter(Cuomo) laughed a little and asked again but got the same answer.
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With Trump, it is pretty obvious why he would be investigated with audits, and I truly don’t believe it has anything to do with him saying he is a Christian. When you have a very public political figure with multiple billions of dollars and multiple companies (esp. ones tied in with gambling) you’re going to get audited. It’s expected in the business world. I am interested in his as yet unreleased tax statements.
 
Interesting interview between host Judge Jeanine Pirro and protestant pastor Robert Jeffress of Dallas, Texas, on Judge Pirro’s TV show last night on why evangelicals find D Trump so appealing.

youtube.com/watch?v=pkwefCpIzrc

Pastor Jeffress makes a parallel between now and the 1980 election between Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter in which Jimmy Carter was the apparent choice for evangelicals because he was a Sunday School teacher in the Southern Baptist Church while Reagan was a divorced and remarried former movie star with a wife who consulted astrologers. However, evangelicals went overwhelmingly for Reagan.

The part about evangelicals starts at about 01:55 of the interview and continues from there. Just fyi. I found his analysis to be helpful in understanding the appeal of Trump to so many.
 
This is an interesting thread and an important question. My 2 cents is this - many fundamentalists/evangelicals are, by the very nature of their beliefs, radical when you view them alongside the average American citizen, who is actually moderate.

Fundamentals are radical because they believe their personal religious beliefs should govern our civic world even if the majority of that world does not believe what they do.

So it makes sense to me that people like this would relate to fundamentalist dictator-like rhetoric.

I also think that many fundamentalist/evangelicals think Trump is the only person that the Party has presented to them who has a chance to beat Clinton. Their votes are more driven by the desire to beat her than by their belief that he speaks for them.

Frankly, as many people here have pointed out, Trump just speaks and speaks and speaks, but his “policy” positions are all over the place - a little conservative here, a little liberal there, a lot of what-the-heck ever here, etc…He’s by no means a real Republican/Conservative and many fundamentalist/evangelicals admit this. But they don’t care, because they feel like he has a chance to stop Hillary.

Of course, he doesn’t have a chance to stop Hillary and I actually feel sorry for those who think he does. There is no way in the world that, in a general election, the mainly moderate citizens of our extraordinary country are going to say no to Hillary and yes to Donald. My opinion only, of course.
 
Tommy999 said:
Interesting interview between host Judge Jeanine Pirro and protestant pastor Robert Jeffress of Dallas, Texas, on Judge Pirro’s TV show last night on why evangelicals find D Trump so appealing.

youtube.com/watch?v=pkwefCpIzrc

Pastor Jeffress makes a parallel between now and the 1980 election between Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter in which Jimmy Carter was the apparent choice for evangelicals because he was a Sunday School teacher in the Southern Baptist Church while Reagan was a divorced and remarried former movie star with a wife who consulted astrologers. However, evangelicals went overwhelmingly for Reagan.

The part about evangelicals starts at about 01:55 of the interview and continues from there. Just fyi. I found his analysis to be helpful in understanding the appeal of Trump to so many.
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Hi T,

Pretty good point ,of Carter vs Reagan. I had to think who I voted for.I had just become a Christian ,so you are right ,the first move was towards Carter .But brothers convinced me to vote for Reagan based on his foreign policy(hard stand against communism) and pro military build up. We did not look strong to the world with the Iran hostages still being held and just 5 years removed from exiting Vietnam, our first military “loss”. The reasoning was that the Church behind the iron curtain were being persecuted and we had a lot of underground missionaries.So for the sake of those brothers, we went Reagan.Turned out to be a God send in my opinion, the "wall’ finally coming down with out a bullet fired. Reagan is properly credited for his tremendous pressure and personal appeal to that end, with diplomacy and speeches and military buildup ,that the USSR could not keep up with economically. A most unbelievable event, the dissolving of the Soviet Union, our biggest foe for 45 years.

Blessings

PS I believe the demons behind communism just switched over to Islamic extemists.
 
benhur said:
Hi T,

Pretty good point ,of Carter vs Reagan. I had to think who I voted for.I had just become a Christian ,so you are right ,the first move was towards Carter .But brothers convinced me to vote for Reagan based on his foreign policy(hard stand against communism) and pro military build up. We did not look strong to the world with the Iran hostages still being held and just 5 years removed from exiting Vietnam, our first military “loss”. The reasoning was that the Church behind the iron curtain were being persecuted and we had a lot of underground missionaries.So for the sake of those brothers, we went Reagan.Turned out to be a God send in my opinion, the "wall’ finally coming down with out a bullet fired. Reagan is properly credited for his tremendous pressure and personal appeal to that end, with diplomacy and speeches and military buildup ,that the USSR could not keep up with economically. A most unbelievable event, the dissolving of the Soviet Union, our biggest foe for 45 years.

Blessings

PS I believe the demons behind communism just switched over to Islamic extemists.
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Hi benhur,
Yes, I voted for Reagan back then, too. My motto was if I was voting for a new neighbor, I would vote for Carter. However, for president, Reagan was the better leader. I think many voters, especially on Republican side, view Trump in a similar light to Reagan in terms of leadership, but he does not have the personal dignity of Reagan, in my view.

I personally prefer Rubio and Kasich, but they are decided underdogs at this stage.
 
Tommy999 said:
Hi benhur,
Yes, I voted for Reagan back then, too. My motto was if I was voting for a new neighbor, I would vote for Carter. However, for president, Reagan was the better leader. I think many voters, especially on Republican side, view Trump in a similar light to Reagan in terms of leadership, but he does not have the personal dignity of Reagan, in my view.

I personally prefer Rubio and Kasich, but they are decided underdogs at this stage.
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I like Rubio best also but do not think he can win general election. And agree trump is not a reagan,but he does have an appeal obviously and does kind of tells it like it is (as does Rubio) Both can hammer away at Clinton ,just that the country is sooo liberal.
 
Without forgetting what the OP said,
Son_of_Niall said:
I do not wish to discuss the Presidential candidate here,
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let me just say that Pastor Jeffress had to be pretty desperate to try to make a comparison between Donald Trump and Ronald Reagan.
 
The question I have is if Trump even really has dictatorial aspirations. I am genuinely uncertain if that is even the case, I lean much more towards “no” but I do wonder if there are any grounds to think that Trump does have autocratic tendencies.
 
What scares me even more than a dictatorial president would be a religious Ayatollah type president who puts a fundamentalist literal interpretation of scripture on matters political or otherwise…I could accept a Catholic president because their views would ( I hope ) be consistent with Catholic teaching and not their own interpretation…which can become radical among some fundamentalists
 
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