{"id":25878,"date":"2023-04-10T11:00:02","date_gmt":"2023-04-10T18:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=25878"},"modified":"2023-04-10T11:00:04","modified_gmt":"2023-04-10T18:00:04","slug":"the-weird-religious-fervor-of-the-trump-faithful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2023\/04\/10\/the-weird-religious-fervor-of-the-trump-faithful\/","title":{"rendered":"THE WEIRD RELIGIOUS FERVOR OF THE TRUMP FAITHFUL"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Melissa Gira Grant<\/a>\/<\/p>\n\n\n\n

April 4, 2023 (newrepublic.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MAGA MAYHEM<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The MAGA circus hits the courthouse in Manhattan.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

YUVRAJ KHANNA FOR THE NEW REPUBLIC<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Protesters outside the courthouse in Manhatten wait for Trump\u2019s arrival on April 4th.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Diane was up at six this morning, customizing a Christian flag for the former president.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I met her as we stood in a park in lower Manhattan, at the fringe of what the New York Young Republicans Club promoted as a rally to support Donald Trump, who was arraigned today at the courthouse behind us. Diane brushed her yellow-blonde curls off her face, the thin, whippy flagpole in her hand. She\u2019d ordered the flag, she said, and added the slogan herself: \u201cGOD BLESS PRESIDENT TRUMP.\u201d \u201cThe white represents Christ\u2019s purity. The blue represents baptismal waters and faithfulness of loyalness of Christ. And the red, of course, the blood of Jesus.\u201d The flag symbolizing the crucifixion, one of which was carried on the House floor on January 6<\/a>, was flying here during holy week, while Trump at last stood before a judge and was charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such displays of faith outside court on Tuesday were meant for us, the media as much as themselves, to witness. There was little else to see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The two big advertised speakers, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene and Pizzagate promoter<\/a> Jack Posobiec, had come and gone before many people knew they\u2019d even arrived. Greene, who on Monday night released an ad calling<\/a> the current president a predator and members of his party pedophiles, spoke briefly to dozens of camera lenses, and that\u2019s it. Whatever she said was consumed by successive waves of jeers of \u201cGo home!\u201d and \u201cLiar\u201d and \u201cOur kids are being murdered in schools!\u201d set to the screeching of whistles\u2014some of which may have been friendly fire, Trump fans who \u201chad no idea she was even there,\u201d NBC\u2019s Ben Collins reported<\/a>, though many were part of a noise demo<\/a> organized by her opponents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the crowd around Greene\u2014largely made up of the press\u2014missed her, well, there was the guy wearing red wire-rimmed granny sunglasses and a Colonial Williamsburg\u2013esque coat, standing in a ring of cameras, a barrel-size Bluetooth speaker around his neck, lip-syncing to a version of \u201cThe Carnival Is Over\u201d<\/a> by The Seekers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mostly, though, the people there would turn to any camera that came near and bemoan the unjust prosecution of the most popular man, the man they say won in 2020. Some Trump watchers have been saying his supporters will liken<\/a> the defendant\u2019s plight to Christ\u2019s. Or at least these charges will be a way for his supporters to more strongly identify their own personal issues with the former president\u2019s. As one guy in the Trump camp put it<\/a>, \u201cIf they can try to do this to him, they can do it to anyone.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If this is faith, it\u2019s faith built on spectacle and reinforced by mutual grievance. And it\u2019s unlikely it is disintegrating, even as the Trump saga grows more self-referential. In the park where the rally was held, there was a strange, life-size jail cell door, its bars backed with mirrors, reflecting back the faces of the people surrounding, with the courthouse as backdrop. One cop guarded the \u201cdoor,\u201d more a museum docent than a C.O. It wasn\u2019t clear what the message was. Later in the day it ended up covered in Trump flags to block out the mirrors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The metal NYPD barricades dividing the pro- and anti-Trump sides didn\u2019t mean very much, either. There on the anti-Trump side was the guy in red granny glasses, the one I\u2019d watched on the opposite side earlier, talking to a guy holding a sign that said: \u201cPut Him in the Same Cell as Stewart Rhodes So That They Can Enjoy a Night of Eye-Socket Lovin\u2019!\u201d Which side was he on? I yelled at red-glasses over the weird demilitarized zone the cops filled in the six or so feet of empty space between the barricades. \u201cThe Carnival Is Over?\u201d Well, he began, it had started as a joke, mock-serenading the Trump rally over the \u201ccrazy relationship\u201d that was ending, but then he realized, \u201cThere\u2019s real love to it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arguing with these people is a joke, he said. He knows Trump supporters. At the end of the day, they aren\u2019t going anywhere\u2014they\u2019ve always been here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Melissa Gira Grant<\/a> @melissagira<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Melissa Gira Grant is a staff writer at The New Republic<\/em> and the author of Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Melissa Gira Grant\/ April 4, 2023 (newrepublic.com) MAGA MAYHEM The MAGA circus hits the courthouse in Manhattan. YUVRAJ KHANNA FOR THE NEW REPUBLIC Protesters outside the courthouse in Manhatten wait for Trump\u2019s arrival on April 4th. Diane was up at six this morning, customizing a Christian flag for the former… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[392],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25878"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25878"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25878\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25879,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25878\/revisions\/25879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}