When the Facebook post or Tweet says stuff like “Music icon [Kid Rock/Jason Aldean/Ted Nugent/insert MAGA hack here] sells more [albums/concert tickets] than woke liberal Taylor Swift” you are looking at a bot ginning up suckers to keep the MAGA mob perpetually engaged in culture war stupidity and feeling simultaneously persecuted by the shadowy Liberal Conspiracy that is “burying the truth” and feeling triumphant that the MAGA Cult is supposedly marching to victory over the Enemy. (This was, not coincidentally, a favorite tactic of Nazi propaganda which constantly told its dupes that their enemies were both subversive threats who were tunnelling under their houses as part of an all-menacing shadowy cabal…
…and that their enemies were fleeing in helpless terror before the unstoppable might of Our Righteous Cause:
You can see similar combinations of paranoid self-pity (“The libs control the narrative and we are helpless before their machinations!”) and swaggering triumphalism (“We are taking our country and our culture back from the Enemy!) being told about the imaginary studio that [Mel Gibson/James Woods/Mark Wahlberg/Roseanne Barr/insert right wing culture war hero here] are supposed to be building with the help of Elon Musk that will supply us all with “non-woke” movies and drive the likes of [Robert DiNiro/Whoopi Goldberg/Jane Fonda/insert hated MAGA enemy here] from our shores in humiliating defeat.
None of this is real. It is, in fact, a documentable lie. But the MAGA People of the Lie live by lying not only to everybody else, but to themselves. Typically, when you go to the Right Wing Lie Machine Organs that hawk these lies, they tell the standard FOX News LIe: “We’re not telling anybody we’re news. We’re just entertainment.” But the Cult believes their lies are news because the Cult, like FOX, has embraced the biggest liar in the history of American politics and chosen to live in illusion. Thus do they face the doom of all People of the Lie: by wilfully losing contact with reality and never see it coming when, as Reality always does sooner or later, it hits them in the face like a two by four. That these people (like this grifter rightly booted from the priesthood) loudly proclaim themselves to be the truest disciples of Him who is the Truth is a brazen act of blasphemy.
Normals in touch with reality should report all such propaganda posts as what they are: false information. There’s an outside chance Facebook will get the message and block them.
As to the “We’re just entertainment” lie, I always think of this Proverb:
Like a madman who throws firebrands,
arrows, and death,
is the man who deceives his neighbor
and says, “I am only joking!” (Proverbs 26:18-19)
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“The idea is not to compare Trump to Christ…”
Except that it is. And that is exactly what Pavone did.
I remember when I was younger, and I was trying to understand how seemingly devout and sincere Christians could fall for the lies and abuses of the Fascists or the Nazis or the Klan or insert whatever notorious villain you like. It baffled me. We are now seeing it. Fogerty was right. “Deja vu all over again.” Chesterton was right. The world neither advances nor retreats. It wobbles.
I see so called “Christians” revere a man who is a liar and a fraud. They actually seem to regard him as some sort of messiah, anointed by God to lead us. It’s like a SNL skit come to life. The alternative reality is scary. Truth is whatever Trump says it is. To the “true believers” Trump is Jesus with a funny haircut and an extra 100 lbs.
Barr and these other MAGA luminaries are not even funny or interesting as entertainers anymore. They only know how to play one boring and sour note over and over.