Reagan now occupies for Republicans the same psychic space the office of the papacy holds for Traditionalist Catholics. They love to wave him as a flag but they hate and fear most of what he actually says.
From gun control to respect for immigrants to tariffs and trade wars with allies to actual opposition to actual Communists, Reagan would be denounced, hated and mocked by the Cult if he were still alive. To paraphrase the man himself, he didn’t move. The Party left him. They are a Nazi freak show now.
Yes, he set them on their course to self-destruction in many ways and shares the blame for helping to create the Monster that is now the entire GOP. But he would nonetheless be repulsed by the Cult and its orange god and they would not, were he still alive, hesitate to spit on him if he said now what he says above. It is only because he is safely dead and therefore powerless to stop them that they still use him as a mascot. They are too dishonest and too ignorant of history to face the many places where he directly contradicts them.
The same is true of Pope-hating MAGA Catholics. They love to wave the Pope as a flag in the abstract and appeal to his authority in the abstract when they are taking a dump on Protestants and the other human beings they regard as unclean vermin to be chase out of the Church. But when the Pope says, as he constantly does, things they don’t want to hear, they shout him down as loudly as any Fundamentalist.
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