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Don’t Let Evangelicals Use Your Progressive Elitism Against You
Jerry Falwell Jr. recently tried to defend President Trump by comparing him to a Walmart shopper. The scary thing is it’ll likely work.
By now, there have been so many ridiculous and absurd excuses given by White evangelicals to defend our current’s president’s immoral, illegal and unprecedented behavior that it’s easy to misunderstand their purpose. When rational, clear-thinking individuals see evangelical leaders bending over backwards to defend the indefensible, it’s easy to roll your eyes, shake your head and wonder, what are they thinking? How can they be this backward?
But you have to remember that their responses are not aimed at you. Their responses aren’t aimed at people who regularly engage the issues of the day with logic and critical thinking. These responses are designed to bypass the neo-cortex and engage what cognitive scientists call the reptilian brain, the part that responds impulsively to anything perceived as a threat to survival. This part of the brain makes trying to debunk misinformation with facts and statistics a losing strategy.
This is why, even though I despise many aspects of the public persona of Jerry Falwell, Jr. I have to give credit where credit is due — he is masterful at speaking to his white, evangelical Republican base. So when editor-in-chief Mark…
