In The Book Of Trump, All Politics Is Ego

A friend of mine asked of Donald Trump voters: “How can they support such a sniveling, weak, low-IQ, whiny, bitch-ass snowflake? How does a corrupt liar charged with 88 felonies in four indictments and found liable for sexual assault even have a chance to win in 2024?”

There may be an answer to his question.

Many writers have argued that politics is the new religion in America.

It’s an easy conclusion to reach. Maybe too easy.

Over the past three decades, religious affiliation and church membership have fallen dramatically, from a relatively constant 70% through most of the 20th century to less than 50% today.

And this has happened as ideological zealotry has intensified, even taking precedence over religion.

“Today, religious Americans tend to choose their congregation with an eye toward partisanship,” The Christian Science Monitor noted, “to the point where the choice of presidential candidate can lead a voter to move to a new church.”

Not that long ago, you would have been hard-pressed to find anyone putting politics over religion. In the 1960 presidential election, John F. Kennedy faced significant anti-Catholic prejudice. Many feared the pope would have undue influence in the nation’s affairs if we had a Roman Catholic in the White House.

Back then, faith was a primary way people identified themselves and sized up others. It was how we assessed whether you were “one of us” or “one of them.”

For a long time, religious faith could even be a deal-breaker, especially for a marriage. A Baptist, for instance, could never marry a Methodist. Where I grew up, it was almost unheard of for a Catholic person to marry a Jew, something illustrated in a scene from the Martin Scorsese film “Goodfellas.”

Today, however, the