So, his backing is literally a religious cult.
The fact that they're following someone who basically fits their profile of the Antichrist is really disturbing. Some are probably doing it deliberately to try to bring about the Apocalypse, because that's a thing with many white evangelical "Christians". (The same group trying to cause the End Times backs Israel for the same reason -- because they think it's a required step in destroying the world.)
I've made the same ironic observation. I've also thought the person in Congress who is probably walking the talk with the Christian message the best is Bernie Sanders, who is Jewish. But my childhood teachings stressed the "by their actions ye shall know them" philosophy.
Many religious scholars think "forcing the end" is bad form, but some American Evangelicals think that's what they are supposed to do.
I was also thinking about my comments the other day that there are some jobs you can't get native born Americans to do. A lot of it goes back to poverty consciousness. Some people are poor, but don't get trapped in that mindset and they are willing to do anything they need to, including taking a demeaning job for a while, to get out of poverty. In some cases maybe they won't make it out, but they want their kids to. A lot of immigrants have that attitude, which is why they are willing to do a lot of jobs others won't do.
Poverty consciousness can become pervasive in a population when a population is beaten down and kept in poverty for generations. A pervasive attitude can seep in that this particular population is at the bottom of the pecking order and while they want it to stop, they don't think it will. A lot of study with this has been done on African American populations, but it's also very pervasive in some white groups too.
The Appalachians have had a poverty consciousness for hundreds of years. The poor hillbilly is an American meme, but it has a basis in truth. Poor Southern whites can also have this consciousness. Near the tail end of the industrial revolution a lot of Appalachians ended up getting recruited for factory work in the Upper Midwest and things did get better for them financially for a generation or two, but they never shook the poverty consciousness and when the economy turned against them, it just compounded their mindset.
One thing that goes along with poverty consciousness is disrespect. Many people with this mindset are hyper sensitive to being disrespected and may have out of proportion reactions to incidents. Taking a demeaning job is a sign of disrespect and it really punches their buttons.
For someone who doesn't have the mindset, a demeaning job is just something you endure and get on with your life. But for someone with the mindset, a demeaning job is an attack on their dignity as a human being. Something that is severely challenged to begin with. So they will either not take those jobs, or will quit when they feel disrespected by it.
It means we have a lot of jobs that native born could use, but won't do because of what amounts to PTSD from being poor for many generations. This isn't just an American thing. It exists in many countries around the world. It contributed to the Brexit vote in the UK.
It's also something that fuels Donald Trump supporters. His "Make America Great Again" slogan went over big with the poverty consciousness whites whose fathers and grandfathers made good money at the factory, but the family now struggles to get by on scraps. They had poverty consciousness to begin with which they went back to when times got bad.
White collar workers tend to figure out something to do when the company they worked for kicks the bucket. I have a friend who knew a lot of people at Enron. They had all tried to get her on there, but she was working other gigs and she smelled something wrong with Enron. It was devastating in the short term for all her friends when the company went under, but as the shock wore off, they went out and found something else to do. Nobody she knew ended up on welfare.
When white collar people end up on the streets en masse, a lot will be unemployed for a while, but entrepreneurship tends to spike and those new businesses end up hiring up those who stick around. Silicon Valley took a hit from the dot com crash, but it rebounded and you wouldn't know that there were many doom and gloom predictions about the place 16 years ago.
The trick is how do we end poverty consciousness and replace it with the sort of attitude immigrants have? Nobody has come up with a good solution yet.
