"We could argue the many, many inhumane points of Trumpist decrees if we were actually interested in discussing policy or, say, the mainline Christianity I once knew as a Presbyterian. But the Republican Party stopped working on policy — and started perverting Christianity — many election cycles back. Why? Largely because the GOP ran out of ideas that would fly with the American public (“Trickle-down” economics? C’mon, man!), and was assiduously courting the evangelical and Catholic religious right as a voting bloc. Meanwhile, “welcome-the-stranger” and “eye-of-the-needle” messages of Jesus had become entirely inconvenient for elite Republicans. With Trump, the Southern strategy morphed into something quite like a “Bring back the Jim Crow laws that inspired the Nazis” strategy. To divert attention from their desire to give further assistance to the wealthy and corporations through tax breaks, they focused their energies on “othering” different groups: People of color, immigrants, Democrats, women and LGBTQ folks. Of course, if you are part of the MAGA cult of personality, you don’t want to hear any of this. But we — progressives, liberals, Democrats, moderate Republicans (those horrible “RINOs”), people of faith and of no faith — are, frankly (to use a word Republicans love to utilize), the reasonable ones. There’s no question about it. To mimic Trump, everybody knows it. You do, too."