QOTD: Fanatics

Gene Lyons, writing in the Chicago Sun-Times, on "fundamentalist" supporters of the Malignant Loser:

"Donald Trump’s MAGA movement is fundamentalist at its core — with fundamentalism being understood as a psychological rather than a religious concept.

Pretty much every large-scale public movement, secular or sacred, has its share of extremists, and as the religious columnist Paul Prather has argued: 'Remove the labels, close your eyes and quickly the fundamentalists in one group start sounding uncannily like the fundamentalists in all other groups, as if they were reading from the same script.'

It’s another word for fanatic.

Most Trumpists call themselves 'conservative,' which used to signify a belief in limited government, low taxes, free trade and freedom of conscience but which under Trump signals tribal loyalty and revenge.

This explains what some see as the central paradox of the MAGA movement: that a congenital braggart who embodies what Christianity has traditionally called the seven deadly sins — greed, lust, envy, sloth, gluttony, pride and wrath — has come to seem the totem of faith for millions of Republican evangelicals."  (our emphasis)

That's the intro to an eye-opening column about the cult surrounding the Malignant Loser, and the Malignant Loser's own background leading to where he is now. Well worth a read. 

(photo: Mobile, AL "fundamentalists" for Trump. Mark Wallheiser / Getty Images)