Donald Trump craps on subtlety and nuance, when he panders to his white evangelical base he does so in an over-the-top way. Most Americans were shocked when Trump ordered police and military personnel to use tear gas and rubber bullets against peaceful protesters to clear the way so he could walk to a nearby historical church to stage a sacrilegious and blasphemous photo-op.

But when white evangelicals witnessed Trump brandishing a Bible, upside down, outside a church, they praised him as a crusader establishing God’s kingdom on Earth. We may have winced at the reality of an amoral buffoon using a Bible as a prop and a church as a backdrop to appeal to his gullible white evangelical base, they broke out in tongues at the heavenly vision of their orange messiah testifying to the supremacy of their faith.

Jesus said “my kingdom is not of this world”, and history chronicles that all attempts to create a peaceful theocracy culminate in brutal dictatorships. The national zeitgeist is striving for a secular democracy where all religions are respected, all races are treated with equality and people of all sexual orientations are allowed to be themselves.

Trump and his supporters are on the wrong side of democracy and demographics, they will never establish a theocracy, and they may not even win another presidential race.

We will survive the coronavirus pandemic, the metastatic cancer of racism and the Neanderthal Trumpism that is currently poisoning our democracy.