Idol Worship

I recall a time when people were getting a chuckle over people who considered Barack Obama their Messiah.  

And then there was four years when people got a good belly laugh over large numbers of people who consider Donald Trump their Messiah.

Joe Biden is the POTUS and he's a practicing Roman Catholic.  If you've ever been in a Catholic church you will note they have statues of saints, Mary, Joseph, Jesus and more all over the place.  Some call that idolatry.  So I suppose he has his own flock of messianic followers.

I have no recollection of this Messiah phenomenon occurring with Presidents Bush (both of them) or Clinton. Moreover, once you have left the White House it seems any false prophet Messiah worship stops.  The Ju-Ju dissipated after vacating the White House.

The exception to this is the persistent Messianic following the former guy seems to have garnered that is manifested on Face Book.  I have friends that post stuff like this:

Donald Trump never struck me as a particularly devout individual or even seriously religious.  Several years ago an evangelical minister explained this phenomena to me and I wish I had written it down.  

What I recall from his rather clinical explanation and understanding of it was that it had much to do with a belief among evangelical Christians about their place in American culture being threatened or replaced (displaced).  Combine that with generalized resentment and grievance over Washington's history of turning a deaf ear to cultural differences.  Trump's nationalism, and positions on immigration, on torture, on gun control, on Black Lives Matter and police brutality — they all line up pretty closely with their own.  These are their values, and Trump represents them.  With a bit of badass masculinity for good measure. Trump's disregard for most of the Commandments on a daily basis doesn't count for much.  I still struggle to understand that dynamic.  But I digress.

I puzzle over the people who sure seem to be easily influenced by these Messiahs that walk among us.  Not a single one of them can cure lepers, raise the dead, turn water into wine or walk on water.  Bereft of WWJD it's largely showmanship and fakery.  Slim pickings they are for the second-coming. 

My conclusion is that a significant number of my countrymen - from the left and right fringes - are just garden-variety idolaters.

PT Barnum had a saying for this.....