It's what the book says

In a thoroughly disturbing coda to my watching the US presidential inauguration last night, I went on to watch Til Kingdom Come: Faith, Trump and Money,* a documentary on the BBC I-player. This examined the evangelical Christian Right in the US and its relationship with Israel (putting ‘Trump’ in the title may have helped get it past the BBC censors). What we saw was a strange kind of lunacy, faith taken to absurd extremes. I don’t think these people themselves quite know what it is they’re expected to believe. They are ardent Zionists but seem to have a schizophrenic relationship with Jews. One could say that they are Zionists and anti-Semites at the same time. The creation of Israel fulfils biblical prophecy, but it seems that continuing in this vein one third of Jews must convert to Christianity and the rest must perish. I guess it’s OK in this context to have interfaith fundraising schemes (the ‘Friends of the Israeli Defence Force,' for example) so long as Jews accept what God says is coming to them. In this context, perhaps Netanyahu represents a good example of Stockholm syndrome. These evangelicals certainly maintained a good grip on Trump. Perhaps they were pinning their hopes of Rapture on him. Now all they’ve got is a good ‘ole fashioned Irish Catholic. He won’t be such easy prey, since we may assume he already knows what he actually believes in, unlike the Donald.
 
* Being a member of the Labour Party, I’m not sure I’m allowed to write about this. But since I haven’t used the expression ‘Freedom for Palestine’ in this blog I guess it will be OK.
 
P.S. The evangelical supporters of Trump will no doubt be contributing to the costs of Trump’s presidential library. Since the library will contain barely any books, this won’t be much of a burden.