In what I would characterize as a bit of a sleeper NYT column this morning, David Brooks identifies two extremely different ways to view life: as a story or a game. People with the latter view see life as an unending contest with the rest of the world to gain and affirm status. Every human interaction has winners and losers. There are no other rules.
The reader will have noticed immediately that this a perfect description of Donald Trump’s mindset, about which I write all of the time. What occurred to me afterwards, however, is how profoundly the gamer mentality conflicts with Christianity. How could someone with Trump’s fascist, amoral world view win the intense support of American Christians?
By engaging in grievance politics. By telling Christians they were losing–on the verge of annihilation, actually–and by persuading them that only he could bring them the permanent political and cultural predominance to which they were manifestly entitled. Millions of them still believe it today.