Evangelical end times hype.
It's not just that, although that's certainly one of the main catalysts. Much of it is vaguer, less intellectual and more "gut." The Evangelicals, generally, have a very specific narrative of things that have to happen so the end time can come and the Baby Jeebus can come back and smite the gays and save the Southern Reformed 2nd Convention Baptists or whatever.
But there's a more opaque mentality at work here, more of a Joker-esque need to just watch the world burn, all to get back at people who dared to tell you not to touch the hot stove and then had the utter audacity to actually be right that touching the hot stove was a bad idea. "I'd rather think for myself then be factually correct" has become self-feeding and self-destructive.
Ironically the rise the Trump is the first thing I've seen that really makes me believe that large chunks of the Right can no longer really sustain the lie that they are right about most things or that history is moving in their direction. The problem that no one, and I most certainly put myself in this group to my great shame, saw coming is them all just deciding on-masse somehow to just shift right into "We no longer care that we are wrong" without so much as missing a gear. After science, logic, base morality, provable multiple real world scenarios, and the simple basic course of history has proven them wrong over and over they are not going to start being right, they are just going to tear the whole system down for the Lulz.
I'll fully admit to hanging on to an idealistic version of intellectual standards for too long, far too deep in the fantasy of "Okay at a certain point if you prove someone wrong enough they'll have to change their mind."
As I've mentioned before that's why outside of a couple of core demographics so much of Trump support comes from people who openly admit to not liking him. One of the biggest problems is dealing with Trump has always been how many of supporters are supporting him in sideways fashion. There's like no single term for it but if you account for people doing it ironically, doing it for effect, doing it to troll the libs, doing to prove some nihilistic point about nothing mattering, people doing to to make "The government doesn't work" a self fulfilling prophecy, doing to spite people being "overdramatic," doing it as a joke, people who think Trump is a joke but they are in on the joke, people who think Trump is a joke but they are somehow above the joke, and all that related frippery you've got a fairly substantial number. Probably nearly as big or bigger than whatever we could call Trump's "honest" support base.
And that's why I find this particular point in time so goddamn unstable. Because things not getting better is exactly what some people want. Everytime there's a poll or a thinkpiece or a talking head on the TV or it's point raised in a discussion here on the board that focuses on whether or not Trump is "Making things better" a part of me always cringes because for the first time that question has to have a "Oh and is Trump making things worse a good or a bad thing?" follow up to it because for some people, no I can't put like exact percentile demographic on it but I'm really thinking it's enough to matter, that question doesn't have the same old default answer it used to.
). This will make people think: "Why did he need to get that test?".
