After watching the congressional hearings resulting from the investigation of the January 6th insurrection, I cannot help but wonder if the former president has lost any support among his longtime followers. My guess is that the majority of his supporters at this point are not moved by the revelations of the January 6th Committee inasmuch as their support for him is not based on facts. The enemy of our souls has influenced their perception in a manner that they now firmly believe he is on their side and that is all that matters. And being on their side means different things to different groups of supporters. For example, to the white supremacists, it means the former president shares their disdain for people of color and will strive to bring back the “good ole days” of white dominance. To anti-abortionists, it means that his “dedication” to the preservation of life as illustrated by his appointments to the Supreme Court trumps (no pun intended) all of the vile, unpatriotic, and anti-American acts he has perpetrated on this country.
Among the various groups that support the former president, there is likely at least one common misperception that the enemy uses to help sustain their loyalty to him; i.e., they believe that he will remain on their side no matter what. And by now, to anyone who has been observing the former president, this assumption should be ludicrous. One has to look no further than his treatment of his own vice-president on January 6th to see that loyalty is a one-way street for this man. Ostensibly, the former vice-president had been nothing but loyal to the former president until he was asked to be a part of the president’s scheme to overthrow democracy in the United States. As outlandish as this request was, when the vice-president refused to accommodate the president’s devious plan, he unleashed the violent mob that had penetrated the Capitol on him. But the former president’s obvious lack of genuine loyalty to anyone except himself seemingly goes completely unnoticed by many who blindly follow him.
The hold that the former president has on so many Americans evinces the enemy of our souls’ potential ability to shape our reality by influencing our perception. Conventional wisdom would say that the facts as presented by the January 6th Committee reveals the former president for what he is – an autocrat. But the enemy’s influence is so prevalent in our world that conventional wisdom often no longer applies. Either Americans who still support him do not believe the information as presented by the January 6th Committee despite the fact that most of it came from Republicans who had been staunch supporters of the former president, or their “reality” now allows them to embrace the notion that an authoritarian form of government is preferred over democracy as we know it. In either case, the enemy has manipulated their perception in a manner that allows them to live in a distorted reality.
While the vast majority of these Americans likely perceive themselves to be patriots, one certainty is that loyalty to the Constitution and loyalty to the former president are mutually exclusive. They can no more co-exist than can darkness and light. By his words and deeds, the former president is opposed to the fundamental principles of democracy, and there is no factual basis on which to deny that.
As I watched the interview of the two daughters of one of these “patriots” who had been sentenced to prison for his involvement in the January 6th insurrection, I was saddened by what I saw and heard. I realized that in a very real sense, these young ladies’ father was a victim in that he had been convinced that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen and his reaction was within the realm of what might be expected from true patriots. Unfortunately for this man and many others who have been prosecuted for their “patriotism”, constitutional justice is based on reality, and not our perception of such.