If ‘Woke’ is a Religion, Why Not ‘Trumpism’?

Clarence Page, Tribune Content Agency on Nov 19, 2021

I have to say yes. Pundits and others have found ample fodder in commentary about unfair presumptions of “white privilege” and “Black victimhood” that don’t always stand up under closer examination.

I still bristle, for example, over a white Chicago law professor who had to face a disciplinary process last year for quoting the N-word in class, reading it from the text of a court case.

Or the San Francisco school board’s decision to remove the name of Abraham Lincoln, among other historical figures, from public schools because of his questionable policies toward Native Americans, a move that one parent quite correctly said sounded “almost like a parody of leftist activism.” Sorry, it’s real.

But if wokeness has taken on religious overtones in the passions of some believers in the superheated atmosphere following the murder of George Floyd, so has its opposite, commonly known as Trumpism.

This often occurred to me as I was trolled by some of my more colorfully conservative readers during Barack Obama’s rise, especially with messages referring to him as “your Savior.”

But with Donald Trump’s surprising rise to the White House, I was surprised and impressed by the same level of boisterous devotion, only by a different subset of Americans.

I have since been further impressed by Trump’s success in energizing multitudes of conservatives to take over the Republican Party, particularly with the help of white evangelical Christians, among whom his approvals soared above 80%.

Those numbers appear to have held up so remarkably well, even after some of his devotees attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, that almost no Republicans expect to have a chance to win primaries without his blessing.

Those who try do so at the risk of banishment as “RINOs,” or Republicans in Name Only, as does anyone who fails to show complete devotion to his dominance.

One can only take such comparisons so far, of course. Religion is a system of belief and worship of a superhuman controlling power, dictionaries say, especially a personal God or gods and grounded in faith as much or more than logic.

That’s why I like to keep my politics and religion as separate as possible. My religion tells me that God is infallible. Politics has yet to produce anyone who deserves that level of devotion, and I don’t expect that it ever will.

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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)