Franklin Graham, Donald Trump, & the Ten Commandments

Yesterday, Franklin Graham disingenously decried “the absence of God” at the Democratic National Convention.

This bizarre claim is easily falsifiable: In fact, many speakers paid eloquent tribute to the deep faith of Joe Biden, the party’s presidential nominee.

Graham can lie so audaciously because he knows most of his followers get information exclusively from hard right propaganda echo chambers — none of which dared question or complicate the multimillionaire evangelist’s false narrative.

Of course, Graham knows few in his docile flock will ever encounter contrary facts, and that even if they did, nearly all lack the courage, decency, and intellectual rigor to reconsider their biases in light of new information. For five decades, Graham and other evangelical leaders have trained their followers to extend their habits of unthinking obedience from faith to politics, by preaching that voting Republican is a religious duty. Worn down by fifty years of fundamentalist fatwas, the right’s remaining critical faculties crumbled into dust during three decades of escalating lunacy, from Rush Limbaugh and Fox News to InfoWars, Teabaggers, Trump, and QAnon. All of this has relentlessly reinforced the right’s mental reflex of loving lies and loathing truth.