To understand not only what took place last week in DC, but the response of many Americans and the Republican party to it, it's absolutely essential to understand the role a certain kind of religion plays in US culture and politics. /1 #capitolsiegereligion

This kind of religion is most accentuated in its evangelical iteration, but is to be found in a lot of other sectors of religion in the US since, as Kristin Kobes du Mez shows in her book Jesus and John Wayne, evangelicalism has extended its influence all through US religion. /2

Some key reasons — rooted in a kind of religion that is deeply embedded in US culture and politics — many Americans and Republicans will keep lying boldly about what we can all see on the videos from last Wednesday: /3

a. The kind of religion on full display last week in the DC race riot lives in a world of alternative facts, and is proudly scornful of all information and news sources beyond that world. /4

b. The kind of religion we saw manifesting such malevolence in DC last week is ravenous for enemies. Its raison d'etre is the generation of an endless succession of enemies — the native peoples, "witches," "heretics," Jews, Commies, queers, women, liberals — to be overcome. /5

c. The belief of these religionists that they are engaged in holy war as they trounce their perceived enemies seamlessly translates into coercion and violence, against which there is little check in this religious system — since God is on their side. /6

d. This is all fed by an absolute certainty (the world of alternative face does not correct this) that they own America and have a divine commission to run it, and a right to do with it as they please. /7

e. The strong apocalyptic backdrop of this belief system encourages it to welcome violence, death, destruction as the ushering in of an era in which these believers' "enemes" are finally trounced and their power over everyone else is decisively confirmed. /8

f. People who think God is on their side and God validates their cruelty and violence towards perceived enemies are full of a hubris that allows them to see no "truth" other than their own truth. /9

For all these reasons, and due to the willing captivity of the GOP to this kind of US religiosity, we will see little repentance, acknowledgment of something horrendously awry, in what happened last week. We'll see only lies piled on lies and the determination to do it again. /10

“Alternative fact,” not “alternative face,” in /7 above.