I've been reflecting on this a lot in the last several years, ever since it became obvious that the Evangelical Right was backing Trump back in 2015/2016. I went to a strict Christian school. I wouldn't be surprised at all to find out I know people who participated January 6. https://twitter.com/C_Stroop/status/1351655871311278082

Fuck, my number one pick for "most likely to be an insurrectionist" is my AP US History/US Government/Western Civilization teacher....which...is something. Part of this is because she moved back to the mainland; lot harder for the folks who stayed in Hawaii to make it.

But the other reason is that, as I was reflecting on my upbringing and why they backed Trump, I realized that they were extremely good at creating "logical" reasons to justify what they considered important. Easy to delude yourself when you believe that you're smart about it.

I have a lot more thoughts I'd like to write down and I will in this thread. Getting to be dinner time though.

Back thinking on this. Turns out it’s been different musing and thinking on something and actually trying to write things down coherently. I’m going to present it as a tale of two classes that I took my last semester of high school. Warning, long. #exposeChristianSchools 1/

My school was a bit different from ones people have been talking about in the replies and retweet to @C_Stroop, in that they did generally try to toe the academics/indoctrination balance better than most. But ooh boy they were all about preparing us to be culture warriors. 2/

Two classes I took spring semester my senior year reflected the breadth of the evangelical indoctrination: Health and Western Civilization. There are other stories of course, but these two provide an interesting parallel. 3/

I was an oddball in health, being one of two seniors in a normally freshman course. Because army brat, I had two years in Texas, so I hadn’t taken it in 9th grade. It did give me a way of seeing the start of the high school indoctrination from more mature eyes though. 4/

Health class was required for graduation in order for my school to remain accredited, and was a pretty clear example that requiring certain courses is not adequate regulation. It. Was. The. Worst. 5/

It was basically “How to Culture Warrior 101: Protecting yourself from outside influences” I forget who wrote it (BJU or Abeka), but the text was far more concerned with spiritual health first, physical health second, and mental health = LOL, JUST PRAY MORE. 6/

The teacher wasn’t great either. She filled the class with busy-work art projects, which the freshmen weren’t a fan of either. She’d gotten a bunch of grief the previous semester when she had them build a model of the biblical temple because “your body is a temple.” 7/

Well, that project was too much of a stretch, so she replaced it with an advertising project to “learn how the world manipulates you.” I, being artsy and bored, fired up photoshop and made a pretty cool cell phone ad that got points knocked off for “not having enough text.” 8/

This was before the iPhone and Apple’s ultra-minimalistic advertising, but not that much before. Either her sense of advertising was stuck in the 50s (she wasn’t born yet), or she didn’t know what she was talking about. 9/

Her disciplinary style was extremely passive agressive. She would make comments clearly talking about another student without naming them, which the more disruptive types would just ignore. Lot of fun, being in a class you hate with some kid throwing paper underneath desks. 10/

And for anybody thinking “How did you manage?” I didn’t. I vented a lot outside of class. The other senior was a friend and also in art with me, so we griped a lot there. (With teacher participation: she didn’t like our health teacher treading in her realm) 11/

I finally snapped in class one day when my teacher, the only teacher who had a problem with me drawing in class, decided to call me out in class as being a distraction instead of the class clown sitting next to me. 12/

I forget exactly what I said, but it was something about maybe if she could manage the actual disruptions, I wouldn’t need to draw to stay focused. And, in an almost “and everybody clapped” moment, there were nods of agreement from everybody else in the class. 13/

Turns out, having one of the seniors, and valedictorian at that, speak out about how bullshit the class was, was just the excuse everybody else needed to agree 14/

I don’t remember specifically how that class ended, but I remember the aftermath. The class dissatisfaction spread to the other section, which I discovered because my brother, actually a freshman, was in that class. 15/

I didn’t want it though. I had my acceptance to Cal Poly, I was graduating in like a month, I was not looking to cause a major shakeup in my high school. I was not the type to question authority, just in this case it was SO BAD. 16/

That submissive reputation at least kept me from getting in more trouble. I was looking for advice on how to deal in a lunch break Bible Study (yeah, I was doing optional Bible studies), and the “YOU what?” Reaction had the emphasis more on the you than the what. 17/

With their help, I ended up deciding it wasn’t worth fighting about a teacher’s ineffectiveness so close to graduation, and I would suck it up, apologize for snapping in class, and do my best to keep my head down till May. 18/

I brought my friend who was also in Health with me as emotional support. In response, I was gaslit and beaten down. Clearly by bringing somebody, I was seeking to gang up on her, regardless of how much I told her I only brought somebody so I wouldn’t explode 19/

The only way to move past this was to make a public apology in front of the class. I agreed, although I shouldn’t have. This wasn’t a public apology. This was public humiliation. In prayer, which of course, opened class, that same passive agressive nonsense was applied to me. 20/

In retrospect, the words she used were ironic, post-1/6. She spoke of those, moved by the devil, who would seek to incite rebellion in the hearts of others. It was infuriating at the time, because *I* was the one being used by Satan, but now? Lack of self-awareness much? 21/

And here were get to the crux of the matter: I was known as a goody-goody at a Christian School. I made an effort to live in a way that my school encouraged. I had a reputation as being an earnest, hard worker. In spite of that, when in a conflict, none of that matters. 22/

I had spoken out against authority, and that authoritarian figure was all that mattered. When I tried to find an adult solution, I was emotionally beaten down, and described as being moved by the Devil. Anything conflicting with her preconceived notion was clearly Satanic. 23/

I suppose in retrospect, it should have been more of a red flag, but health was just one class. I didn’t at the time consider it indicative of how the evangelical line of thought trained people to fin any excuse to justify preconceived notions when faced with a challenge. 24/

That’s where Class #2, Western Civilization, comes in. This was taught by my “most likely to storm the Capitol” teacher. I had her for 10th grade AP US History and US Government (fall semester) /Western Civilization (spring semester) senior year. 25/

She had a reputation as a hardass. She took great pride in former students telling her that her classes were harder than any they encountered at the local community college. She was also a hardcore culture warrior, but in a way unique from how health class was presented. 26/

As an aside, her US Government class definitely answered a lot of the “why Trump in 2016,” (basically desiring the power of a conservative judiciary), but it didn’t answer why that goal was worth setting aside every value they had claimed important to them. 27/

Unlike my health teacher, she was actually competent. Her students overall probably had the best record on the AP tests (it was one of my two 5s along with Calculus). She made her students work for their grades, and to an extent, that was what made it insidious. 28/

She knew that Western Civilization was a senior class, and also that most students would not be going to Christian Colleges. Maybe 20% tops would even go to the mainland for school? This class had a purpose. It was to train us how to see the world we were about to enter. 29/

We had two texts for Western Civ, neither of them from BJU, Abeka, or ACE. One was a college level art history book, which was one of the coolest things ever. We had to get a permission slip signed where parents would acknowledge that yes, there were going to be naked people. 30/

I was already 18 that January, most of us would be by graduation. We generally appreciated that a teacher was treating us like the adults we were, especially those with parents who might have had a problem with the art textbook. 31/

The other text though? How Should We Then Live by Francis Schaeffer. This book came up in the news years later when Michelle Bachmann was running for the GOP nomination in 2012 and she listed it on her top reading list. 32/

That book...that book... IIRC, the basic premise of that book is the great achievements of any Western culture is a result of their moral uprightness and closeness to God. Of course there was an extremely narrow view of what constituted a great cultural achievement. 33/

Also, Rome fell because they got too okay with gay people, which, while I hadn’t recognized my own queerness at the time, still stuck out in my head. 34/

Pair that book with our art history text. Together, the basic point of that class was that society peaked in the 17th-18th centuries. Slavery was glossed over. That a lot of enlightenment thinkers were deists got ignored unless they were French. 35/

Why French? Well, because you could pin the French Revolution to their rejection of God, of course. 36/

Also in the “this should have been a red flag that Trump was coming,” Henry VIII was used by God to pull England away from the Catholic Church. I was reading books on the Tudors for fun back then and my reaction should have been more LOLWAT and not “like God used Pharaoh?” 37/

We had to write a bunch of essays analyzing the art we were looking at and draw conclusions from it, often in line with the Schaeffer-esc dogma. And as wackadoodle as Schaeffer was, you couldn’t just bullshit something, you did have to support it. 38/

What was considered support though was iffy in hindsight. Confirmation bias and spurious correlations were just fine. There just had to be a correlation. I’m just glad I chose essay topics I could be positive about. Love me some Beethoven. 39/

The writing principles themselves were fine, and that was what made my school so terrifying. It’s why I believe civics alone is not enough. You need civics AND logic. You need to learn how to accept that not everything will fit the worldview with which you were raised. 40/

That wasn’t what I got from my Western Civ class though. The message I was taught in Western Civ was...well...white nationalism. It was that only things that drew from “God” were superior, and as the arts were more affected by other cultures, they became inferior. 41/

Compounded with the founding father worship of US Government the previous semester resulting in a lot of American Exceptionalism, you got this sense of superiority that felt *SMART.* The ease at which I handled my writing course in college felt *GOOD.* 42/

Take that back to freshman health (if I’d actually taken it then)-the distrust of science, the normalizing of abuse, the disregard of mental health-those all leave a hole, easily filled by a Trump type, who will confirm what is fundamental about their world view. 43/

Things I was told growing up like “character matters,” “fiscal responsibility,” and “work ethic,” those aren’t what’s actually fundamental. In the case of a Trump, who’s shallowly successful, those are too easy to downplay because his greatness suggests he is blessed by God. 44/

What is fundamental is their own superiority. They can play lip service to “all have sinned,” but as this has all occurred since they were “born again,” things that confirm their world view have to be God’s will. 45/

As much as they would like to think they are like the Church at Berea, examining their faith, they are only examining any new outside information, and not the foundation on which that faith is built. 46/

Trump said the right things to validate their worldview, and he was accepted with open arms. When others rightfully questioned that decision, they retreated into the militaristic martyr complex that is also fundamental to their identity. Onward Christian Soldiers. /fin