I’ve had some of the same thoughts in moments of despair but it actually makes sense. A quick trip through the Patriarchy sections of the book of Genesis kind of explains it.

Every single one of them did horrible things to their family and their tribe. They broke norms. They broke laws. They connived, lied, and defrauded. They were hypocrites. They caused a lot of harm.

And yet… they were God’s chosen and annointed — The hereditary line through which God placed his blessing and fulfilled the covenant promise to make the decendants of Abraham more numerous than the stars.

In that light, it makes sense that they would be able to turn a blind eye. There’s biblical precedent for the sort of shady double dealing chicanery we’re seeing in the Trump administration and the GOP at large. Being unlawful is not exclusionary to being the annointed chosen of God according to Genesis. Whatever consequences befall are within the scope of God’s ultimate plan no matter what.

That’s not a spell that’s going to be easily broken, especially given the cognitive dissonance it will create to do so. Maybe if religious leaders tied that bit in the book of Kings (when and why God abandoned his inhabitance of the planet) with the book of Revelations passages about the antichrist people would snap out of it. But, it would not serve their long term agenda to do so. They need hordes of ignorant masses to bilk money from and drive a grasp for power. I doubt those masses can hear it from anyone else.