So, I binge watched the 1st 2 seasons of The Handmaids Tale

[paleotn]

23. Umm, actually, yes it can....

I've been exposed to the religious right my entire life and trust me, there are many in that movement who wouldn't at all be upset with a theocratic dictatorship in the US. In fact they would rejoice. People like Franklin Graham, James Dobson and many other are all about enforcing their world view on the rest of us, by legislation and the power of the state if necessary. In fact, I once heard Dobson espousing the virtues of a "godly" dictatorship, whatever the fuck that is, over the evils of democracy. He actually said those things on his radio show. Their motivation is to turn the US into some puritanical hell hole by any means necessary. And I mean any means. There's no real love for Trump in the hierarchy of the religious right. They're not stupid like their followers. They know who and what he is. He's merely a useful idiot for furthering their agenda.

As for their stupid followers, many times I've heard would be normal and supposedly decent people state with heartfelt conviction that gays and atheists should be locked up simply for being gay or atheist. That we should bring back the Old Testament punishments to "clean up our wretched society". They would see Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and all other Christians who don't believe exactly as they do, be forced to espouse the "one true religion" or suffer the consequences. To them, it's simply what we have to do to "remake our society in god's image." It's really not all that far from that to stringing up their former neighbors in front of a wall in order to clean our society of what they consider the unrepentant ungodly.