"Peter, we Evangelicals have no illusion that Donald Trump was godly. We cringe over some of the things Trump does. But the Bible, especially the Old Testament, tells us that God often uses bad people to carry out His will. God is using Trump. That's why we support him."
Bob, an Evangelical Christian, spoken to me this week.
Donald Trump's brand is "bad boy." It's easy to be bad, and hypocrisy doesn't hurt you. After all, you are bad. It is expected.
Democrats were selling competence and national unity with Hillary and Biden. It is hard to be good. Hypocrisy hurts you.
You don't have to be good to do God's work, as my Evangelical friend told me. Trump delivered what White Evangelicals wanted: Anti-abortion judges, changes to immigration that reduced the numbers of outsiders changing the culture of America, and presidential support for the centrality of White Christians. Trump was on their side in the face of a liberal mainstream culture pushing diversity and equality of religions, ethnicities, sexual orientations. They felt under attack and Trump was their defender. It takes a tough, rough guy to take on the assault from the liberals.
The battle of archetype heroes. This blog had likened the 2016 election to a high school student body election. One candidate was the goody-goody valedictorian, Hillary Clinton, who was cosy with the principal and who came across as stuck up about her grades, penmanship, and behavior. She supported the school dress code. Donald Trump was the good looking, rich football quarterback, who dated the prettiest cheerleader, then shocked the school by breaking up with her to date a younger, maybe even prettier, cheerleader. In their election, bits and pieces of news came out that maybe the valedictorian wasn't as perfect as people thought. People didn't like that. Meanwhile, other news came out that the quarterback was even more of a scoundrel than people thought. It didn't seem to matter.
The quarterback won. Then the quarterback did exactly what he said he would do: mock the studious nerds for being wrong about some things, mock the principal's rules, complain about the school newspaper, and advocate for cutting regulations relating to students. He was for student freedom; enjoy yourselves; decide for yourself what you wear.
Meanwhile, COVID. In the 2020 election Donald Trump positioned himself as the opponent of inconvenient behaviors to slow the spread. "Don't let it dominate you," he said. He praised armed militiamen who went to the Michigan state capital to intimidate the Governor who imposed a mask mandate. He mocked the Governor and didn't criticize people who said they planned to kidnap and kill her. He mocked Biden for wearing a mask and "hiding in his basement." Trump says that COVID will spread, yes, but that will create herd immunity, and that the "cure" of shutdowns and social distancing is worse than the disease itself. He said the people who will die would have died pretty soon anyway; don't blame COVID or him. He was on the side of freedom and against people who try to tell you what to do.
Joe Biden isn't Hillary. He never pretended to be the smart guy, the male "valedictorian" candidate, but Biden's brand has a similar element. He represented prudence and regulation as regards COVID as well as the economy and environment. Biden wasn't "stuck up." He was "regular Joe from Scranton" and White working people in the Upper Midwest were the people he grew up with, ethnic, Catholic, pro-union, and jobs-oriented. But, still, on the defining issue, it was Biden with a mask, Trump without one. Biden was the dress-code candidate, the one who listened to the prudent experts.
Asymmetry. Biden's brand is hurt by apparent hypocrisy in a way that Trump's is not. Biden, as the spokesperson for mask-wearing prudence is hurt when Nancy Pelosi is photographed without a mask getting her hair done. Biden is hurt by photographs of people at BLM protests not wearing masks, and doubly hurt when Democrats are quoted saying that protesting racial injustice is "worth it" to make a mask exception, but big church gatherings are not. Democrats were seen without masks celebrating Biden's electoral victory. The conservative media jumps on this: See! And yet they presume to regulate church gatherings! We are under attack. Democrats hate us. The hypocrites!
Biden has a "good government" message. Wear a mask, he says. Social distance. Experience some pain now for a better tomorrow. Do it for the team. It is a good message, but it has a giant weakness. It is a big country and cameras are everywhere and Democrats doing Democratic advocacy will be seen failing to observe mask and social distancing rules. It has happened and it will happen. The "good guy" brand is hard to pull off, especially when the leader lacks the oratorical skills of a Bill Clinton or Barack Obama to explain things away.
The white hat hero has to be very good. Impossibly good.
Trump doesn't have to be good at all. He can say something flatly wrong, something utterly contradicted by widely acknowledged evidence, and it doesn't cause his supporters to doubt him. He can say we are turning the corner on COVID and he has done a great job, even as new cases and new deaths skyrocket. COVID cases have doubled in the past week. What had been 50,000 cases a day and 700 deaths quickly became 180,000 cases and 1,200 deaths. The hospitals ICU units are filling up. He got seventy million votes ten days ago, and yesterday said he expects to do nothing new about COVID. Let the next administration deal with it. He can be shameless. His supporters still support him.
He isn't good, honest, and certainly not pious or Godly. But Trump offers Evangelical Christians the judges they wanted and he defends their freedom to gather together maskless when they want. God's will be done and He uses the tools at hand.
Trump doesn't have to be good at all. He can say something flatly wrong, something utterly contradicted by widely acknowledged evidence, and it doesn't cause his supporters to doubt him. He can say we are turning the corner on COVID and he has done a great job, even as new cases and new deaths skyrocket. COVID cases have doubled in the past week. What had been 50,000 cases a day and 700 deaths quickly became 180,000 cases and 1,200 deaths. The hospitals ICU units are filling up. He got seventy million votes ten days ago, and yesterday said he expects to do nothing new about COVID. Let the next administration deal with it. He can be shameless. His supporters still support him.
He isn't good, honest, and certainly not pious or Godly. But Trump offers Evangelical Christians the judges they wanted and he defends their freedom to gather together maskless when they want. God's will be done and He uses the tools at hand.
6 comments:
So you are asserting that the Evangelical Christian Right is subscribing to the notion that the ends justify the means. Although not schooled in the New Testament, my religious training in the Old Testament certainly did not endorse that approach to ethics. It seems to be opportunistic at best, and hypocrisy at least.
My own view is that serious Christians made a good earthly bargain and a bad religious one, but I I am not on that team so I view as an outsider. I may be wrong and they may disagree.
I was brought up Christian but became disillusioned by the hypocrisy, which is, of course, the vulnerability of people presenting themselves as "good." They are subject to the charge of hypocrisy, the underlying theme of today's post. The Christian right chose power, not virtue. Trump does not display Christian virtues and indeed he mocks them. The solution for Christians, as I was informed, was to see Trump as the bad guy doing God's work. Still, in supporting Trump they endorse a person openly doing unChristian behavior, which people observe. It hurts their reputation, but Christianity will survive, just as it has survived other scandals by earthly leaders seeking money, sex, power, whatever. My own view is that twenty years from now their support of Trump will be regretted by them as having hurt their credibility, but, again, they have an out: they will repent. And in the meantime, they got their judges and immigrants who might dilute American Evangelicalism with Latin American Catholics or Asian non-Christians are slowed entry and Muslims mostly kept out.
For what does it profit a man to gain the world at the price of his eternal soul? Well, in the short run you got the world.
And later, since Christ forgives, you can get your soul back, and eventually, maybe, your brand identity as people who care about Christian virtues. Observers like a repenter. And if people look and think your religion is hypocritical, again, there is an answer: we are all sinners, and said so up front. Repentance will get them back OK with God and OK with fellow Americans. It will work out for them.
Peter Sage
What you lack in hypocrisy you make up for in cynicism!
I think it's time we relegate this ex-president to his rightful place between the bearded lady and the two headed goat.
For me the pertinent topic is the Republican party. As they become increasingly irrelevant in American society and their influence wanes will there be a last ditch effort to reform or will they continue to embrace white supremacists and religious fanatics? In this election Democrats did make some inroads to the more sensible in their base, who may have voted out of distaste for the extremism and perhaps see through the barrage of lies, and there's every indication this will continue. Another question regards whether Democrats will prioritize the reforms needed to assure that another opportunistic populist, who is certain to appear, will have a more secure system of checks on self-dealing and abuse of power.
Our Democracy narrowly escaped this time, and now we know that we have many elected officials who have little respect for our institutions and norms.
It has taken over two centuries, during which time perhaps the bloodiest war of all time was fought to preserve a union which has been widely advertised as"perfect" to reach the day of reckoning that was inevitable when slavery was not only accepted but sanctioned as a necessary means of accomplishing the formation of a new nation known as the United States of America. Though Abraham Lincoln is credited with the abolition of slavery the Emancipation Proclamation was a strategic ploy excuted for no other reason than to weaken the Southern push for secession rather than a deep-seated revulsion of that vile institution. The poisonous remnants of slavery fostered the inane and baseless roots of old prejudices that irrrefragably divide our nation and always will. I for one feel no kinship and share no sense of common citizenship with the contaminated sections of our nation and believe that instead of attempting to solve our nation's ills in long drawn out political battles over contentious matters we would be better served by dividing our nation so that its citizens could opt to live in communities where overall beliefs were shared rather than fought over. As an exammple those who question the efficacies of vaccination could live in states not mandating the practice. This is but one matter of contention that could be solved through a simple separation of peoples.
Yes, I am proposing something drastic, but I see no light at the end of the tunnel when our democracy elects a man so patently unfit for a myriad of reasons to the office of president of the United States and one of the major parties supports him. Republicans all, Have you no sense of decency? Shame on you for your blatant hypocracy.
Bob Warren
Trump follower cult are acting out the drinking of the coolaid by obediently not wearing masks and mixing. The trouble is the cult leader is going to fly off the compound and go back to his Maralago church and leave the dead to bloat in the sun. When the offspring of the dead weep and wail and gnash their teeth then someone might seek revenge. Too late. The rural hospitals are closed due to funding. The container morgues are over run with body bags. The vaccine will be for the Maralago residents not the bed makers and dishwashers. Covid gods will win because the poor will keep contaminating the city. The leader will not offer himself for sacrifice to appease Zeus.
We are lost.
What would Jesus Do? A least die on the cross after turning water to wine and healing the sick. Then rise on the third day and give hope of a glorious rapture. What about abortion? What about it?
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