To a great degree, a presidency shapes the public character of the nation. A president should unite us and inspire us to follow “our better angels.” A president should demonstrate the essential qualities of honesty and integrity, and elevate the national discourse with comity and mutual respect. As a nation, we have been blessed with presidents who have called on the greatness of the American spirit. With the nation so divided, resentful and angry, presidential leadership in qualities of character is indispensable. And it is in this province where the incumbent’s shortfall has been most glaring.The other problem, however, is that Trump's followers, even those who should know better, deify him. For example, Jerry Falwell Jr. asserts he can see no circumstance that would lead him to not supporting Trump.
Is there anything President Trump could do that would endanger that support from you or other evangelical leaders?
No.
That’s the shortest answer we’ve had so far.
Only because I know that he only wants what’s best for this country, and I know anything he does, it may not be ideologically “conservative,” but it’s going to be what’s best for this country, and I can’t imagine him doing anything that’s not good for the country. [Emphasis in original]
In response to Romney's op-ed, Trump's campaign manager, Brad Parscale doubled down on deification
That tweet, which borders on idolatry, certainly goes against scriptural injunction found in Psalm 146: 3-4.The truth is @MittRomney lacked the ability to save this nation. @realDonaldTrump has saved it. Jealously is a drink best served warm and Romney just proved it. So sad, I wish everyone had the courage @realDonaldTrump had. https://t.co/mbxoTqbSX6— Brad Parscale (@parscale) January 2, 2019
Do not put your trust in princes,in human beings, who cannot save.When their spirit departs, they return to the ground;on that very day their plans come to nothing.
The more secular and mundane problem with deification and the belief that Trump or any other human will save the nation is the fact that the "savior" needs a threat to save the nation from. That fact creates an illogical conundrum: there's a threat and the nation needs a savior; the savior has saved the nation, but now there's a bigger threat and the nation needs to be saved again.
Trump will not save the nation; he is incapable of saving the nation. That's not an insult or a political judgement. No human can save any nation. The danger is believing a human can do no wrong or singlehandedly save one. Deifying a human rarely works well.
3 comments:
You are quoting Jerry Falwell to place this in biblical context. Saving this nation from the quagmire of the last two presidency is in the economic and security sense. It's a stretch to assume all his supporters worship Trump. We just believe he is the best answer right now. Much better than the slick, lying politicians before him. That has been former governor Romney should have faded into the woodwork after the 2012 fiasco instead of traipsing across the country and running off at the mouth.
Thanks for stopping by.
Many folks make King Cyrus analogy, so I don/t think I'm going too far when I use Falwell and others to show that people are coming dangerously close to worshiping him
I was not a fan of Bush and believe he took us into war too quickly. Obama was far from perfect. His use of executive orders remains problematic.
You and I will likely disagree forever about Trump. Nearly everything he has done has made things worse. Historians in 2119 can make the call
Trump is a career criminal.
After painting Barack Obama as the antichrist we're watching evangelicals fawn over Trump as their Righter of Wrongs. It's horrifying in its duplicity. The End Times fulfill a prophesy and welcome a supernatural extraterrestrial to create a one-world government. No higher being could be anything but predatory. It's dystopian fantasy run amok.
Secretary Clinton's campaign was phoned in at best because they knew she’d be impeached so they gave Trump and the GOP all the rope they're using right now to hang themselves. The Clinton campaign knew that if she had won she'd have been removed by now and Trump would be on the sidelines egging them on. She sat in with the most sophisticated intelligence community on the planet, ferfucksake! She and her campaign knew the Russians, the Trump campaign, Mike Pence and the Republican Party were hacking the election and the battle over her private emails proves it.
Somebody promised Paul Ryan the presidency had Clinton been impeached and Tim Kaine met an unfortunate end but that all crashed when Trump was installed. Who would a President Kaine have chosen for Veep? Lindsey Graham wants to be President pro tempore of the Senate and will become US President if Nancy Pelosi meets an unfortunate end after she succeeds in removing Trump and Pence.
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