American intellectuals haven’t felt the allure of authoritarian, illiberal politics this strongly in a long time.
.. In 1953, Czesław Miłosz published The Captive Mind, which described how a series of Polish intellectuals came to embrace Stalinism. Miłosz detailed the role that “coercion” and “personal ambition” played in their ideological transformation.
.. “To belong to the masses is the great longing of the ‘alienated’ intellectual,”
.. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. observed that “against the loneliness and rootlessness of man in free society,” totalitarianism “promises the security and comradeship of a crusading unity.”
.. First, they admire his campaign’s raw, unbridled energy. The Trump movement, according to the Wall Street Journalcolumnist Peggy Noonan, radiates “dynamism.”
.. The “Journal of American Greatness” makes explicit what Noonan, Hanson, and Gingrich imply: that America’s current system of government is illegitimate.
.. A second asserts that the United States is “post-Constitutional.”
.. A tyrant, Strauss argues, takes absolute power by overthrowing a constitutional republic. A Caesar also takes absolute power, but only when a constitutional republic has already collapsed on its own.
.. “Caesarism is not tyranny. It is rather a sub-species of absolute monarchy, in which the monarch is not an unjust usurper but the savior of a country with a decayed republican order that can no longer function.” By overthrowing a depraved and unaccountable elite, Trump would reassert “the people’s sovereignty” and “their natural right to rule themselves.”
.. In May, she wrote that Trump’s fans want him to be “a human bomb that will explode by timer under a bench in Lafayette Park and take out all the people but leave the monuments standing.” These are ghastly metaphors. Obviously, Noonan is not endorsing revolutionary violence. But she’s writing sympathetically about the people’s supposed desire for it. And she’s doing so on behalf of a candidate who incites actual violence.
.. Because Trump represents the people and the people distrust the media, which are part of the corrupt ruling class, Trump has the right to slander and impede the media’s work. In Hannity’s words, “They deserve what they get.”
.. For Trump, popularity equals truth.
That’s why, when he’s ahead, he spends so much time citing polls. He understands that in American public discourse, it’s hard to say the people are wrong.
.. America is a democracy because the people’s voices count. But it is a liberal democracy because freedom of the press, independence of the judiciary, and the rule of law are not subject to popular vote.
the candidate challenging Speaker Paul Ryan in a Wisconsin Republican primary, Paul Nehlen, declared in a radio interview that the United States should consider deporting all Muslims. “I’m suggesting we have a discussion about it, that’s for sure,” he said. “I am absolutely suggesting we figure out—here’s what we should be doing. We should be monitoring every mosque. We should be monitoring social media. We’ve got about three million Muslims in the United States.”
.. This is the GOP’s future if Donald Trump wins.
.. In Republican primaries, opportunists will try to mimic Trump’s ugly brand of identity politics and actual white nationalists will be emboldened to vie for power in the GOP. They will win in some regions and transform the tenor of local politics in many more
.. If Trump fails––especially if he loses in a humiliating landslide––the defeat will go a long way toward discrediting that same brand of right-wing identity politics, putting the GOP on a trajectory that would benefit conservatives and progressives alike.
Trump has repeatedly called for the support of evangelicals and thanked evangelicals for their support (which is also a subtle campaigning trick to woo undecided evangelicals), and it is something very serious when the rulers who represent the spirit of this age call on the church to mobilize on their behalf.
..Trump has openly bragged about his adulterous affairs and sexual conquests. No other Presidential candidate has ever been such a bold proponent of adultery. He has been so base as to suggest that his daughter is fit to pose for Playboy and that if he was not her father he would be dating her.6 He recently described sexual desire towards his daughter7, and he’s even asked others if they thought she was “hot.”8 When his second daughter was a year old, he was already making comments about her body.9 His overall attitude towards women is highly sexual, misogynistic, and deplorable.
.. By simply looking at how the Bible describes a foolish leader, we can easily see that Trump is the embodiment of nearly every description the Bible gives of a foolish leader.18
.. To reapply a conservative phrase from the 1990’s – if Donald’s wife cannot trust him neither can we.
.. Christians deep down know that Trump is not a true believer and yet we fail to follow Paul’s clear instruction on what to do with such a man.
.. Jesus was clear that we are to evaluate men by their fruit. Until there is a genuine, public brokenness backed up by a radical change in demeanor, a commitment to repair past wrongs, and real fruit to demonstrate the truth of the commitment we should ignore any claims of an election conversion.
.. However, when a man is bold in his sin it is very different from someone who has failed and yet is repentant or at least is struggling against their sin. Trump is the opposite. He has said that he has never felt the need to ask for forgiveness because he and God have a great relationship and he doesn’t do much that is bad.29 This is a man who is brazen in his sin. He is not a broken man who has come short. He is not even trying to hide his sin because he does not even feel the shame of it.
.. when God’s people put their hope in political saviors God will give us more and more inferior leaders until he breaks our ungodly association with political saviors.
..
We found that evangelicals are drawn toward politics by messianic figures. Although Trump may not be Christ-like, the term messianic does have other synonyms such as “liberator” or “defender,” words that Trump supporters might easily use to describe him.
…we found out what did draw this group toward politics: strong, decisive leaders, not issues. They got involved in politics for the same reason they got involved with their church — because they were looking for someone to help “show them the way.” Evangelicals were drawn into politics by messianic leaders.[31]
.. The Lord is forcing the issue by presenting us with worse and worse leaders to expose where our true loyalties lie.
.. It is humiliating that the church bows to a man who is the opposite of everything we stand for because we have fallen prey to a political narrative that motivates us by fear. If we were truly free and truly found our hope and citizenship in heaven then we would not be so fearful and easily manipulated by the threat that if we don’t fall in line then another candidate will be elected.
..
“Though it’s common to talk about the Republican Party having been captured by white evangelical activists, if you really look at the way the two groups have interacted over the years, it’s more accurate to say that evangelicals have been captured by the Republican Party…Born-again Christians continue to laud Jesus as their King of Kings. But it is a strange sovereign who is so slavishly responsive to his subjects. Here Jesus is more pawn than king, pushed around in a game of political chess, sacrificed here to take down Obamacare and there to turn a reality-television star into God’s gift to America.
“The Trump candidacy is no outlier. He has not hypnotized evangelicals into forgetting the foundations of their faith. He is simply revealing the fact that their faith is now more political than theological. The white evangelicals who flock to his rallies like their parents once did to Billy Graham revivals know that he lives a life comically at odds with teachings of the Bible and the examples of the saints.”[32]
.. I think we aren’t giving the convictions of evangelicals enough credit. They know enough to know what Trump is saying and doing is wrong, and yet they are still supporting him.
.. Russell Moore closes his op-ed with a plea to evangelicals: “We ought to listen, to get past the boisterous confidence and the television lights and the waving arms and hear just whose speech we’re applauding.” But what if the boisterous confidence and the television lights and the waving arms are precisely what evangelicals have been trained to love? What if they can’t listen because they are enraptured? What if they applaud, not because Trump has given them a speech, but because Trump has given them what they love?[33]
.. Perhaps the Lord wants to use Trump to break our obsession with worldly power.
.. To say it another way, if we are in a generation when the Lord is humbling the nation, then Trump’s rally cry is essentially a rejection of what the Lord is doing in our nation. Trump is not defining greatness as goodness. He is describing it as power, might, and economics.
.. What if Trump’s entire platform is actually in opposition to the season the nation is in? What if we are in effect repeating the error of the religious leaders in Jeremiah’s day and assuring a man, and his supporters, that the Lord supports his agenda when in fact it is entirely the opposite?
.. If the Lord is humbling the nation, Trump represents something entirely different – pride, arrogance, and tolerance of sin. Promoting and embracing Trump is a statement of our trust in human strength at the cost of decency and morality.
.. When Jesus is declared in His beauty and in His glory, then we are neither awed by imposters like Trump nor fearful of leaders like Clinton.
.. Daniel was an influence in government and politics but he never put his hope in it and was therefore able to be a prophetic voice. He never confused Babylon with Zion and that’s why Daniel was just as able to serve under Babylon as under Persia. We should be equally able to be a prophetic voice to the Republicans as to the Democrats.
.. We are faced with two unqualified options because the Lord wants to break our search for a political savior.
.. Any man who sets himself up as the savior, threatens others, ridicules the vulnerable, and even threatens freedom of the press will not suddenly become a Christian in office.
One is Clinton’s 2008 claim that she landed in Bosnia in 1996 “under sniper fire” and “ran with our heads down” from the plane. The Washington Post dismantled that claim; video shows that Clinton was greeted not by gunshots but by a crowd of dignitaries that included an 8-year-old Bosnian girl.
But it’s also true that as the plane prepared to descend, security officials gave a spine-chilling briefing of the risks of sniper fire, and Clinton wore body armor in case of shooting.
.. In March, Politico chronicled a week of Trump remarks and found on average one misstatement every five minutes. The Huffington Post once chronicled 71 inaccuracies in an hourlong town hall session — more than one a minute.
.. He denied telling The New York Times’s editorial board that he would impose a 45 percent tariff on China; The Times then released the audio of him saying just that.
.. Then there was Trump’s claim that he had seen thousands of Muslims celebrating in New Jersey after 9/11. That was preposterous, but he then claimed that an article from the time backed him up (it didn’t), mocked the disabled reporter who wrote it, and denied he had done so.
.. Equally brazen were Trump’s claims about his fund-raiser for veterans in Iowa: He said on video that he had raised $6 million for them, then when the money didn’t show up he denied ever saying that. He claims to have been “among the earliest” to oppose the Iraq war, even though interviews from 2002 and 2003 show he then supported the war.