James Dobson, who is among the most influential leaders in the evangelical world and serves on Mr. Trump’s evangelical executive advisory board, declared that “Trump appears to be tender to things of the Spirit,” by which Dr. Dobson meant the Holy Spirit.
Of all the descriptions of Mr. Trump we’ve heard this election season, this may be the most farcical. As described by St. Paul, the “fruit of the Spirit” includes forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, hardly qualities one associates with Mr. Trump. It shows you the lengths Mr. Trump’s supporters will go to in order to rationalize their enthusiastic support of him.
.. Time and again Mr. Trump has shown contempt for those he perceives as weak and vulnerable — “losers,” in his vernacular. They include P.O.W.s, people with disabilities, those he deems physically unattractive and those he considers politically powerless. He bullies and threatens people he believes are obstacles to his ambitions.
.. What Mr. Trump admires is strength. For him, a person’s intrinsic worth is tied to worldly success and above all to power. He never seems free of his obsession with it. In his comments to that gathering of evangelicals, Mr. Trump said this: “And I say to you folks, because you have such power, such influence. Unfortunately the government has weeded it away from you pretty strongly. But you’re going to get it back. Remember this: If you ever add up, the men and women here are the most important, powerful lobbyists. You’re more powerful. Because you have men and women, you probably have something like 75, 80 percent of the country believing. But you don’t use your power. You don’t use your power.”
In eight sentences Mr. Trump mentioned some variation of power six times, to a group of individuals who have professed their love and loyalty to Jesus, who in his most famous sermon declared, “Blessed are the poor in spirit” and “Blessed are the meek,” who said, “My strength is made perfect in weakness,” and who was humiliated and crucified by the powerful.
To better understand Mr. Trump’s approach to life, ethics and politics, we should not look to Christ but to Friedrich Nietzsche, who was repulsed by Christianity and Christ. “What is good?” Nietzsche asks in “The Anti-Christ”: “Whatever augments the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself in man. What is evil? Whatever springs from weakness. What is happiness? The feeling that power increases – that resistance is overcome.”
.. Trump embodies a Nietzschean morality rather than a Christian one.
.. Mr. Trump’s entire approach to politics rests on dehumanization. If you disagree with him or oppose him, you are not merely wrong. You are worthless, stripped of dignity, the object of derision. This attitude is central to who Mr. Trump is and explains why it pervades and guides his campaign. If he is elected president, that might-makes-right perspective would infect his entire administration.
.. Evangelical Christians who are enthusiastically supporting Donald Trump are signaling, even if unintentionally, that this calling has no place in politics and that Christians bring nothing distinctive to it — that their past moral proclamations were all for show and that power is the name of the game.
.. Jacques Ellul wrote: “Politics is the church’s worst problem. It is her constant temptation, the occasion of her greatest disasters, the trap continually set for her by the prince of this world.” In rallying round Mr. Trump, evangelicals have walked into the trap. The rest of the world sees it. Why don’t they?
Of Duterte & Trump
Although there is no “smoking gun” that proves that the DDS operates as Duterte’s hit squad, he often speaks quite favorably and enthusiastically of summary executions and extrajudicial killings, and documents published by Wikileaks even reveal that U.S. State Department personnel believe that Duterte is “clearly behind” the vigilante group.
Duterte’s signature method of fighting crime with crime had been the most prominent issue of his presidential campaign. He has promised to kill hundreds of thousands of those he deems criminals, and to make the fish of Manila Bay fat from feeding on their corpses.
.. On the matter of the free press, I should first explain that the Philippines is considered one of the world’s most dangerous country for journalists. It is common for journalists who do investigative work into the corrupt dealings of politicians and businessmen to end up as victims of assassination, and the bulk of those murders go unsolved. When asked about this problem, Duterte responded that if you’re a journalist and you get offed, it’s probably because you were doing something wrong!
.. His reputation as a strong man who can get things done has made him a hero to many of his supporters, and thus to many average Filipinos, having such a savior lead their country to the promised land greatly overweighs any concerns about human and constitutional rights, the rule of law, or the due process of law.
.. Thus, as bad as having Duterte occupy the Philippine presidency is, his popularity is merely a product of a breakdown in Philippine politics and society as a whole.
.. Some dismiss his extreme rhetoric as just the hyperbole of a flamboyant politician who is simply intentionally projecting a caricature of himself, and his spokespersons often defend him by saying his controversial remarks are just jokes or cases of the press taking his words out of context. I, however, believe that the man is a psychopath who probably suffers from delusions of himself as a “Dirty Harry” type who can clean up the streets simply by slaughtering all the bad guys. Such a person obviously has no business being the head of state of any nation.
.. However, even if Duterte is successfully defeated, or even ousted, the societal and political climate that produced him will remain, and the country could go simply back into the hands of the corrupt oligarchs.
We’re Better Than That
Trump wants us to follow the Brits into a corner of isolation — by race, religion and trade. His philosophy, the rant of a besotted boob making things up in public, is anti-American at its core. In rejecting our former colonial masters, we threw off monarchy, the class system and a state religion. We opened our doors to all nations, all religions, all opinions.
Trump: ‘Why am I not doing better in the polls?’
I was in West Virginia, the crowds are massive. And you know, I walked out of one, and I said, ‘I don’t see how I’m not leading,'” Trump said, invoking the size of his crowds.
“We have thousands of people standing outside trying to get in, and they’re great people and they have such spirit for the country and love for the country, and I’m saying, you know, ‘Why am I not doing better in the polls?’ And I’ve noticed the polls are coming up,” Trump said. “But you know, you have to understand, your show, no, but many shows it’s just a constant hit from mainstream media, no matter what you do, it’s always a negative.”