This is an admitted rant, aimed at my Christian friends in the USA who appear to be Trump supporters.
I’ve been watching the whole American electoral circus the past couple of years with growing dismay and increasing alarm.
Maybe it’s partly due to my having lived away from my home country for most of my adult life. Maybe it’s because I’ve been personally exposed to so many situations where the assumptions of “the American dream” are not only absurd, but also undesirable. Maybe it’s been this distance from the land of my birth which has helped me see the unreflected close correlation many American Christians seem to draw between their own government, and what they assume is God’s government.
Plus, the country in which I spent most of my life is Austria, a small and rather xenophobic Western country on the border to Eastern Europe, with a fascist past they have not very well dealt with; the land of Hitler’s birth, and the first to officially welcome him as Führer. The “annexation” of Austria, as it is still referred to, was hardly comparable to the violent conquering of most of the rest of Europe, as Hitler already had many, many supporters there.
During the three decades I lived there, the Christian church in Austria (both Catholic and Protestant) was quietly researching the facts of Austria’s culpability in the Second World War, something their politicians have (until very recently, and even then, only a few) been highly unwilling to do. We formed an interdenominational group called the Round Table, and took the spiritual responsibility upon ourselves.
We researched and prayed through the material we found. We did prayer walks, candlelight vigils, made pilgrimage to concentration camps, and nudged politicians to admit the past. We repented both to God and to remaining Jews in the country for what had been done to them. A group of us even went to Israel to find survivors from Austria and honour them by personally acknowledging their pain, and inviting them back for a visit at our expense.
During all this research of the years leading up to WWII, many things became clear about how a demagogue becomes powerful-- even someone quite ridiculous like Hitler, whose uneducated speech and shrill mannerisms had serious politicians and informed citizens laughing at him, and not taking him seriously, for years. The parallels between then with Hitler and now with Trump are shockingly similar, and really very unsettling indeed. There are far too many to list, and many much more educated articles have been written on this very subject, so I will address just a couple of issues here.
One of the first things necessary for a would-be despot is to discredit and disempower the free press. I have been open-mouthed at Trump’s childish and transparent attempts to brand any news agency who doesn’t agree with him as “dishonest” or even “fake news”. This is even or especially the case when they simply accurately report (even actual live news footage!) what Trump himself did and said.
“Fake news” is a genuine Internet phenomenon. It refers to literally made-up stories masquerading as actual news articles, and are pretty easy to disprove. DT uses the term indiscriminately to refer to anything in genuine reportage of real news which he doesn’t like, or which presents him in what he considers an unflattering light (that’s not hard to do, by the way).
A free press is absolutely necessary to a democracy. So is political satire, lampooning, and public criticism of leaders. DT is so thin-skinned he can’t even handle a longstanding comedy show like Saturday Night Live, let alone political criticism of his own recorded words and deeds. Public people have to have learned some self-control, and learn to listen to their critics. Trump couldn’t handle being a schoolteacher, let alone President.
Another thing a would-be despot tries to do is to get the public to distrust the experts. (Why? Because only they can prove that what the despot says is wrong; and if nobody will listen to them any more, the despot can say what he likes and be believed.) Remember, experts are experts because they DO know what they’re doing. They have facts we don’t have and ways of analysing those facts we can’t even comprehend, and they are good at what they do. If the CIA and the FBI (among others) say they have proof of Russia’s meddling in our election, THEY DO.
You wouldn’t send your expensive stereo system to be repaired by a neighborhood guy who tinkers with things, would you? You’d send it to the experts. A despot reverses this natural thinking; he preys on people’s fears and latent penchant for believing conspiracy theories in order to discredit those who actually DO know better, and to whom we should be listening!
Hitler worked on these tactics for several years before he actually seized power.
But what has disturbed me much, more more is the support Trump finds from many Americans who would refer to themselves as “God-fearing Christians”, and the silence of many more. What kind of myopic world do you live in, American church?
It is so completely obvious to anyone not caught up in the modern American system themselves, that what we are observing here has very little to do with restoring Christian morals and values (as is claimed) and EVERYTHING to do with grasping political power at all costs. Sure, it is CLAIMED the power thus obtained will be used to further the aforesaid Christian morals and values, but Trump has been proven to say whatever it takes to get what he wants-- in this case, the Presidency.
What you’re missing, people, is that Jesus does not back this kind of thing. Read your Gospels again. God’s Kingdom is an upside-down Kingdom: he who would lead must be servant of all; the first shall be last; those who try to make themselves great are barking up the wrong tree, etc. Jesus himself, in the desert, rejected and repudiated the very temptation (worldly and political power to achieve “Godly” goals) you are apparently enthusiastically embracing.
As far as I can figure out, many Christians who identify as “Spirit-filled” are basing their illogical and immoral support of Trump and his policies on "prophetic words" widely disseminated through the Internet. In other words, people have had dreams and visions and have put them "out there" to general Charismatic acclaim. Many of these are from people of whom nobody had ever heard, though some are prominent within certain circles.
I can’t even describe what this knowledge does to me. As someone who has practised and taught New Testament prophecy for many years, I can only appeal to you that whenever you must throw away your common sense and deny what your own ears and eyes are telling you, something is seriously wrong with such “words”. Those I have read are transparently myopic and have a clear political agenda. Please, people: whatever happened to discernment? Shall we do evil that good may come (to quote St. Paul)?! May it never be!!
Listen to some common sense here: Wouldn’t you have to agree that the VERY SAME PEOPLE who clamoured to the highest heavens that Hillary Clinton should be thrown in jail for endangering American security, by using a non-secure server and then deleting her mails (and nobody is denying she did so or that it was wrong), should be the very first ones to declare Donald Trump a much more severe security threat due to:
°his preference for and open admiration of Putin (ex-head of the KGB, now despot over Russia-- America’s sworn enemy, and for good reason!); normally called “treason”
°his insistence upon using a personal unsecured cell phone for his tweets, even after repeated warnings from U.S. security forces that this DOES compromise security
°the proof that our own (and other Western intelligence agencies) EXPERTS, WHOSE JOB IT IS TO ASSURE NATIONAL SECURITY, have found which clearly implicates Russia as definitely interfering to Trump’s benefit, in the last election
°his own need to look good in front of Russian diplomats, to the extent that he casually dropped TOP-SECRET CLASSFIED imformation on them! This alone is enough to cry foul
°the fact that Trump will not attend most of his own Presidential security briefings. Why? Because he thinks he knows better?! He does not trust experts. That is, he dismisses those who actually know what they’re talking about and listens instead to people like Bannon, which should scare anybody
...and probably much more we don’t even know about. (This was written before Trump FIRED the head of the FBI, who was investigating things which shouldn’t threaten Trump at all ...if he were innocent.)
WHERE ARE YOUR VOICES NOW, “PATRIOTS”?!
It is the sheer and utter hypocrisy of it all that galls me the most.
If any Democrat had done a third of what Trump has done, you would be (and rightly) shouting for his blood. And if it had really been about “security” with Clinton, you should be shouting even louder now. But it is just the opposite; your silence is resounding, and your defense of Trump is galling. So clearly, this is not about security. What is it about then?
Christian brothers and sisters, have you lost your minds? Where is your discernment? Who on earth have you been listening to, that you would support a man who (and the following items are a proven lifestyle) sleeps around, openly disrespects women (including his third wife), is clearly racist, is publicly and privately vindictive (see his tweets), indulges in cronyism and nepotism, has serious anger issues, has a long record of cheating his workers, lies constantly, and is narcissistic to the point of absurdity? These statements are based on documented and provable FACTS about DT’s life, which is not fake news, but personal history and (lack of) character. This is a man none of you would have considered as your hero until the Republican party hailed him as their hero, and neither his lifestyle nor his character has demonstrably changed.
Has this lifestyle suddenly come to represent “Christian values” while my back was turned? And if not, how are these concurrent with the Christian values you somehow hope he will re-install?
Is it because he tells you what you want to hear, so you think your lives will be made even more comfortable? (Don’t you realize this man demonstrably lies all the time? How can you not care about that?)
Is it because he has promised (recently under political pressure, not due to any known personal conviction) to repeal Roe vs Wade, and that’s your only criterium for fitness to serve?
Is it because he’s attended some well-publicized and televised church services (though he normally does not attend church at all), and been prayed for and prophesied over by prominent Pentecostal preachers, who also coincidentally seem to have very inflated lifestyles?
Is it because of the above “prophetic words” circulating on the Internet about his being somehow chosen by God, so you think anything he does must be ordained and okay?
Or is it because he is a (recent, mind you) Republican and you think he will take our country by force back to oh, say 1952, when you felt like it was a “christian nation”?
Whatever your reasons, my misguided friends, I fear you are supporting a very dangerous man who demonstrably cares only for himself.
This is not “fake news”. If DT were a Democrat, I am certain you would be pointing out all his obvious flaws with glee, as indisputable proof he is not fit to serve in this role. As you did with Hillary. As you tried to do with Obama. And frankly, though neither of them would be my first choice either, neither of them have character flaws that even come close to the magnitude of The Donald’s.
This is not rocket science, friends. Jesus himself told us to look at the fruit of a man’s life and judge the man by his fruit.
Donald’s fruit is NOT GOOD (unless you worship money). Donald’s character is NOT GOOD (unless you value selfishness and abuse). Donald’s marriage is NOT GOOD (he cheated on both his wives with the next one-- and look how he treats his current wife). Donald may occasionally do a good thing, especially when the cameras are rolling, but he is not a good man.
It’s elementary, it’s obvious, it’s A-B-C.
So what, or who, my American Christian friends, is blinding you?
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