“He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind: and the fool shall be servant to the wise of heart.” – Proverbs 11:29
I have occasionally heard the accusation that today’s politics are insufficiently ironic. I say that today’s politics positively bleed with irony. In 2016, Americans elected a man whose documented business history was that of tax fraud, bank fraud, and petty crime. His petty crime was the stuff of comic book villains: defrauding credulous college students through a fake eponymous university – and hawking fine wine more suited for a box than a decanter. There was no noblesse oblige for The Donald. His use of the funds of his own non-profit charity to buy an oil painting of himself as a young Donald Trump, sans the jowls and dressed in the preppy uniform of the 1950s, is outré in a different sense, entirely. The preppy sweater symbolized a fundamental grudge Trump had with the patrician Palm Beachers who looked down their noses at the arriviste who still bore his Queens accent and hadn’t taken the time necessary to properly launder his own fortune as they had. The Donald was “new money”. He was known to have ties to the New York Mafia, and his business strategy of buying up defunct resorts and golf courses using his vaunted “other people’s money” principle was merely a burlesque fan dance, a strip tease for his real business which was money laundering.
However, there was, indeed, one unifying personal characteristic Donald shared with Palm Beachers in the 80s, and that was his refulgent whiteness. His whiteness lit his way through any room he entered. He was whiter than a Kabuki Dancer, and he knew the Kabuki Politics of New York City because his personal motto was: The devil take the hindmost. He was – however corrupt – supremely white. So, eventually, Palm Beach came to him.
But the leap from grifter to president is still hard to explain. We already knew that Donald Trump “… is a racist, a conman, and a cheat.”, as his fixer, Michael Cohen, testified before Congress. And we knew that Vladimir Putin interfered with Trump’s election in order to make Trump president. We knew that Republican state legislatures engaged in targeted gerrymandering to moot the popular vote and throw the election to the Electoral College. We knew that Trump’s election campaign flooded social media with disinformation to falsely defame his opponent. But what we didn’t anticipate was that devout Evangelical Christians would flock to him in such numbers. It’s the ecstasy of this base of supporters that I find so perplexing, so chilling.
In our Trumpian world of today, white Evangelical Christianity is his sustaining force, and the creed of Prosperity Gospel opens the door to a species of credulity that beggars the very belief they purport to embrace. While we see a mirthless clown, a failed plutocrat in the throes of dementia, what do they see? While we see a ruthless dictator, who counts the death of over 160,000 human beings as his opening bid, what exactly do they see? While we see a tyrant who treats the deaths of Covid-19 souls as merely collateral damage, what do they see?
And where in the New Testament are these acts consecrated?
These deaths aren’t merely the result of a failure to govern; they are the cost we must bear for a dictator to seize power. But, it is useful to also see what this dictator and his party are facing in the future. While anti-immigration rhetoric has stirred the cauldron of hate throughout the country, Pew Research reports that:
“…The share of Americans holding the view that newcomers strengthen American society is 11 percentage points higher than it was in the spring of 2016… Both Democrats and Republicans are now more likely to view newcomers as strengthening the country than they were three years ago. And, since 2016, fewer Republicans say the prospect of a majority-minority nation is a bad thing… Over the past three years, the share of Republicans who say that this population change would be a bad thing has decreased from 39% to 21%, while the share saying that it would be neither good nor bad increased from 57% to 73%.” https://www.pewresearch.org/…/PP_2019.12.17_Political-Value…
So, in spite of the Gospel of Donald Trump, the Republican brand is failing to land its abominable punches. And for Evangelical Christians who see Donald Trump as the Second Coming, one must ask: Of what? You are idolizing a racist, a conman, and a thief – the very antithesis of the religion you claim to follow. And it is the very essence of irony.
So, to the Republican Party that unpatriotically supports this fraud because their members value their seats more than they value the lives of Americans; be prepared to inherit the wind. To the Republican voters who rationalize their support of this tyrant by saying, “but I like his policies”: be prepared to inherit the wind. And to the Evangelical Christians who cannot recognize the difference between the teachings of a murderous thug from the teachings of Christ; be prepared to be servant to the wise of heart.
Deborah Long is a Principal at Development Management Group, Inc. and founder of several non-profit, charitable organizations. If you find her perspectives interesting, controversial, or provocative, you can follow her at: https://www.facebook.com/debby.long.98499?ref=br_rs