Trump apologists have made The Donald their little g god, and — get ready for this now — they have made Presidents Obama and Clinton their justifiers.
What is a god? The Macmillan Dictionary offers several definitions. Among them are “something that someone thinks is very important and allows to control their life,” and “one of the male spirits or beings with special powers (that) people … believe in and worship,” etc.
My personal definition of “a god” is anything that you use as the ultimate yardstick to determine right and wrong, and the basis for how you will live your life, shape your behavior and judge the moral rightness of human actions.
Seen that way, Donald Trump and right wing politics are clearly much more the god of a lot of people’s lives than Jesus Christ. I will add that left-wing politics serves the same function for a lot of other people, however they haven’t elevated one person into a messiah figure the way that right-wingers have with Trump.
Ironically, many of these Trump people are among the most aggressively self-proclaiming “christians” in the world today. Not only do they believe themselves to be the only “real” Christians left in the world, but they are constantly using Scripture and Canon Law as clubs to beat other people over the head and bully them.
I look at them, and what I see are people whose god is not Jesus Christ at all. They are completely and totally in the grip of worldly gods of their own perverse devising.
Many fallen religious leaders have openly conflated following Jesus Christ with following Donald Trump and the Republican Party. Their rhetoric is so crude and over the top that only an idiot would be convinced by it. But it resonates with many millions of people. Or at least that’s what they claim.
Personally, I think that the only real function the Trump clergy serves is to put a moral gloss on what’s already happened. The real culprit in this is the nasty little Trump bots on various internet web sites and cable news who have been brain-washing the faithful for decades now. The clerical acolytes of Trump are useful justifiers, but they are not the real leaders. They’re handing over American Christianity to Caesar, and rendering themselves obsolete in one move.
The double irony in all this is that Trump followers, who are historic and constant Clinton and Obama despisers and attackers, have made Obama and Clinton and how they conducted their presidencies into the Trumpette popes. President Trump routinely does and says several trashy, crude, and morally bankrupt things every single day. He withholds statutorily mandated aid to a foreign country to force them to interfere in America’s election, takes on dictatorial powers, curses, incites to violence, degrades women, murders the Kurds, separates families, carries Putin’s water, trashes this country’s alliances, race baits, supports rapists and sexual predators, puts little children in jail, threatens nuclear war, pushes us close to war as a diversion from his own impeachment, uses the power of his office to enrich himself, brags, swaggers, bullies, defames and lies, lies, lies, lies and then lies some more.
How do people who spend their days attacking everyone else on the planet for their moral failings and who can’t carry on a conversation without telling someone they’re going to hell or bashing them with Scripture or Canon Law, justify supporting these things?
It turns out it’s easy. They say “Obama did it. “ Or, failing that, “Clinton did it.” The irony of them using these two men who they have claimed for many years were moral ingrates for moral justifiers escapes them entirely. They point to actions by Presidents Clinton or Obama and use them as the moral yardstick by which they judge the rightness or wrongness of President Trump.
If one of these two guys did something, even in a small-time and much weaker way, that can be twisted into an equivalent of President Trump’s actions, then they claim that Trump is justified in doing it, too. Not only that — and this is the important part — they are justified and still holier than all the thous they encounter — for supporting him in it.
President Trump’s supporters are not really saying that President Trump is morally justified by Clinton and Obama. President Trump’s supporters are not justifying Trump. They are justifying themselves.
They are saying that it’s ok for them, their own precious selves, to support withholding statutorily mandated aid to a foreign country to force them to interfere in America’s election, it’s right and just for them to back a president taking on dictatorial powers, cursing, inciting to violence, degrading women, murdering the Kurds, separating families, carrying Putin’s water, trashing this country’s alliances, race baiting, supporting rapists and sexual predators, putting little children in jail, threatening nuclear war, pushing us close to war as a diversion from his impeachment. They are ok — and it’s ok that they are ok — with a president using the power of the presidency to enrich himself, bragging, swaggering, bullying, defaming and lying, lying, lying, lying and then lying some more.
They are saying that they can support, and by supporting encourage, every and any immoral, amoral thing Trump does and keep on swinging Canon Law and their own particular little bits of Scripture like a club, bashing anyone who disagrees with them. They have justified themselves to themselves by saying “but Obama,” or “but Clinton.”
They tell themselves and anyone they talk to that they are entirely justified in backing, supporting, enabling and making themselves a part of the directly Anti-Christ behavior of their little g political god because Obama, or because Clinton. Thus, they have made Clinton and Obama their moral yard stick, their determiners of right and wrong, their interpreters of morality, their popes.
They look in the mirror, and they see Jeremiah. The rest of us look at them and we see the whip-wielding soldiers who mindlessly beat the Son of God almost to death.
That is because God, the real God, is all around them, right in front of them, and they are not only denying Christ, they are crucifying Him again.
Make no mistake about it my friends. When you are looking at a rape victim, sobbing, crying, bloodied and humiliated, you are looking at Christ crucified, standing right in front of you.
When you are looking at little children, separated from their parents and put into cells on the border, you are looking at Jesus, hanging on the cross.
When you are looking at photos of Kurds, fleeing from the guns, you are looking at Our Savior, walking the Via Dolorosa.
When you support these things, when you join in the attacks and make up totally specious excuses for them, you are yelling “Crucify Him!”
You can quote Canon Law until your tongue wears out. You can pull verses of Scripture from here and there and use them to nullify the Gospels all day long. You will still be confronted with these whom you have abandoned on your judgement day.
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