{"id":73994,"date":"2026-04-20T14:10:19","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T18:10:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?p=73994"},"modified":"2026-04-20T14:10:19","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T18:10:19","slug":"you-can-be-the-president-id-rather-be-the","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2026\/04\/20\/you-can-be-the-president-id-rather-be-the\/","title":{"rendered":"You can be the president, I’d rather be the …"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u2022 This RNS headline reflects just one of the reasons it\u2019s unwise for politicians to pick fights with clergy: \u201cPope doubles down on peace and unity message as Trump\u2019s criticism continues<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"The political headline clich\u00e9 just becomes weirdly funny<\/em> when applied to a pope. The gambling metaphor (\u201cdoubles down\u201d) doesn\u2019t really work here given that this is not the first time that Leo specifically, or his many predecessors, have repeated a \u201cpeace and unity message.\u201d The \u201cpolitician not backing down\u201d framing here treats the pope like he was Thomas Massie, the conservative Kentucky Republican representative in Congress who has criticized Trump on the Epstein files and other issues. But all that framing does is underscore how very much the pope, being the pope, is very much not at all like Massie.<\/p>\n

Oh, the president is turning the full power of \u201cthe bully pulpit\u201d toward bullying Leo? Well, how many pulpits has the pope?<\/p>\n

The opposite political clich\u00e9 headline \u2014 \u201cPope backs down on peace and unity after Trump\u2019s criticism\u201d \u2014 is unimaginable. And it would be unimaginable even if Leo were the relatively powerless pastor of some small nondenominational congregation \u2014 at least when it comes to such basic, almost generic, core religious values as \u201cpeace and unity.\u201d<\/p>\n

You can think of it as a matter of home-field advantage. When clergy stray from core themes like \u201cpeace and unity\u201d and wade into political matters far afield from that \u2014 as some right-wing US Catholic bishops like to do \u2014 they\u2019re playing on the politicians\u2019 home turf. But politicians have nothing to gain from picking a fight on religious leaders\u2019 home field of \u201cpeace and unity.\u201d<\/p>\n

And Trump very much chose to have this fight on Leo\u2019s turf and according to Leo\u2019s terms \u2014 the broadest possible terms of \u201cpeace and unity are Good Things\u201d vs. \u201cNo, they\u2019re not.\u201d The president is going to lose that fight with the pope for the same reason he lost his fight with the king of Latin trap. When Bad Bunny said \u201cThe only thing more powerful than hate is love,\u201d Trump chose to respond as though this were an attack on him personally. He<\/em> chose sides \u2014 choosing \u201chate\u201d as his own personal side in the generic contrast of hate vs. love. That doesn\u2019t mean that Bad Bunny \u00a0is \u201cdoubling down\u201d every subsequent time he affirms the goodness of love, it just means that Trump made the foolish choice of framing this fight in a way that makes it impossible for him to win.<\/p>\n

The same thing has happened here. Pope Leo spoke of \u201cpeace and unity,\u201d condemning war as a carelessly chosen and carelessly conducted first choice. Trump chose to frame that as a personal attack because, according to Trump, it is obvious that anyone advocating \u201cpeace and unity\u201d is opposing him and because, according to Trump himself, his own war was started and is being conducted carelessly. Now \u2014 because of Trump\u2019s own choice to frame the dispute this way \u2014 every time anyone, anywhere speaks positively of peace and unity, they\u2019re \u201cdoubling down\u201d against him, defying his power and exposing his powerlessness.<\/p>\n

It seems unlikely he\u2019ll ultimately win this argument by tweeting his way through it, but it seems he\u2019s determined to try.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Evan Hurst responds to comments from Lauren Boebert<\/a>. Hurst notes the important distinction between \u201chorny\u201d and \u201cpredatory,\u201d That distinction seems to elude Boebert, even though it should be personally important to her because it explains why the behavior of men like Eric Swalwell and Tony Gonzalez merits their expulsion from Congress but her behavior at that performance of Beetlejuice<\/em> doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

This is example number eleventy-billion of the \u201cconservative\u201d inability to comprehend the essential importance of consent in any discussion of sexual ethics. This, again, tends to be expressed as hostility<\/em> to any mention of it, in a move that\u2019s so obtuse that it seems suspiciously like deliberate bad-faith.<\/p>\n

Any Normal Person: Consent is necessary. Without consent, no sexual behavior can be ethical.<\/p>\n

Conservative: So you\u2019re saying consent is sufficient \u2014 that as long as there\u2019s consent, \u201cAnything goes\u201d?<\/p>\n

ANP: No, I said \u201cnecessary,\u201d not suff\u2013<\/p>\n

Conservative: \u201cAnything goes!\u201d This is why we must never mention or allow anyone to think of consent.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

They have been doing this forever. Either they are afflicted with some defect that prevents them from comprehending elementary truths or they are arguing in bad faith because, for whatever reason, they personally prefer a world in which consent has no consequence.<\/p>\n

\u2022 The title for this post comes from Prince\u2019s \u201cPope<\/a>\u201d (lyrically NSFW), which makes amusingly filthy, sexually swaggering use of an extended metaphor. I mean, yes, Jo\u00eblle Rollo-Koster, professor of medieval history and chief editor of the Cambridge History of the Papacy, has some helpful historical context on the question of \u201cWhat Happens When Sacred and Secular Power Collide?<\/a>\u201d But you can\u2019t dance<\/em> to it.<\/p>\n

We could spend some time pondering how Prince\u2019s song might speak to those in right-wing MAGA world for whom \u201ccuck\u201d has become the most frequently invoked insult, but that would probably spoil the man\u2019s joke. So instead let\u2019s just ponder how the rapping on this 1993 track is light-years beyond, say, the break in \u201cAlphabet Street\u201d from 1988, and then we can enjoy a round of the impossible argument about what genre best describes Prince\u2019s music.<\/p>\n

The image above comes from the other song I thought about referencing in the title \u2014 \u201cWhat\u2019s So Funny \u2018Bout Peace, Love & Understanding?<\/a>\u201d That image is from Elvis Costello\u2019s version, but here\u2019s the Postmodern Jukebox arrangement<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Leo says that “peace and unity” are Good Things. Donald Trump (correctly) perceives this as an attack on him personally.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":74024,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nYou can be the president, I'd rather be the ...<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Leo says that "peace and unity" are Good Things. 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Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"You can be the president, I'd rather be the ...","description":"Leo says that \"peace and unity\" are Good Things. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/141"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73994"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73994\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}