Politics

I was not a Donald Trump supporter. For the first time since I started voting I not only voted third party, but wrote in a name Michael A. Maturen of the American Solidarity Party. A totally Don Quixote gesture tilting at a ballot box. Still I wasn’t railing over people who were supporting Trump. I have a hard enough time following my own conscience without dictating other people’s consciences.

Still I did feel much relief that Hillary Clinton did not win. That was certainly an upside. My disdain for her and her policies had developed over a much longer time. Still this does not wipe out the reasons I had for opposing now President-Elect Trump.

Still I am giving myself a Trump Reset.

“I didn’t vote for him, but he’s my President, and I hope he does a good job.” — John Wayne

So I am going to attempt to not let what has gone before color everything about a President Trump. To let events unfold and judge them on their merits. To support the good and the true and to call out error (not that my opinions have any consequence). No doubt I will have temptations towards I told you so!. It is not as if people are transformed as they step into being president.

The reality is that like everything we take the hand dealt and make the best of it. I have seen many cries of this being a pro-life win. No doubt Trump’s policies will be more generally pro-life than Hillary’s would be. Not exactly a high bar to exceed, but not something to ignore. I will let events unfold to see if there is actually merit in this. At a minimum the Hyde Amendment will continue. I doubt his priorities regarding pro-life causes will match what pro-lifers want. But like most elections I really want to be wrong.

The biggest thing people have talked about is his possible Supreme Court nominations. I hold this as very important for the most part. But I won’t be fooled again as so many disastrous appointments have come at the hands of Republican presidents. Democrats have the knack to pick justices that if they change at all it is in a more liberal direction. So only time will tell if even a well thought of pick actually stays that way. The Supreme Court like everything in the Federal government has grown more powerful than ever intended. Still I think supporting 40 Days for Life, And Then There Were None, and other direct pro-life groups will bear more fruit than any vote for President because of Supreme Court nominations. We have done this time and time again, yet these groups are helping to convert people and to actually close down clinics. As a both/and kind of guy both avenues are important.

I will be greatly interested in how he directs Religious Freedom issues. It has been quite an awful eight years in this regard on multiple fronts from the government. Trying to transform Religious Freedom into Freedom of Worship as a diminishment. So we will see how quickly he overturns the Obamacare Mandate that is affecting religious institutions right now. This mandate was not required by the law, but was a shameful edict that can be quickly removed.

There were certainly things that candidate Trump found the pulse on regarding his supporters. He tapped into some general problems that do need to be addressed. The economic climate is nowhere near what it should be and the media has maintained a rose-colored glasses filter on it. No doubt the media will find lots of problems in the country after he takes office.

“The Reformer is always right about what’s wrong. However, he’s often wrong about what is right.” G.K. Chesterton

So will he provide actual solutions to what he criticized? Time will tell. I would restate Chesterton’s quip in that also “The Reformer is always right about what’s wrong. Yet rarely right on how to fix it.”

I am certainly not optimistic regarding foreign policy. We have been blundering along for decades, if not more. We have been the literary Bull in the China shop when it comes to the Middle East. Making decisions from our cultural perspective as if you could rubber stamp the same assumptions on other cultures. So much arrogance there and failing to understand the differences and the forces at work along with all the nuances. Give them Democracy and everything is fixed. Still just perhaps Army Lieutenant General Michael Flynn has at least some grasp of this and the extent of our blunders.

I will also not be fooled again regarding for example a removal of a government program such as so-called “Obamacare”. Exactly what government programs or parts of government promised to be removed that were. I score zero. Could Obamacare be reduced back to the reforms that were actually needed? I’ll believe it when I see it.

“The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected.” – Illustrated London News (1924) G.K. Chesterton

I see Chesterton quip as pretty much an iron law verified by everything. Still I want to be wrong, very wrong.

So yeah I remain highly skeptical, but I hope not a pig-headed skepticism where evidence to the contrary is rejected out of hand. The Trump Reset I am attempting is to evaluate events as they occur and not to prejudge everything. So I certainly hope him and Mike Pence well and will pray for them as I try to do for any President.

Still I am also reminded how unhealthy the power of the Presidency has become and how much we invest in it emotionally. Instead of acting in our communities we try to put our hope in a person who is going to fix things and get things done. We always want to take the Federal government shortcut to fix everything everywhere.

I found this spelled out very well in Amy Welborn’s post today #NotMyCityCommissioner. Just exceptional writing and not just because I fully agree with it.

Ross Douthat in a Twitter essay yesterday (21 tweets) said in one tweet. Tweet’s listed here

That’s what there is to see here: Not anti-Catholic “bigotry” (an overused word), but a window into how the Catholic civil war is fought.

This is something that resonated with me as I was already thinking about how anti-Catholic was being overused. Not agreeing with Catholics is not anti-Catholic. No more than not agreeing with atheists or Protestants makes you anti-atheist or anti-Protestant in the pejorative way of reflexive bigotry. They are bigots in the classic sense of “prejudiced person who is intolerant of any opinions differing from his own”. There is pretty much zero-striving towards understanding the arguments of those you disagree with. But there is a lot of that going around. This is not to deny true the existence of true anti-Catholicism.

No they are just fine with Catholics who reject the Magisterium like Biden/Kaine/Kerry. It is Catholics who actually believe and follow the faith they have trouble with on most issues. This is why they shift the terminology of “Religious Freedom” to “Freedom of Worship”.

In C.C. Pecknold’s fine article on The Progressives’ Plot to Change Catholicism he references:

In some ways, the Investiture Controversies of the 12th and 13th centuries never ended. Kings continue to want to bring the Church under their control.

There will always be efforts to bring the Church under control. The Chinese government has their Patriotic churches and John Podesta and others create astroturf groups to project their secular values as the faith of the Church. This is doomed to fail as it historically has always failed. Catholics keep trying to bring the Church under control.

If the Church is merely a human institution as the Church’s critics maintain then it makes perfect sense to try to subvert it to your own message. It is not anti-Catholic to do so, it is just mistaken as to the reality of Christ’s church.

““You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel! (Matthew 23:24)

It has always been the case that people will support somebody who personally violates or goes against one of their deeply held beliefs as long as they support another one. That they will go to great extent to suppress that there is any tension at all in their support.

With ex-President Bill Clinton back in the news cycle it is easy to remember his scandalous personal activity as President and before that. Also easy to remember that it was an extremely rare feminist who called him out on his behavior. This certainly did not happen with national feminist groups. Patricia Ireland, then President of NOW, had much harsher words to say about the impeachment proceedings than about Bill Clinton’s scummy actions. Rape victims must be believed unless they are Juanita Broadwick.

If Bill Clinton had ever wavered on abortion, it would have been a totally different story.

I point this history out not as something unique, but as an obvious example of how the support of the “ONE THING” excuses everything else.

Self-deception is also nothing new and anybody who has done any examination-of-self will find obvious examples in our own lives. I don’t have to search far myself to wonder “What the hell was I thinking” and why was I so willing to suppress the obvious (“Shut up conscience”).

The pro-life community is also often capable of this “ONE THING” thinking. Voting for people not because we think they are actually pro-life, but that they promise they will vote pro-life. We believe the panderer when we want to believe the panderer. Being a Floridian Charlie Crist comes to mind.

We also often get “ONE THING” thinking where Supreme Court vacancies become among reason to suck it up and vote for the awful candidate. Not that this aspect isn’t a valid consideration. Voting for the greater good when there are two bad candidates and it is possible to discern this, is perfectly valid. But let us not minimize for a second the evil there is. Maintain your caveats and don’t gloss over them. Advance the greater good by doing good yourself and work to not ever explain away or trivialize evil.

In the spiritual life it is important to do a daily examination of conscience to be able to grow in holiness. Our political lives should certainly be a part of this examination especially as it is one area especially prone to Self-deception. At least I find this true for myself.

This election cycle I have found this more so. There are so many people who will excuse anything for the “ONE THING”. Trump supporters see him achieving for them the “ONE THING” whatever that might be. No facts of his past actions or his constantly changing opinions will put a dent into their support. Trump support is a projection of what they think he will successfully achieve. It just isn’t falsifiable since it was never based on evidence – really despite all evidence to the contrary.

Although I could have written the last paragraph using Hillary’s name instead of Trump and it would have been just a true. They share much in common. Really this election is like an old episode of Mission Impossible. At the end Hillary rips off her mask and it’s Trump, and Trump rips off his mask and he’s Hillary. The major difference is that Hillary in public has more self-control. Hillary is much more coldly calculating.

So this election I will be going full Cervantes and tilting at the voting booth with a write in. I think I dislike Trump all the more since I have to take arguments seriously that Hillary would do more for the common good than Trump. In conscience I can not vote for either of them – ever.

I deeply relate with Mrs Darwin.

… But thanks to Trump virtually clinching the nomination by winning Indiana, I’m freed from the tyranny of the party. I don’t have to identify as a Republican anymore. When someone asks me if I’m a Democrat or a Republican, I can say neither! And for the first time, I can vote for someone I like for president. Who gets my write-in vote? Which person do I actually think would be best suited to run the country? It’s almost overwhelming.

Free, free, I’m free at last.

Picture licensed under Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license.

Trump is going to make God great again! Take that Christopher Hitchens..

I am sure most people would balk at Donald Trumps “great” relationship in God, but in the service of charity I will try to explore the topic.

So how exactly did Donald Trump develop his great relationship with God? Well few know this but he meets regularly with Joel Olsteen for spiritual direction. Trump maintains both his health and his wealth so this is obvious Olsteenian proof of Trumps great relationship with God.

Trump respects the sanctity of marriage so much he employed this great institution three times. He possibly could respect it even more in the future. In fact while married to Ivana he started a romance with the women who was to become his “second” wife among the pews of a Manhattan church. This also shows that Trump does not find church boring and seeks to reach out. Trump is really a model Christian as he has “married” three models.

Some have doubts about Trump’s humility, but he lists the Bible in front of his own book “The Art of The Deal,” as his favorite book. In his amazing humility today he said “the Bible blows it away”. When first asked about his favorite verse and why he replied.

“I wouldn’t want to get into it because to me that’s very personal. You know when I talk about the Bible it’s very personal.I don’t want to get into it.”

This shows that Trump has a personal relationship with this favorite scripture verse. Although a month later he did manage to come up with a vague reference regarding envy in Proverbs and his aids eventually managed to find one that fits. So The Donald is willing in humility to give us his personal favorite scripture verse despite how personal it was to him.

Proverbs 24:1-2: “Be not thou envious against evil men, neither desire to be with them. For their heart studieth destruction, and their lips talk of mischief.”

Now at first glance this might seem quite an odd choice as a personal favorite. This just proves that Donald Trump has studied the scriptures much more than we have and us willing to go obscure instead of pandering with perhaps John 3:15. In fact today he was at ease referring to “Two Corinthians” instead of “Second Corinthians” showing his fresh look at scriptural references.

Trump is also not afraid to show that he is a renaissance man and talk about art, movies, and scripture comparisons. Here is compares the bible to the Mona Lisa and a movie.

“it doesn’t look as great at the beginning and by the time they see it many, may times they can’t take their eyes off it” — and to watching a “great, incredible movie.”

Another area where it seems Trumps actions are at odds with his great relationship with God is that the Trump Taj Mahal could make history early next year by opening the first strip club inside an Atlantic City casino. He hopes that it would “take off” showing his adeptness with both political language and strip clubs. I’ve heard rumor though that he plans to tithe ten percent of the stripper’s tips to charity. Yeah it will all be mostly dollar bills, but so are the collections in many churches.

Another proof is Trump’s conversion to the pro-life cause. This is an amazing story regarding how he went from being fervently pro-abortion to pro-life. Now he has never mentioned what changed his mind, but it must be a great story and as good as Mitt Romney’s or Charlie Crist’s – oh wait scratch Charlie Crist. I find it amazing how running for President as Republican causes such deep conversions and reflection on previous culture of death views. On same-sex marriage he said “The Supreme Court ruled on it” and previously he had attended a same-sex marriage. This bodes really well for appointments to the Supreme Court just as long as you are not a social conservative in any way. Still he has no definitive comment on “same-sex marriage” proving once again he is so humble as to not give an opinion on an issue of the day.

Trump is also a great ecumenist and is willing to reach out and attack the faith of other Presidential Candidates such as Ben Carson and Ted Cruz “not too many evangelicals come out of Cuba.” No doubt as a Presbyterian he sees the losers competing against him as predestined to loose. Not to mention inter-faith dialogue – or as The Donald calls it “in your face” dialogue like with Muslims. Well actually he has never called it by that term, but I am sure he would approve.

Today Trump said “We’re going to protect Christianity”. Hopefully it is from Donald Trump. Now who would be a good intercessor to pray for Donald Trump? I mean besides St. Jerome.

References and quips:

• The Gospel According to Trump
• Would Donald Trump Be a Pro-Abortion President?
• Picture via @daveweigel
• I’m intrigued by the religion Mr. Trump seems to have invented and I’d like to subscribe to his newsletter. Ross Douthat
• The only god with whom @realDonaldTrump has a great relationship is Mammon. And even that’s been a bit iffy. William Newton