The Devil is Not in the Details; The Devil is the Detail

 

                                                                                

The wicked plot against the godly; they snarl at them in defiance. But the Lord just laughs, for He sees their day of judgment coming.  Psalm 37:12-13 (NLT)

We all saw it. You know, last Thursday night on your favorite propaganda/panic news channel. Yeah, The Big Debate.

Ex-President Donald Trump vs. sitting President Joseph Biden.

Honestly, I was ashamed and worried in about equal measure. 330 million citizens in this country, and these two guys were all we could come up with to lead the free world? Seriously?

I know, I know, there are dyed in the wool fanatics who will go to their graves insisting that their candidate is not only the savior of the nation, but may well be the Second Coming himself! Christian Nationalists certainly seem to think so, even with no evidence.

By tomorrow, none of this may matter because with President Biden's stellar explosion at said debate, the power brokers that support the financial interests that make the politicians and patricians inside the beltway of Washington, D.C. wealthy will likely pull their money out of his candidacy and put it into somebody with a chance of beating the G.O.P.'s orange messiah.

But this brings things back to We The People, doesn't it. I'll call it like I see it. The former President is no saint, much less any kind of messianic figure. His fanatical base has gone down a rabbit hole so deep they still haven't emerged into the reality of who they themselves are, much less who he is. 

In a funny/not funny sort of parallel, these fanatics are lot like their polar opposites on the left who, during the Hamas-Israel War couldn't tell us what the phrase, "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!" meant. Similarly, the We The People types, who wear the ball caps and t-shirts with that phrase would mistake where that phrase came from: The U.S. Constitution, or the Declaration of Independence. Do you know? By the way, is 2A some kind of code? How about the other "A"s? How many know anything beyond the basic 10 Amendments of the Bill of Rights? Not many, I'm betting.

Extremism is easy for the devious to capitalize on. God laughs, and our enemy--the Enemy of our Souls--has permission to wreck things everywhere he can. So he is...for now.

We have given ourselves the illusion that America is a Christian nation, whose values in government, economics, juris prudence, and education are fundamentally predicated on values that are consistent with Christian principles. Presidents and Congresses from every party since the founding have proven this false in one way or another. 

One of the ways they've done this is with their treatment of indigenous populations from the landing of the first Europeans, to slavery, to the repatriation of American citizens to their countries of origin (even after gaining citizenship), to the forced incarceration of Japanese-Americans in World War II and Jim Crow we have done everything we can to demonstrate our fear of things in this world, instead of what we should have had all along: Faith in the God Who is laughing at the nations.

If or when Trump is re-elected to another term, he will go a long way to reaffirming our lack of Christian values as a country, I can say with certainty.

As he is well known for doing, Trump paints everything with a "HUGE" brush. People and situations in the same way. There is little in his mind that distinguishes a person from where they come from. This, in and of itself, is wrong in every way but advantageous to someone like him because he has been able to capitalize on this kind of thought process his entire life. You, my fellow American, are no different. Nowhere does he do this with greater effect than with the immigration issue.

The reader may recall the Texas murder of a 12 year old girl found two weeks ago, and the arrest of two Venezuelans alleged to have killed her and dumped the body. Trump said this at the debate:

"There have been many young women murdered by the same people he allows to come across our border," Trump said. "These killers are coming into our country and they are raping and killing women. And it's a terrible thing."

Citing Nungaray's case, he said: "This is horrible, what's taken place ... We're literally an uncivilized country now."

Trump played the same cards in 2016, and it worked. He played to the basest fears of every unthinking xenophobe's nightmare: That the country would be overrun by non-white people who would take away work, ruin the economy, rape, murder, and pillage whatever was left. Trump is a cynic at the core of his being, and if you look deeply into his marriages, his career in business, and bankrupcies, as well as matters of faith, it becomes obvious.

Last week, he attempted to court evangelical Christians at the Faith and Freedom Coalition in Washington, D.C. where he applauded Louisiana's new law requiring the posting of the Ten Commandments in every public school classroom. About that, he said "Has anyone read the 'Thou shalt not steal'? I mean, has anybody read this incredible stuff? It's just incredible". He also posted this on his website:

"I LOVE THE TEN COMMANDMENTS IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS, PRIVATE SCHOOLS, AND MANY OTHER PLACES, FOR THAT MATTER. READ IT--HOW CAN WE, AS A NATION, GO WRONG???"

Perhaps the Ten Commandments was a revelation to him. In the same Faith and Freedom speech, Trump joked about migrants as being "tough" and that the Ultimate Fighting Championship president, Dana White, should "why don't you set up a migrant league and have your regular league of fighters. And then you have a champion of your league, these are the greatest fighters in the world, fighting the champion of the migrants". Not sure how this lines up with the Constitution. Clearly Trump doesn't know.

This, to a Christian audience who laughed and applauded. Sure, the United States is a Christian nation.

Biden may be a dementia-ridden old man who is being manipulated by those around him, but Trump has his own glaring weaknesses, and his lack of depth in anything speaks volumes. So does any voter's support for either of them.

America has great minds but these two aren't even close. Neither are the cynical manipulators around them, who are  trying to pull their reins and ours by proxy. We have enemies abroad on this earth too, and they are salivating at what will transpire if we don't demonstrate some of our former intelligence and polish.

I'm a Christian, but not a Christian Nationalist. I believe in God. I also believe in His righteous judgment, and that we have it coming. Biden and Trump are evidence that this might come sooner than later, if you ask me. We as a nation are capable of so much better than the loveless, equivocating, ugly discourse that we have allowed ourselves to fall into in recent years. We're frankly delusional if we think this will end well.

To answer the former President's question, "how can we as a nation go wrong?"

It certainly looks as though we'll find out, without some serious soul-searching on our part, and for those of us who believe, recognizing that which is truly glorifying to the One Who put us here.