source: Twitter
It’s 12:00 on a Friday, I have nowhere to be, and I’m laid up with a migraine. So naturally I’m passing the hours by thinking about…. Donald Trump.
In all fairness, I try not to talk or write about the president too often. It’s as frustrating as all hell, it’s not considered polite dinner conversation, and John Pavlovitz is doing an amazing job saying all the things I want to say in a more eloquent way than I could ever say them.
But this just needs to be asked, because I’m genuinely and deeply baffled.
How do you keep defending him?
It feels like that question should have been preceded with a nicety like, “With all due respect,” but I just couldn’t make myself do it. Because the thing is, I don’t respect a decision to support the president. I don’t. I know it’s not very PC to say that, and God knows I often talk about the importance of respect myself. But the fact is, while I respect a LOT of people and ideas and opinions that are different than my own, I just can’t respect unkindness.
Or misogyny.
Or bigotry.
Or arrogance.
Or name-calling.
I can’t respect a man who brags about sexual assault. I can’t respect a man who spends his days disgustingly disparaging everyone who disagrees with him on Twitter. I just can’t do it. And the thing I can’t stop thinking about, the thing I keep wondering, is: Do you, Trump supporter, respect those things? Are they okay with you? Do you find those traits to be admirable? Do you find this man to be someone to emulate?
Those (mostly) rhetorical questions are for all of you, but most especially for my fellow Christ-followers. Because I can not, not for the life of me, understand how someone who purportedly wants to live like Jesus lived, could defend and support a man who does everything but. Donald Trump is like the universe and God and the spaghetti monster all got their collective little heads together, and asked, “Okay, who can we think of that’s the LEAST Christ-like candidate out there?” And in walks Donald Trump. And they saw that they’d done their job, and they delivered him on a platter… and the people just ate him up. Lock, stock, and barrel.
And the rest of us stand with our mouths open, and say, “Wait. WHAT? What just happened?”
Because it makes absolutely no sense. It makes no sense how otherwise kind, compassionate, and reasonable people could buy what he was selling. It makes no sense how they could overlook what kind of person he is. What kind of person he continues to be. What kind of person he’s proud to be. Because make no mistake. Donald Trump isn’t just a regular flawed human being who’s made some errors in judgment but is doing his best to right his wrongs.
He’s a man who takes great pride in doing, and saying, horrible things. He’s not your savior. He’s the antithesis of a savior… a person who would not only let you drown, but laugh at you while he watches.
So again I have to ask, how can you keep defending him? Defending his actions? His words? His demeanor?
There’s a saying that goes, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” My friends, Donald Trump has shown you who he is. Not just once, but over and over again.
And I’m confused and I’m tired and I’m angry and I’m sad. I want to believe – I have to believe – that there is an explanation. I want to understand, but I’m afraid that there IS no understanding. There is simply no understanding the defense of a man like Donald Trump.
So I think my question is really this:
Do you truly not see the kind of person he is? Or do you simply not care? Because as far as I can tell, at this point in time, those are the only two possible explanations.
I’d like to think people care what kind of person our President is. Or maybe their experience with narcissistic, misogynistic sociopaths is, mercifully, less than my own, which means maybe they are still able to hope that somewhere under that hideous behavior is a decent souls. Nah, folks, we are all born with great potential and lovely souls. Sometimes, tho, a person gets broken – often by parents or other caregivers who are very broken themselves.
Lacking insight, my (very broken) mother warned that, at some point, it doesn’t matter how a person got broken; just that others should be warned. Our current President is such a broken person. There’s no good to be found there, no repentance possible. He’s just a broken, mean man.
Jen, I so appreciate you writing this post. I am very sad about the whole situation, but I’m also scared because I keep thinking about the old saying (paraphrased) “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men should do nothing.” I feel like I’m doing nothing because I don’t want to argue with Trump Supporters. I don’t want to argue at all but I really don’t want to argue with people who are so demonstrably dense that they are supporting the indefensible. I am left feeling like if this situation gets worse then I am also to blame. Many of my social contacts are conservative Christians who support their issues and apparently fail to see all that you talked about above. I don’t feel safe talking to them. I’m so sad. Reading your thoughts helps. Thank you for writing what you do. Always.
I think a hard choice had to be made between a jerk leader who would hopefully put good people in charge of defending the Constitution and upholding conservative issues valuable to a free republic, or a collective of people determined to overturn the founding principles and push values and issues completely opposed to my values. Like wow, if we had to hold our nose and pick HIM, that says a lot about how much worse of an option we felt the other candidate was. I think Trump became the Republican candidate because there were so many fantastic primary candidates and our votes were all spread thin.
Do you still support and defend him now that he has shown he isn’t picking competant people and doesn’t stand for traditional conservative values of fiscal conservatism or strong ties with our allies?
Although I don’t share your opinions I completely understand and respect your reasoning above. I’m sincerely curious, what do you think of the situation now? And if you are able to say, what would you like to happen in the next presidential election?