A friend (yes, I still have a few) and I were jawing about the sociopolitical landscape and the striking 180-degree variance in views and values that defines the current political cycle and divides the country. I’ve maintained that while many events are interpreted through the lens of our political beliefs, the gulf cannot be explained by this alone. A great deal can be attributed to ignorance, in the true sense of the word, where information is lacking. In its more typical, pejorative use, it implies a moral judgment that the person so tagged is willfully not seeking knowledge. However, in our current sociopolitical climate, it’s become evident to me that there has been a grave inequity in the distribution of knowledge in my favor, the disparity exacerbated by an induced unwillingness by many to receive even the crumbs of knowledge that manage to fall through the increasingly dense Leftist filter. The following, I contend, well characterizes a significant subset of the vehemently anti-Trump Left. Some pundits have said that Leftists, devoid of God and religion, have adopted the modern progressivism as their religion. The often volatile behavior and inability of those on the far Left (as distinct from true liberals) to rationally discuss and debate issues and events may support this notion. What’s most striking is the disproportionate hatred directed toward the current President. I remember how the Right hated Obama and the Left hated Bush junior with intensity, but those were like spring showers to today’s emotional hurricane. With Trump, the move to oust him began during his campaign, and has continued unabated throughout his administration, employing extraordinary and often ludicrous means. I’m hard pressed to find a single accomplishment of his, and there have been many, extolled in the mainstream media. Conversely, his every word and action has been criticized and/or twisted, even to the point of silliness (I used to say that if Trump declared cancer was bad, the opposition would try to explain its virtue). It’s so bad that friends have unfriended friends, and families have disowned family. Even allowing for policy differences, and I was not a fan of Obama, it’s hard to fathom this degree of acrimony. During my conversation, it hit me: To many disciples of the ideology of progressivism, Trump is literally the anti-Christ.
The Bible, a perennial best-seller now in disrepute in many quarters that I’m finally close to completing as a bucket list item, underscores something that most of us, Christian and non-Christian alike, have known: the claim by believers that Christ “died for our sins.” To paraphrase the ideas of the New Testament, accepting Christ as the son of God and following the rules of behavior as laid out in the Gospel absolves you of sin and paves the way for eternal life. With this as a template, viewing Trump as a mirror image explains a lot. Just about everything the Left perceives as bad, be it COVID, climate change, “systemic” racism and misogyny, whatever, is attributed to Trump (and, by extension, the “deplorable” followers). If you believe this, he is surely evil incarnate. To the progressive Left, he’s become the center, or secular sponge, for most of our current societal ills, just as Christ is defined by Christians as the repository of the cure for all human sin. And thus, removing Trump is seen as a giant step toward resolving those ills. It’s safer, and simpler that digging deep into the real root causes, many of which would reflect negatively on well-intentioned, deeply held beliefs.
The danger of the gulf between belief and reality is that when he’s gone, and the problems remain, as they inevitably must, the havoc will already be done. Because those that constructed the straw man anti-Christ so widely accepted as the new, progressive Gospel will have already moved one giant step closer to the goal—fundamental socialist change—and the road back is a hard one.
NEXT: TRUMP AS HITLER