Maggie Haberman of the New York Times has an upcoming book about Trump. In a recently released excerpt, Haberman alleges that while still in office, Trump flushed government documents down a White House toilet to the point of clogging it up to overflow. Trump’s former communications director, Alyssa Farah, says Trump is “terrified” of Haberman’s book coming out…
Watch almost any cop show, and at some point the villain pours illegal substances, like drugs, down the toilet – a last-ditch effort to keep from getting caught before the cops bust down the door.
So when I heard about this latest disgrace of and by this ex-president, I felt several emotions. First, I laughed because it is so ridiculous and childish. But we cannot laugh this man off.
Next I felt very sad about Trump’s ability to pollute the highest office in the land, literally and figuratively.
Finally, sitting in front of this blog, I keep going back to one thing: How do Trump-supporting Christians remain loyal to this man, even to the point of worshiping him in the form of a golden calf? That got the Israelites into a lot of trouble. Just sayin’.
Trump-Christians making Jesus a “poster boy” for white supremacy
Then I remembered a passage in Matthew 15. I’ve shortened it. I think we get specific instruction from Jesus about proper conduct and true faith, as he quotes from the prophet Isaiah.
[Jesus says] Isaiah’s prophecy of you hit the bull’s-eye:
These people make a big show of saying the right thing,
but their heart isn’t in it.
They act like they’re worshiping me,
but they don’t mean it.
They just use me as a cover
for teaching whatever suits their fancy.
So to answer my own question, “Why do Christians keep supporting Trump?” I’ve come to the conclusion that many of the Christians supporting Trump act like they worship Jesus because of the presumed respectability it brings. However, Jesus is just a “cover” for them to do what they want in Jesus’ name – support and/or worship a white supremacist who will keep rich white [men] in material power, and keep other whites in psychic power. It really bothers me to say this.
In truth, many Trump-Christians tolerate and in fact celebrate Trump’s incredibly appalling behavior while simultaneously being blind to their Christian tradition and the Bible they purport to follow.
What constitutes pollution?
Further on in this same passage, from the paraphrase, The Message, Matthew 15:
10-11 Jesus then called the crowd together and said, “Listen, and take this to heart. It’s not what you swallow that pollutes your life, but what you vomit up.”
15 Peter said, “I don’t get it. Put it in plain language.”
16-20 Jesus replied, “You, too? Are you being willfully stupid? Don’t you know that anything that is swallowed works its way through the intestines and is finally defecated? But what comes out of the mouth gets its start in the heart. It’s from the heart that we vomit up evil arguments, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, lies, slander, and cussing. That’s what pollutes. Eating or not eating certain foods, washing or not washing your hands — that’s neither here nor there.”
Our communication is what pollutes our world
So Jesus is speaking to a group of Israelites who must maintain ritual cleansing to eat, for example. Yet, Jesus rejects this and says that what really pollutes comes from what we say, and by extension, what we communicate through our gestures and our written word, and our behavior. The analogy Jesus employs here brings his message home. We know what goes in the sewer from our bodies, but Jesus finds false, misleading, evil arguments, and lies, as major social pollutants. Jesus finds this conduct to be so revolting that he compares it to sewage.
Let’s take a quick inventory of a few polluting offenses from Jesus’ list as they apply to Trump:
False/misleading statements: Trump made 30,573 false or misleading statements in four years. 365 x 4 = Trump spent 1460 days in office. 30573/1460 = 20.94, rounded up to 21.
That means Trump made, on average, 21 lies or false statements a day.
Steve Bannon, the former head of Breitbart News and chief strategist for Donald Trump, summarized the Trump strategy: “The Democrats don’t matter. The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.” Doing this constantly will weary people and cause them to believe that we can’t ever really know the truth.
Evil arguments: What jumps out as the most disturbing is Trump’s devotion to white supremacy and the mythical assertion that he won the 2020 presidential election.
I won’t take the time to expound on these, as I might never finish. But these two evil arguments and their offspring have done an incalculable amount of damage to our American psyche and very nearly resulted in the death of our democracy, and no, I’m not overstating the January 6th Riot.
As the House Committee continues to tease out the truth of what happened in the days before, during, and after the riot, we will continue to be shocked and appalled by how high this treachery went – it will be the words, written and spoken, and the attendant actions, that undo all who were in league with this near coup d’etat.
Slander and making fun of people: Google for these stories – you’ll find scads
As we get to the bottom of this latest fiasco, we may not ever know what incriminating documents were sent to the sewer by the Flusher in Chief. But it is our job as voters and citizens to demand that we get to the truth. Support the House Committee however you can!
As Christians we must demand the highest degree of integrity in our leaders, and I fear we are nearly failing outright at that. The midterm elections of 2022 will indicate who we want to be when we grow up – a great bastion of democracy and equality, or a devolving government headed toward fascism and scapegoating, and far worse.
