Trump. Can he triumph? Possibly?

 

 

 

Comments.    Considerations.     Questions.

                

               by Kenneth Bagnell

             

  

 

    Not long ago Donald Trump gave us this; “It is better to live one day as a lion than a hundred years as a sheep.” Really?  We the people are all sheep. The Trump was asked about it and replied: “It’s a good quote.” He quotes a father of Fascism and it doesn’t matter? No wonder a senior commentator on CNN put it a bit coarsely but truly: “Most of what he says is total crap. Why, why do people take him seriously?” Good question.

     All credible Presidential candidates have caught on to his pretentious and hollow ambitions. One of those candidates, Martin O’Malley — former Maryland Governor — had this to say: “When Donald Trump says things like ‘let’s issue an ID card for all Muslims Americans’ that’s not bringing people together… that’s making a Fascist appeal.” I wonder who else should be carded?  Maybe all trade unionists.

    But there’s a growing constituency of doubters who are becoming deeper doubters and thereby worriers as the days go by. One, given history, is The American Rabbinical Public Affairs Committee, backed by countless supporters. “We are hoping thousands of people support our protest. We’re going to be the antidote, we believe, to what Trump espouses,” says Rabbi David Paskin, a clergyman from Florida and one of the group’s creators. Nonetheless in recent days there’s been a surge of anxiety in the Jewish community, much of it having to do with utterances by Donald Trump. In fact in almost all the credible media outlets, Trump is covered but not positively.

   For example, not long ago, the respected Atlantic wrote this: “Donald Trump is immodest, arrogant, foul-mouthed, money obsessed and until recently pro-choice. By conventional standards evangelical Christians should despise him.” That’s correct but the evangelicals seem to support him strongly. A mystery.  Why should this be? In part, I believe the evangelical community, much of it not well off (except those preachers with the private planes!) see Trump as an enforcer who will build more and bigger prisons plus of course the high brick wall to keep foreigners out.) Hence at a recent Trump rally, 20,000 evangelical people attended, all leaving confident things were in good hands.

        As for the broad but crucial political issues, I can’t see a thing in his platform touching on the desperate need of refugees.  Not a word. So how can his Christian supporters, mainly evangelicals, support a man who overlooks, dismisses or deliberately discards the values spoken by Christ and the Scriptures. Yet despite all this he still trumpets being a Christian. He even has the gall to designate a church when it wasn’t his. He claimed he was a member of the upscale Marble Collegiate in New York, where I once interviewed the famed “positive thinker”, Norman Vincent Peale. (The church promptly announced he’s not a member, nor is he involved in any way. He lied to millions. )

      A month or so ago, in building my research file,   I came upon a reference to a book published in 1987, written (it says) by Trump, a biography: The Art of The Deal. The article in which it’s mentioned has a very bold title: “Donald Trump, Evangelical Scam Artist”. (That’s very nervy and I expect the publishers lawyers sweated before passing on it. “Trump is a lot of things,” the writer says “but stupid isn’t one of them. He’s clearly determined that the only way to win the Republican nomination was through an appeal to the conservative evangelical vote.        

         What of Trump’s relationship with the Jewish community? Just a day or two ago, Israel’s respected paper, Haaritz, ran an article with an interesting title: “Can Jews learn to stop worrying and love Donald Trump?”  The first part I hope for. The article reports that Trump is very soon to speak in Washington to a Jewish audience of 18,000, all natural supporters of the state of Israel. As the Haaritz journalist puts it: “As the countdown to the opening curtain today, March 20, ticks down, the ominous atmosphere at Trump events and the way in which Trump is seen as fanning the flames of bigotry deeply troubles Jews on the right and the left. An unqualified reception for Trump is far from given. In the not distant past he spoke to Jewish business leaders and has so misjudged his audience that he’s reported to have said this to the audience: “Stupidity, you want to give me money?” Then he added “You’re not going to support me because I don’t want your money.”  This graceless crudity was an outright insult to many of the sincere and respected Jewish leaders. Little wonder that the paper put this heading over the article: “One Huge Mistake. Donald Trump just delivered an anti-semitic speech to a Jewish coalition.” Can you believe it?

   It so shocked me I put in a call to a very respected rabbi in Toronto, Erwin Schild, a longtime friend who just celebrated his 96^th birthday. (He and I were colleagues years ago on the Christian-Jewish dialogue and Erwin is a member of The Order of Canada.) I asked for his response to this coarse and vulgar attitude from a man who wants to be the President of the United States. Here’s Rabbi Schild’s entire written response. (I can see him smiling slightly as he wrote it):  “There is a Jewish proverb that roughly translated says, ‘If you need the thief cut him loose from the gallows.’ I take this not as a moral maxim, but as an observation of what people often seem to do. I suppose it is human to occasionally have ‘sublinear’ wishes that our ethical principles ought to reject as wrong and unworthy. Let us not envy those whose weaker moral scruples allow them to listen to political siren songs that resonate with the lowest chords of their wish orchestra. Leaders of people that have endured prejudice, homelessness, expulsion, exclusion cannot possibly endorse the Trump candidacy. Never again means never again for anyone.” Thank you, Erwin.

   

 

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