Since at least 2016, Leftists have been fond of calling Trumpism a cult. This label gained traction when the Q Anon prank bamboozled BoomerCons, and even more so after January 6 of last year.
We all know the Death Cult’s penchant for projection. But sometimes the rule “it takes one to know one” takes precedence. What we’ve seen since the FBI’s Bolshevik style raid on Trump’s house is a groundswell of Conservatives striving to prove the Lefties right.
Consider this comment thread from that post, which I present not to roast anyone, but as an occasion for spiritual instruction.
Reader Hardwicke Benthow comments:
“In the coming months, the DOJ will announce with great fanfare that Trump had classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.”
I doubt it. Eric Trump publicly announced that despite the FBI ordering them to shut off the security cameras at Mar-a-Lago, they left them recording and caught the FBI “acting improperly” on camera. He made the announcement as insurance: now that the FBI knows everything they did is on tape, they don’t dare claim to have found anything because they know the recordings exist and will prove them liars.
It’s already majorly backfiring on the FBI. Even scum like Andrew Cuomo are calling them out for it (not due to any moral qualms, but because they realize that the raid severely damages their own cause and puts Trump in a safer position than ever before as far as prosecution and public smearing are concerned).
https://twitter.com/andrewcuomo/status/1556990308424028163
They already tried to frame Trump for Russian collusion, inciting an insurrection, and various other bogus charges. Yet they have consistently failed to harm him, despite creating multiple elaborate schemes involving fake evidence to take him down. Every time they try, he comes out of it smelling like roses and they expose more of their own corruption. What are the odds of this consistently happening again and again? Isn’t it entirely possible that there’s something providential about all of this? That divine intervention is making things turn out differently than they would under normal circumstances? That perhaps Trump, as flawed as he is, is appointed for a purpose that cannot fail even if he himself fails from time to time (as was Samson, who failed and yet ultimately succeeded in doing what he was appointed to do)?
Even the 2020 election theft had the side-effect of exposing government corruption on a level that even most of the awake couldn’t see before and exposing which supposed allies can’t be trusted and need to be gotten rid of so that Trump or some other patriotic future president can get things done without having his hands tied by RINOs like Trump did in his first term.
This could very well be playing out before our very eyes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_85VrWHQ-fo
Draining the swamp was never going to get rid of the swamp creatures in and of itself. It’s just the first step. The swamp has been drained. The swamp creatures are all still there, but without the water, there’s no place for them to hide any more. That makes them more vicious and desperate to employ every tooth and claw at their disposal, but it also means that they’re in a weaker position than ever before. Many of the Soviet Union’s most tyrannical measures were instituted not when it was at its strongest, but when it was starting to fall. Tyrants becoming more tyrannical is usually a sign that they are desperate to hold on to power that is slipping away.
My first reply:
Everything you just wrote is the diametric opposite of reality. The FBI does not care if they were caught on tape with their hands in the cookie jar. Even if such a tape exists, the MSM will bury it. Thinking it will protect Trump in court ignores the fact that similarly solid evidence didn’t keep the courts from aiding the coup against him.
As for Trump’s loyalty, tell that to the hundreds of his supporters imprisoned in his name for January 6. He could have pardoned them before leaving office but left them to rot. Instead, he released thousands of black felons onto the streets.
If the swamp couldn’t touch him, Trump would still be president right now. What may be providential is that he’s not.
His first response:
“As for Trump’s loyalty, tell that to the hundreds of his supporters imprisoned in his name for January 6. He could have pardoned them before leaving office but left them to rot.”
Pardoning them would have removed even the limited Republican Congressional and Senate support that he had during his impeachment trial, which was already barely enough to prevent him from being convicted. He would have been convicted in his impeachment and sent to jail for inciting an insurrection. The intelligence agencies would have tracked down thousands of other Trump supporters who were at the January 6 rally (using cell phone data) to arrest in retaliation for the ones that would have been pardoned. It would have been a suicide move; sometimes it’s necessary to live to fight another day.
My second reply:
That’s the problem with parroting talking points you hear online without stopping to think first. If you had, you’d have seen how the argument negates itself.
If a system is corrupt enough to tell the President “We’re illegally imprisoning and torturing these 300 people, and if you pardon them, we’ll imprison you and thousands more,” it is too corrupt to be bargained with. There are no checks to prevent it from prosecuting the President and his followers anyway.
Which is what we are seeing happen now. The FBI raided an ex-president’s home. Then they stopped a sitting congressman in transit and seized his phone. Leftist influencers are now calling for ordinary Trump voters to be arrested and crushed and their children orphaned. Who’s going to stop them? The same Republicans who threatened to convict Trump if he’d pardoned those same people?
The day the system proved itself illegitimate was the day Trump should have stood and fought (peacefully). Running to fight another day turned into just running. Now he’ll be jailed anyway. And so will many of his supporters.
Defending him now requires the same rationalization battered wives use to justify their abuse. It serves no one.
His second response:
“Now he’ll be jailed anyway. And so will many of his supporters.”
The surface-level events would seem to indicate the likelihood of that happening, but I still believe that there is something more at play. I have experienced many events in my own life that I believe to be miraculous; not in a blatantly supernatural way like the parting the Red Sea, but events coming together for good in a perfect way that is too unlikely – and too frequent – for me to believe them to be anything less than the hand of God. And I see the same types of patterns in the events of the last few years.
For instance, the recent repeal of Roe v. Wade would not have occurred if Ruth Bader Ginsberg were still on the Supreme Court, nor if she had been replaced with someone picked by Joe Biden. And she died just in the nick of time to be replaced with Amy Coney Barrett. Due to the tricky and contentious nature of the appointment process, it is very possible that if she had died only weeks or perhaps even days later, the process to replace her would have been been dragged out or postponed until Biden was in office (much like how Obama’s Supreme Court pick Merrick Garland didn’t make it onto the court and Neil Gorsuch was appointed instead). So the timing of her death was just as if she was mercifully allowed the maximum time possible to live (and therefore have the opportunity to repent of her sins and seek salvation) that would not result in her living long enough to prevent this year’s repeal of Roe v. Wade. Mere chance? Maybe. But I suspect otherwise.
Likewise, many incidents surrounding Trump bear what appear to me to be signs of Providence. For that reason, I am more optimistic than you regarding the events of the upcoming years and Trump’s role in them, despite his many flaws (God can, and often does, use the most foolish things to confound the wise).
Of course, it is entirely possible that I am seeing things that aren’t truly there and being betrayed by wishful thinking. I do not believe this to be the case, but I admit that it is a possibility. The one thing that I can say for certain is that time will tell.
My informed conclusion:
I thought it fitting to give my final analysis and theological guidance in a full-fledged post, since many are now struggling with the same spiritual crisis as our brother in Christ Hardwicke.
Contrary to some people’s misconceptions, I don’t use the term “cult” lightly. A defining feature of cult thinking is holding a fixed belief despite that belief’s falsification. When reality contradicts the cultist’s beliefs, he overrules reality.
It shouldn’t be necessary to point out how perilous that kind of delusion is. God gave man a rational soul. Reason is the faculty which tells us if our ideas correspond to reality or not. So a belief contrary to reason cannot be of God.
The main errors we see above are binary thinking and cherry picking. All positive outcomes are attributed to Trump-as-divine-instrument. All negative outcomes are a priori dismissed. This selection bias sets up a false binary in which the only two options are:
- Trump’s political career and its fruits are providential, therefore he will survive this current assault an win reelection, or
- Trump’s past successes were all due to mere chance.
But those aren’t the only rational conclusions we can derive from the facts. Maybe Trump’s election was an act of Providence whose chief fruit was overturning Roe v Wade. So now his job is done. The possibility that a divine hand guided Trump up to that point doesn’t dictate that he continues to enjoy providential guidance indefinitely.
Trump’s betrayal of his most ardent supporters, a grave failure of leadership, would indicate a loss of the Mandate of Heaven.
And on the flip side, implying that Trump is somehow necessary to achieve God’s plan verges on idolatry. It also requires more cherry picking. One could argue that Merrick Garland’s denial of a SCOTUS seat was, more than Trump, the work of Mitch McConnell. Roe was overturned after Trump was deposed, but McConnell is still in office. Why not single him out as a providential figure?
Or Clarence Thomas?
Or heck, Joe Biden?
Never forget that God is able to raise up sons to Abraham from base stones, and our hope should rest in the new and greater Son of Abraham, Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Might Trump escape indictment and incarceration to run and win again? We can’t rule that scenario out, because these are strange times when the impossible happens regularly.
But reason sets the odds of Trump emerging unscathed as an interplanetary long shot.
And that’s OK. Because if Trumpism is of God, no one can stop it. Nor does it need internet cheerleaders.
But if it’s not providential – or not providential anymore – we’d best discern that and comport our veneration accordingly.
Because cultism can arise from occultism: a disordered desire to control matters beyond our station.
The Qultism on display in some circles smacks of a desperate bid for the illusion of control from people shaken out of their complacency by their world flying apart at the seams. “Patriots in charge!”
Peace, brothers.
You are not in control.
It’s not your burden to be.
All authority in Heaven and Earth is given to Jesus Christ.
Be still, and know that He is God.
For more help living your faith in a disordered world, read this.
“Maybe Trump’s election was an act of Providence whose chief fruit was overturning Roe v Wade. So now his job is done. The possibility that a divine hand guided Trump up to that point doesn’t dictate that he continues to enjoy providential guidance indefinitely.”
True. I don’t expect him, or anyone, to enjoy providential help forever.
George Washington survived so many things that should have killed him that I am very strongly inclined to beleived that he was under divine protection.
One of these many incidents was this one that Washington wrote about in a letter to his brother on July 18, 1755:
“Dear Jack: As I have heard since my arriv’l at this place, a circumstantial acct. of my death and dying speech, I take this early oppertunity of contradicting both, and of assuring you that I now exist and appear in the land of the living by the miraculous care of Providence, that protected me beyond all human expectation; I had 4 Bullets through my Coat, and two Horses shot under me, and yet escaped unhurt.”
That was by no means the only one. He survived and succedded in many other unlikely circumstances as well (there were multiple possible miracles on the night that he crossed the Delaware alone), and even survived tuberculosis, dysentery, pneumonia, malaria, smallpox, and diphtheria in a time when even one of those alone could prove deadly.
Yet he eventually died due to a sudden-onset throat illness and/or the bloodletting that his doctors prescribed for it. His work here was done.
Abraham Lincoln survived multiple assassination attempts and other perils long enough to prevent America from splitting into two countries and to end the institution of slavery, but then was shot dead very shortly afterward. No one’s time lasts forever, even those divinely appointed to important tasks (a I believe that both Washington and Lincoln likely were).
However, I am inclined to believe, based on the pattern of events of the past two years, that Trump still has a further role to play. I could be wrong. But that is what the events seem, by my inferences, to indicate. As soon as the first plot was hatched against him years ago, a pattern emerged that resembles nothing so much as a Road Runner cartoon, with the schemers repeatedly setting up elaborate traps to take Trump down once and for all, and instead taking metaphorical anvils to the tops of their own heads (on a literal level, the consequence is more and more of their corruption and dishonesty being publically exposed each time, while Trump remains free). This pattern did not end when he left office, but has continued since then. Just look at how the “surprise witness” Cassidy Hutchinson turned out, for a very recent example.
Can I say definitively that the recent FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago will end the same way? No. But there are already indicators that it’s not unlikely. Watch Merrick Garland’s public statement afterward and take note of his twitchy, nervous appearance. Read Andrew Cuomo’s tweet in which he expresses his fear of how badly the raid could damage the cause of taking Trump down. These are not the behaviors of confident people who have just won a victory, but of worried people who fear that they have just taken a giant misstep.
“And on the flip side, implying that Trump is somehow necessary to achieve God’s plan verges on idolatry.”
I did not and do not imply that Trump is necessary to achieve God’s plan. God can choose anyone at any time. But for whatever reason, He often does choose particular people for particular purposes. Sometimes, He abandons them for certain failings or sins, but other times sticks with them even after severe failings.
For example, God decided to take the Kingdom away from King Saul after his first instance of disobedience (offering a sacrifice too early), yet stuck with King David not only after the Bathsheba/Uriah adultery and murder incident, but also the incident in which he broke Exodus 30:12 (a commandment that if a census is ever to be taken of the Israelites, each Israelite numbered must give a money offering as a ransom for his soul, lest they all be punished by a plague) by having a census of Israel taken without taking offerings, which resulted in the plague deaths of 70,000 Israelites.
This is not to imply that Trump will receive the level of divine favor that David did (the level of favor David received, considering the magnitude of his sins, is something very rare and special). It is merely to point out that while God can use anyone at any time, He sometimes chooses to stick with a particular person for a particular purpose, even if that person is guilty of severe failures. And of course, sometimes He doesn’t and chooses a replacement instead. It depends and is at His discretion.
“One could argue that Merrick Garland’s denial of a SCOTUS seat was, more than Trump, the work of Mitch McConnell.”
I brought up Merrick Garland not as an example of anything that Trump was responsible for, but specifically and purely as an example of what could have happened if Ruth Bader Ginsberg had died later than she did. My point is that Ginsberg’s death, if even a little later, could have resulted in her replacement being chosen by Biden rather than Trump, like what had happened in the earlier Garland/Gorsuch incident.
Amy Coney Barrett was sworn in on October 27, 2020, a mere one week before the 2020 election (November 3, 2020), due to the time that it took to put her through the various processes necessary for her to become a Supreme Court Justice. If Ruth Bader Ginsberg had died approximately one week later, it is very likely that Barrett would not have been sworn in yet when the election had happened. If that had happened, Trump’s stance that the election had been stolen and the resulting political turmoil could very well have been used as an excuse to scrap Barrett’s confirmation process and to instead wait until Biden was in office to pick Ginsberg’s replacement. Had this happened, Roe v. Wade would still be in effect.
“Roe was overturned after Trump was deposed, but McConnell is still in office. Why not single him out as a providential figure?
Or Clarence Thomas?
Or heck, Joe Biden?”
If this is in response to what I wrote about Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Amy Coney Barrett, please re-read what I wrote more carefully. Here is the paragraph in question:
“For instance, the recent repeal of Roe v. Wade would not have occurred if Ruth Bader Ginsberg were still on the Supreme Court, nor if she had been replaced with someone picked by Joe Biden. And she died just in the nick of time to be replaced with Amy Coney Barrett. Due to the tricky and contentious nature of the appointment process, it is very possible that if she had died only weeks or perhaps even days later, the process to replace her would have been been dragged out or postponed until Biden was in office (much like how Obama’s Supreme Court pick Merrick Garland didn’t make it onto the court and Neil Gorsuch was appointed instead). So the timing of her death was just as if she was mercifully allowed the maximum time possible to live (and therefore have the opportunity to repent of her sins and seek salvation) that would not result in her living long enough to prevent this year’s repeal of Roe v. Wade. Mere chance? Maybe. But I suspect otherwise.”
I meant this paragraph as a specific explanation of the type of patterns of events that I interpret as likely to be signs of divine Providence (hence the “for instance” at the beginning). I used it because it was the most vivid and easily understood example that came to mind. I did not credit Trump for the seemingly providential timing of Ginsberg’s death (something that he could have had no effect on unless he had her assassinated, which I doubt).
In the paragraph following that one, I wrote:
“Likewise, many incidents surrounding Trump bear what appear to me to be signs of Providence. For that reason, I am more optimistic than you regarding the events of the upcoming years and Trump’s role in them, despite his many flaws (God can, and often does, use the most foolish things to confound the wise).”
The use of “likewise” here was meant to indicate that JUST AS I saw the signs of divine Providence in the timing of Ruth Bader Gisberg’s death, I ALSO (seperately) saw signs of Providence in many incidents involving Trump. I neither said nor meant that the timing of Ginsberg’s death or the repeal of Roe v. Wade were due to Trump or that Trump was especially instrumental in them compared to other people involved; I didn’t even mention Trump once in the Ginsberg paragraph.
Regarding Clarence Thomas and Joe Biden, they may very well be providential figures (although in Biden’s case, not in the typical way one would use that phrase). Thomas was instrumental in repealing Roe v. Wade, has been involved in other important legal decisions in which he almost always rules correctly, and may yet be involved in more. He has consistently been a blessing to this country for decades.
As for Biden, as terrible as he is, our current situation would be much worse if the current president was instead a wicked but charming, charismatic, and popular person (like Obama was). Instead, they’re stuck with Biden, a humiliating albatross around their necks. His supporters support him not for any particularly desirable individual traits, but merely because he’s on “their team”. Pretending that he’s not a dementia-ridden puppet is an “Emperor’s New Clothes”-style farce, and it’s painfully (or hilariously, depending on one’s appetite for gallows humor) obvious to any who have eyes to see.
As you put it in your previous blog post:
“For Trump did bear fruit. By blundering into Washington and presenting the regime with a real threat, he forced them to drop their kabuki theater act. The political class and their toadies in the media had already been killing their own credibility every day of the Trump admin. Sending federal agents to toss an ex-president’s home finished off the last of the faith many folks had in the system.”
Biden is, from a different angle and in a different way than Trump, also causing (obliviously on his part, of course) more people to wake up to how corrupt and farcical our current govermnent is. Maybe the fact that he, rather than a charismatic and popular type, is in the Oval Office is indeed providential for how this situation aids in awakening* people to our current reality.
(*Awakening is the key word here, at least according to how I read the signs of the times. I believe that America is approximately where Nineveh was when Jonah was sent to it (on the verge of destruction but with the opportunity for mercy and a second chance), and that the events of the last few years and likely the upcoming few as well are meant to jar a once-sleeping public into wakefulness about the amount of wickedness infesting our government and the country as a whole, thereby forcing every person into the position of having to consciously choose the side of either good or evil; the fate of this country resting on whether enough choose correctly.)
And of course Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s refusal to step down to be replaced during Obama’s presidency (as he requested her to do) could very well be providential as well. Had she done so, Roe v. Wade would likely still be in effect. But her arrogance wouldn’t let her step down (just as the Pharaoh’s hard-heartedness wouldn’t let him let the Israelites go).
“And that’s OK. Because if Trumpism is of God, no one can stop it. Nor does it need internet cheerleaders.
But if it’s not providential – or not providential anymore – we’d best discern that and comport our veneration accordingly.”
True. I do believe it is premature at this point in time to classify Trump’s story as a tragedy when we haven’t seen the ending, but as I put it in my last comment on your previous post, “The one thing that I can say for certain is that time will tell.” Sooner or later, events will make whatever the truth of the matter is more clear.
“Never forget that God is able to raise up sons to Abraham from base stones, and our hope should rest in the new and greater Son of Abraham, Our Lord Jesus Christ.”
I agree.
So would Trump himself, for that matter.
“Our country needs a savior right now. Our country has a savior. And It’s not me. It’s someone much higher up than me. Much higher up. The life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ forever changed the world. It’s impossible to think of the life of our own country without the influence of His example and His teachings. Our miraculous founding, overcoming civil war, abolishing slavery, defeating communism and fascism, reaching boundless heights of science and discovery. None of this could have ever happened without Jesus Christ and His followers and His church – none of it. We have to remember that Jesus Christ is the ultimate source of our strength and our hope, here and everywhere and for all time.” – Donald J. Trump, December 19, 2021
Thank you for being a good sport, and for continuing to dialogue.
“Trump’s betrayal of his most ardent supporters, a grave failure of leadership, would indicate a loss of the Mandate of Heaven.”
I can only speak for myself, but that is when he lost me. The Qult, as you call it, can torture language and logic all they want to rationalize this, but it’s betrayal, pure and simple. No good and decent man would have done this in the face of what Trump stood against.
If he was smart enough to be 10 steps ahead of the Deep State, or play the imaginary 4D chess at master level, as the Qultists frequently claim, he would have easily been able to predict the results of this betrayal.
Your comment highlights the contradiction at the center of the Trump personality cult. Explain the unlikelihood of his reelection, and they proclaim he’s the Anointed One chosen by Heaven. Point out that he’s horrible at governing, and they’ll project his many unforced errors onto the invincible Deep State.
I find it hard to believe God would bless this country, given how it performs silent mass murder of the unborn and the rampant hedonism. It’d take a miracle to turn things, like a second Great Awakening around but I’m not seeing that happening (Harvest America was a blip in the 2010s and… that was it).
We deserve the Sodom and Gomorrah – or the Chorazin and Capernaum – treatment without a doubt. Because for all the Death Cult’s enormities, they don’t bear most of the blame for Clown World. The pied pipers who created diversions away from effective resistance, and the normies who followed them, have the greater sin.
That said, there are signs that God, in His unfathomable mercy, is offering us one more chance. The Roe v Wade reversal and the rise in religiosity among Zoomers are hopeful indicators.