By Lafe Tolliver, Esq
Guest Column
It is not just a figure of speech or being in engaged in hyper hyperbole to say that if the American voting public puts Donald Trump back in office, America has truly seen its “better days.”
With Trump sweeping the recent Super Tuesday primaries, that day is closer than you think.
Such an outlandish victory for Donald Trump would clearly be a watershed in American history, that a large portion of the American electorate has made the unprincipled decision that character does not, in fact, matter.
Without reciting a litany of the visible, ribald acts and traits of Trump, suffice it to say that even a cursory reading of his sordid history would or should convince any American voter that Trump has demonstrated, without reasonable doubt, that he is wholly unfit to serve in politics; and much less again to sit in the White House.
What such an election would expose is that over a period of decades the moral fiber of America has atrophied to the point that a person convicted of sexual assault and is facing 91 felony counts, does not cause an outpouring of outrage, embarrassment and anger among American voters.
I postulate that such a lack of angst with the voters is indicative of a moral problem that bespeaks of a loosening of any moral constraints, that in the past, would have quickly doomed the presidential aspirations of any candidate, Democrat or Republican.
If there ever was a reservoir of moral standards that the voter would draw from in regard to assessing the worth of a political candidate, that reservoir is seemingly bone dry.
It is dry from the repeated telling of the sins of Trump to the point of exhaustion for the news viewer that somehow, new stories of his tawdry conduct do not invoke a rebuke from the media or from organizations that are supposedly watchdogs monitoring who is entering the political arena.
It is dry from an American public that, for decades, has seen its attendance at churches and synagogues precipitously decline to the point that one of the main
sources of teaching a moral and ethical code have had their moral influence greatly diminished.
Some may ascribe such a descent into this moral predicament as starting when prayer was taken out of the schools or when the 60’s went amok with, “Do your own thing” or the God is Dead movement, or the disillusionment with the long Vietnam War and the ongoing fight for civil rights, etc…etc.
Whatever event or a cluster of events triggered the idea or belief that the guardrails that held a society together were slipping, something slipped, and it slipped big time!
Into such a vacuum stepped a demagogue, Donald Trump, who can “sniff the air” of discontent within a large segment of the disaffected voting population; and discern that they are angry, bitter and mad at governmental establishments that they believe have forsaken them for “others”.
The “others” theorem allowed Trump to pump it up with the origination of the cockeyed birther theory that former President Obama was not one of “us.”
From that point on, Trump has enjoyed a virtual monopoly in vomiting out lies and half-truths that fed into the angst and paranoia of his base, now called, MAGA…and it was on!
Unless you can discern that the acts of Trump were not accomplished in a vacuum, you will fail to connect the dots that America was falsely set up as a Christian country and that it was specifically endowed with God given blessings solely due to its founders being White European settlers.
The nascent term of Christian Nationalism has no support in Holy Writ but originated in the fervid imaginations of biased historians who wanted to concoct a heavenly seal of approval on their anti-people acts and thus establish a false narrative that America always was and is a morally sound nation.
Too many historical facts belie that notion but suffice to state that the term of Christian Nationalism is on the rise and projects the false image that America is and has been, tongue in cheek, a part of the Holy Trinity.
For the lazy reader, you need to understand that when Jesus walked the earth, he never spoke of establishing a kingdom, being a worldly king or endorsing any political party; and especially so of a political party that champions a man whose character traits are vehemently antithetical to the Gospels. Full stop.
But. Some Americans, fearful of being replaced by those “others” and wanting a champion who would rant and rail against what they perceive as an unjust system, simply shut their eyes and closed their ears to the outrageous acts and statements of Trump, as long as he did their craven bidding.
Such a noxious group of voters could stomach his wretched acts and despicable conduct because he said he was their champion and they voted for a soiled politico who is in love with dictators and desires to be one.
For such voters, his favorable views of such tyrants are of no consequence to them because they are being provided a victory in that Trump is battling for them. He is their vindicator, and he is willing to die on a political cross for their sins.
A Trump victory would plunge America into a veritable swamp of cross currents of what is right and what is wrong and with Trump, ever the grifter, making the most of it. Truly, a race to the bottom.
Contact Lafe Tolliver at tolliver@juno.com