Strange sympathies

I am scratching my head over statements that begin, “I have been and am still appalled at some of the things Donald Trump says, and I am spiritually repulsed by his attitude and boastfulness”—and then in the middle of the sentence comes the word but, followed by the reason why the appalled and repulsed speaker is voting for him.

These reasons for support of the admittedly unsavory candidate fall into a few main types:

1) At least he doesn’t act like a politician.

2) At least you know where you stand with him.

3) At least he tells the truth.

4) At least he doesn’t pretend to be a Christian.

5) He is the one who will fix our problems.

6) We can’t stand around and watch Hillary or Bernie win.

7) We are choosing a president, not a pastor.

8) Cruz is pompous.

The responses to this list of reasons are not difficult to proffer:

1) Trump is second to no living politician in sleazy campaigning and boasts of his backroom deal-making on both sides of the aisle.

2) Seriously? Is a man to be commended because he scurrilously defames you openly and brashly rather than quietly and timidly?

3) Trump tried to destroy Ben Carson early on with the mantra of the surgeon’s having a “very serious pathological disease” that “cannot be cured,” then channeled Sarah Bernhardt histrionics over Ted Cruz’s alleged shameful treatment of Carson.

4) He does pretend to be a Christian. It was because he was “a strong Christian,” he theorized to CNN, that he was audited by the IRS.

5) If the notion of Trump fixing all our problems is a reference to his supposed mastery of the minutiae of law, government, and foreign affairs, that supposition was imploded in every televised debate.

6) This is a false choice and logical fallacy, ignoring the fact that there are other and better options to H. and B. than Trump.

7) Whether choosing a president or a pastor, wouldn’t we want to pick a virtuous man if one were available? Isn’t the Bible peppered front to back with reasons to prefer the good man over the wicked one? What other conceivable character quality of a man would be important enough to make us sacrifice integrity in order to get it? Knowledge? Trump is a dilettante. Honesty? Trump is unprincipled.

8) If Cruz is rejected and Trump accepted on the grounds of pompousness, then we are truly living at the Mad Hatter’s tea party.

How does one explain these strange sympathies on the part of evangelicals, no less? Fatal attraction? Lust for this world? Desire to be loved? Stockholm syndrome? Christian self-hating syndrome? Moral battle fatigue?

Whether choosing a president or a pastor, wouldn’t we want to pick a virtuous man if one were available?

On Feb. 11, 2014, as a freshman senator eating lunch with his colleagues in the Lyndon B. Johnson chamber on Capitol Hill, Ted Cruz was asked to go along with an order sent down by the Republican leadership. That order was that all 100 members vote (unanimity was necessary) to change the rule from 60 to 50 for the number of senators required to take up the debt-ceiling issue. This cynical ploy would enable the Democratic senators to raise the debt ceiling while the Republicans would not have to get their hands dirty and could accurately tell their constituents they didn’t vote for it. Ted Cruz and only one other senator opposed the scam.

You get an upright man in government, and what do you do? You call him divisive; you say he doesn’t get along with others. You get a candidate who claims to be one of Christ’s, and what do you do? You accuse him of wearing religion on his sleeve. “To what then should I compare the people of this generation, and what are they like? They are like children sitting in the marketplace and calling to one another, ‘We played the flute for you and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not weep’” (Luke 7:31-32).

The one standard for one candidate, the other standard for his opponent. Leniency and tolerance for the ungodly man; arrows shot from the shadows for the better man.

“Yet wisdom is justified by all her children” (Luke 7:35).

Email aseupeterson@wng.org