Many supporters of President Donald Trump became such
precisely because of what they consider his take-no-prisoners, no-nonsense, no
compromise style of “leadership.”
But given yesterday’s threat he made toward North Korea upon
learning about a possible nuclear attack on Guam — he said, off the cuff, that “[it]
will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen” — I’m wondering if
he really understands leadership.
Because there’s quite a difference between “leading” and “driving,”
the latter I refer to as exercising existential authority for its own sake — “because
I say so.” You can and probably need to do that with children, but above a
certain age it gets tiresome.
This becomes dangerous in the spiritual realm as well, with
numerous Christian groups basically on his team for similar reasons. Some
pastors and other leaders, wrongly in my view, have said that America’s pulpits
are being victimized by “weak preaching [against sin]” and need to redouble
their efforts for things to turn around morally.
It’s dangerous because approaching things in that way leads
to not only legalism but also cultural and social isolation. Nobody wants to
deal with people determined to have their way for its own sake, which is why,
despite all the religious right’s time and energy in trying to re-impose “Christian”
values in the public square in the 1980s, doing so proved ineffective. (And
that won’t change, even with redoubled efforts during the Trump Administration — indeed,
perhaps even because of such.)
I haven’t seen any recent polls measuring Trump’s effectiveness
as a leader; they can’t be too high these days, however. Being a jerk may
attract a certain segment of the population but can take you only so far.
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