And if Biden wins …

What should the majority of Americans do should Joe Biden win the presidency in two weeks with the supporters of President Trump to reclaim a United States of America? According to Russ Joseph’s “A Radical Proposal for Dealing with Trump Supporters After Biden Wins,” published last week in medium.com, put aside differences and reach out to them.

It’s understandable and high-minded. But it isn’t very smart, because it ignores recent history.

What folks might not understand or appreciate is the depth of animosity of Trump supporters toward anyone who disagrees — and not only that but that such animosity against “liberals” has been percolating for decades before he came on the scene (I began noticing it way back in 1980, in “Christian” media). Even then, if you knew where to look, you could hear broadsides against the government, the media, the Democratic Party, the “deep state” et al. Today that list has been extended to Black Lives Matter supporters and Antifa activists, the latter of which Trump has accused of burning down city neighborhoods (though in fact it’s been pro-Trump forces causing the riots).

These were the folks who wanted Bill Clinton strung up — for the “crime” of getting elected president — and helped to spread salacious rumors about his sex life. These are the folks who questioned whether Barack Obama was actually born in this country and have referred to his wife Michelle as “he.” And those are just off the top of my head.

Clearly, we’re not dealing with a full deck here. Such folks have forfeited any right to power or authority and ought not to be brought back anytime soon — if ever — because their intent always was, and apparently still is, division.

Joseph tried to make parallels to post-Nazi Germany and Japan after World War II. The difference is that those nations not only recognized where they went wrong but at least made some effort to change their ways and responded when former enemies reached out to them, and both nations are allies today, in large part due to different leadership. Not so here, especially with pro-Trump militia members recently plotting to kidnap governors in two states and try them for “treason” due to their actions to combat COVID-19, linked to the complaint that the only alternative to Trump is “communism.”

Anyway, a better example would be ancient Israel under Roman rule. The Jewish people of that day deeply resented Rome and sought a Messiah who would overthrow it similar to what happened a century earlier when Greece occupied — the impetus for the holiday of Hanukkah — and Jesus became that person (one reason He never volunteered that he was the true Messiah was because the term had political implications that He wanted to avoid). After His ascension, however, that resentment still lingered, which is likely why the Apostle Paul, in Romans 13, instructed the early church, which of course was heavily Jewish, to pray for those in authority — to save itself from bitterness. Eventually, but not right away, the Roman Empire ended up not only conquered but destroyed from within.

Joseph mentioned that “I ... hope you’ll join me and the rest of the Democrats, Independents and Never-Trumpers as we forge a relationship with Trump supporters.”

That simply will not happen, as no relationship is possible or even practical. We can do the “love” thing all we want, but in the Greek, true “love” is synonymous with justice, which often demands confrontation — which they’ve always tried to avoid.

Best to leave them alone otherwise.

A ‘Hail Mary’ pass

You may have heard of the story in the New York Post last week about a new twist on the old, debunked story that Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter was trading on his father’s name while being on the board of an energy company in Ukraine. (I won’t get into the fabrications here.) You should know, however, that the story has already been proven unreliable, with the author(s) withholding his/her/their name(s) because it couldn’t be independently verified — and it turns out the former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, now serving as personal lawyer to President Trump, planted the story as per Russian spies.

That said, this qualifies as a desperation move from pro-Trump media to find a way to take down Biden just weeks before the election. And it won’t work.

Reason?  This election is less a referendum on Biden’s fitness for office than Trump’s failure to govern properly. Unfortunately, Trump supporters aren’t interested in governing, only in power, and that’s been his, and their, downfall from day one.

Of late they’ve done their best to try to marginalize those they don’t agree with as, say, “radical left” or even the old, played-out cliché “communists” for standing up for justice.

You see, for some people the idea of “equality” is a threat, which to me is a tragedy but which is also why Trump is actually popular with his crowd. But the COVID-19 pandemic and especially the Black Lives Matter protests that took place over the summer discombobulated that hegemony and left him with little to work with because the nation had real problems that needed to be addressed.

In other words, he was exposed. And with even parts of his base, including some evangelical Christians, eroding, drastic measures were deemed necessary — thus the story about Hunter and Joe Biden’s alleged corruption.

The last time Trump wanted Joe Biden investigated, it got him impeached — more accurately, he tried to strongarm the president of Ukraine into announcing an investigation — because he feared Biden. And with Biden’s willingness to build a broad-based coalition, from far-left activists to disaffected conservative Republicans, he had good reason to fear.

I’d say that pass is incomplete or intercepted.

Thoughts on President Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis

During the current COVID-19 pandemic a number of people I know often wondered what would happen if President Trump ever tested positive for the coronavirus.

We’re about to find out, since it was announced last night that he, First Lady Melania and other members of the White House’s inner circle have done so and are now in a mandatory two-week quarantine (and thus won’t be campaigning).

To those of us who admittedly don’t like Trump, this appears to be poetic justice. Since its discovery stateside in January of this year (and he later admitted that he understood the next month just how bad it would be but kept silent because he didn’t want to cause a panic), he has sought to downplay its effects — perhaps in the hope that what his supporters call economic “sabotage” would be minimized. Later, while visiting factories and holding rallies, he refused to wear a mask out of concern that doing so would make him look weak.

He may not realize that he isn’t God and that if you have to pump yourself up as “strong” you’re already weak — not just in the face of COVID-19 but also in his desire to humiliate his opponents.

And this is where I must speak out. If you ask people to join in prayer that the president recovers but not that he changes his ways, your prayer might fall on deaf ears. Understand that he got elected and remains popular with his base due to his bad attitude, and it’s that attitude that got him into this predicament in the first place.

Perhaps Trump’s diagnosis is thus the result of divine discipline — not for Trump per se, since I don’t believe that he’s a true Christian, but for many of his supporters who are believers. There are consequences to actions or the lack thereof which affect others, and now it’s apparently come back to haunt him. Repentance is in order, but I’m not counting on that happening.