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.

The limits of ‘snarl’

Despite what was scheduled to be a debate but became what appeared to be a food fight last night between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden, one thing became clear to me last night: Biden cares about the entire country. Trump does not.

That became clear to me when Trump, per usual, tried to run over not only Biden but also debate moderator Chris Wallace with lies, deflections and personal attacks.

But, as I think we’re beginning to see now, “snarl” can get you only so far.

Trump, significantly down in the polls in major swing states, has nevertheless never made any effort to unite the country, with his attacks on people of color, Muslims and especially “liberals” (which he overstatedly refers to as the “radical left”) being part and parcel of his never-ending campaign strategy.

But with the economy tanking, racial unrest rising and especially the COVID-19 pandemic still raging, he’s shown himself, as Michelle Obama said during the Democratic National Convention last month, “not … up to the job.” For that reason he’s maintained his propensity to lash out at enemies, real or perceived — he has nothing else left.

Last night’s debate sounded like a hot mess in a train wreck, and upon inspection it proved to be such (I stopped watching after 45 minutes). But there was a deeper meaning that you shouldn’t miss: This was a face-off between a bully and a decent person — and the bully is losing as things stand now.

Trying to ‘save face’

It does seem a tad daft that so many people, given the recent rise in COVID-19 cases, especially in “red” states, complain about the use of masks in public places such as stores and restaurants. They demand that they want to live normally and that their freedom is being squashed by left-wing governors more interested in pushing people around and embarrasing President Donald Trump.

But there’s a reason why you see so many people rebelling like spoiled children against directives from governors of “blue” states.

You see, it’s not about their “freedom” per se — it’s an attempt to save face, pardon the pun, on the part of many Trump supporters. Recall that Trump minimized the pandemic from the start in favor of economic prosperity, which he believed was his key to remaining in power, and they’re trying to dodge the reality that they were always wrong.

In other words, part of the reason they support him is to thumb their collective nose at the rest of the world.

Funny, but a life-and-death situation like the current coronavirus isn’t allowing that. And with the recent death of supporter and former presidential candidate Herman Cain, who tested positive for the virus after the Trump rally in June in Tulsa, Okla., the gambit that the pandemic could be dodged simply and clearly failed.

(It should be noted that COVID-19 doesn’t always kill directly — like HIV, it weakens the immune system so that other diseases can finish someone off.)

For the last four decades and even more so since Trump was elected, conservatives’ strategy was about “owning the libs”; now with the pandemic, however, the conservatives are the ones being “owned” and don’t like it. They have two choices — admit defeat or contribute to the culture of selfish immaturity, neither looking particularly promising now because the latter might lead to more deaths.

Trying to maintain the narrative — but losing control of it

It appears that the political populist right is terrified. It thought that it had found its messiah in Donald Trump, but he stumbled out of the gate and is now in free-fall due to his not only mishandling the responsibilities of the White House but also criminal activity. Some folks are even arguing that the response to COVID-19 combined with the Black Lives Matter protests represent a liberal/media conspiracy to besmirch and eventually remove him, not to mention divide the country.

That sentiment is not only ridiculous on its face but also terrifying in the long run.

For openers, the country is already divided and has been for the better part of 60 years — and it was the conservatives, not the “liberals,” who did it for the sake of power. From the “Southern Strategy” of Richard Nixon, whose then-aide Pat Buchanan helped shepherd it through; to the late-1970s rise of Newt Gingrich, who discouraged other Republicans from fraternizing with Democrats on weekends and referring to Democrats as, among other things, “sick”; to the era of Ronald Reagan, who courted Southern racists in 1980s, leading to the endorsement by a leader in the Ku Klux Klan in Georgia; to the smears against Bill and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, they have no authority to complain about anyone else. And that doesn’t even take into account the “religious right” and the rise of right-wing talk radio laced with outlandish conspiracy theories.

That leads to the problem at hand, which is that the right has always sought to impose its views on American society, Rush Limbaugh admitting that he wanted to “control the language.”

The vast majority of us African-Americans Christians understand this, which is why we’ll never be on board. We’re not listening to the denunciations of BLM as Marxist, since the same charge was made against Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil-rights movement. We turned a deaf ear to the same charge against the African National Congress, which did have Marxists in it but only because the ANC and the South African Communist Party were officially underground entities in South Africa under apartheid — and today, the SACP is virtually nowhere to be found. And to this day, the political right has never apologized for its support of the white-minority government.

More to the point, however, we don’t accept that the current crises stem from anything but Trump’s criminal incompetence in dealing with the pandemic and overt racism. Doubling down on rhetoric thus doesn’t help the cause, nor does it solve any problems.

In other words, what the right wants everyone to believe we don’t accept as true, and that’s increasingly the case around the country. It’s why the right, and the Republican Party it controls, is in trouble across the country.

The imminent revival, part 15 — “Black Lives Matter”

I’ve believed and said for quite some time that spiritual revival was coming. And with the recent outpouring of support for the “Black Lives Matter” movement, seven years old but renewed with the death of George Floyd last month in Minneapolis, that time may be at hand.

If that sounds crazy, consider that revival never happens in isolation or among the powerful — it often comes from the streets. And the choking death of Floyd at the hands — or more accurately, under the knee — of now-former officer Derek Chauvin, has galvanized the nation like nothing in a half-century.

Why do I say we’re ripe for revival? Well, the Christian Gospel is designed to speak to “the least of these,” not the high-and-mighty who have no need of things to change.

And this is where the “religious right” and its sympathizers and sycophants have always missed the boat. They believe that once they established themselves as the authority in this country things would turn around morally; the ideology Independent Network Charismatic teaches that it could happen should Christians climb and take over “seven mountains of culture.”

Now, some folks have denounced BLM not simply due to its support for black lives but also those in the LGBTQ community. I’m not feeling that, for the simple reason that they too have been marginalized for similar reasons — and if you really want to go there, most gays have already understood the pain of rejection and, as Philip Yancey wrote in “What’s So Amazing About Grace?”, judgment.

Even the cliché “Hate the sin but love the sinner” comes out as judgment, in large part because such folks haven’t completely dealt with their own sins, which they consider “lesser than.” Of course, in the final analysis it doesn’t work quite like that.

On top of that, Scripture calls Christians to “mourn with those who mourn.” Many of us have refused to do so, saying that we can only when the demonstrators behave properly. That misses the point because, really, in effect we’re telling people not to express their rage and, even more arrogantly, not even to feel it. The irony is that, were such victims known Christians being persecuted for their faith, we would complain that no one is supporting us. (Perhaps our refusal to stand with those who aren’t like us is the reason.)

Anyway, the folks demonstrating in the streets I now see as an invitation from the Holy Spirit to join in and pray, contend and work for justice for all of God’s creation, to “seek the welfare of the city.” If that happens, we’ll have more revival than we know what to do with.