I normally try to steer away from politics. I will admit that I am not always successful. I believe that politics can be a serious distraction for Christians from what is the central task of the Christian church, which is to proclaim the gospel to the four corners of the earth and to make disciples of all peoples. If Christians are not careful, politics can take the place of Jesus and his teaching in the hearts and lives of Christians.
I also believe that Christians can exercise a much greater influence in our society by living their lives according to Jesus’ teaching and example than they can by the election of politicians who are purported to be Christians, the legislation of what are supposedly Christian values, and the appointment of judges who will enforce these values. Jesus did not encourage his disciples to become involved in the politics of the day. Rather he urged them to seek first the kingdom of God and its righteousness. We cannot legislate God’s kingdom. Transformed hearts and transformed lives is what causes the kingdom to grow and advance. This is not to say that we should not do as much good as we can in our short lives, including voting for candidates whose lives are genuinely in harmony with Jesus’ teaching and example even though may not be professing Christians and standing for political office ourselves if our lives are also in harmony with his teaching and example. But let us not delude ourselves that in doing so we are bringing in God’s kingdom.
This said, I believe that the President of the United States should have an impeccable moral character and a sterling reputation. He should not have a history of bad faith dealings, unpaid debts, bankruptcies, lawsuits, and shady business practices. He should reflect what is best in the America character and not its worst. He should be honest, not given to lying to the American people, distorting the truth, and misleading them. The President should respect our great Republic’s democratic institutions, not seek to demolish them. His position on key issues should reflect deeply held beliefs, not a cynical attempt to garner the votes of those who do hold such beliefs. The President should seek to unify the nation and not divide it. He should appeal to what is best in the American people and not their worst. The President should put the good of the nation before his personal interests. He should be in no way beholding to foreign powers due to past indiscretions or past, present or future business dealings. A great Republic like the United States deserves a President who meets these high standards and nothing less.
While he has accused the Democrats of stealing the election from him, Donald Trump is busily seeking to steal the election from Democrat Joe Biden. To date there has been no credible evidence of the massive voter fraud that Trump has alleged. The silence of the Pennsylvania state legislators who met with Trump this week suggests that Trump has suborned them into joining a scheme to replace the popularly-elected Pennsylvania electors who are pledged to vote for Biden with electors pledged to vote for him elected by the Pennsylvania state legislature. The exclusion of the Republican leaders of the Pennsylvania legislature from the meeting points to that conclusion since these leaders have stated publicly that they will not seek to undo the certification of the popularly elected electors. One of the Pennsylvania state legislators has filed suit to have the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturn as unconstitutional legislation overwhelming adopted by both Republican and Democratic state legislators permitting an expansion of absentee balloting.
Trump’s statement that he will accept the outcome of the Electoral College vote is not as the media mistakenly think--Trump’s begrudging acceptance of Biden’s victory at the polls. It is far from it. Trump is hoping that this scheme, if it is successful, will encourage other Republican-dominated state legislatures to follow suit and replace popularly elected electors pledged to Biden with Republican state legislature-elected electors pledged to him. This would effectively overthrow democracy in the United States and replace it with a one-party system with Trump as President and party boss, in other words, a dictatorship. It would nullify the votes of millions of American voters and effectively disenfranchise them.
Republican state legislators who need to ask themselves what protection is Trump offering them from an enraged electorate who may decide to take their anger at Trump out on those who aided him in his schemes to steal the election. Has Trump promised them federal troops to patrol the streets outside their homes and offices—twenty-four hour, seven-day-a-week security details to protect them and their families? Or will Trump be Trump, and turn his back on them once they have done his bidding?
What was once the greatest democracy on the planet will be reduced to the status of a banana republic. Is that why American soldiers died in World War I, World War II, the Korean Conflict, the Vietnam War, and the other wars in which the United States has engaged to maintain its freedom—so a New York businessman and reality TV star with an overinflated opinion of himself can strut about like Mussolini and Hitler?
Trump has had his chance at being the President of the United States. While his supporters may choose not to admit it, he blew it. He could have rallied the people of this great Republic and mobilized the nation to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. He could have gone down in history as a President who, confronted by a crisis of international scale, rose to the occasion. Instead he chose to deny the pandemic’s seriousness, made one poor decision after another, and set a bad example for the nation. His lack of empathy for the suffering and the dying has become increasingly evident. He has written off hundreds of thousands of Americans as expendable. His only concern has been his own re-election. It has become an obsession.
Despite what some Americans fear, the United States is not going to turn into a socialist country where the state owns the means of production and runs the economy. The police are not going to be defunded. Legally-owned firearms are not going to be taken away from their owners. Over the next fours years Joe Biden will have a lot of opportunities to fudge it as Trump has had during his presidency. In 2024 there will be another presidential election and Republicans will have an opportunity to field a better candidate than Trump, a candidate who will not rise to his level of incompetence when faced with a major crisis. Anyone who had been observing Trump’s career over the years knows that Trump is not what he tries to sell himself as being. He is not even half of that.
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