Since at least 2016, Leftists have been fond of calling Trumpism a cult. This label gained traction when the Q Anon prank bamboozled BoomerCons, and even more so after January 6 of last year.
We all know the Death Cult’s penchant for projection. But sometimes the rule “it takes one to know one” takes precedence. What we’ve seen since the FBI’s Bolshevik style raid on Trump’s house is a groundswell of Conservatives striving to prove the Lefties right.
Consider this comment thread from that post, which I present not to roast anyone, but as an occasion for spiritual instruction.
Reader Hardwicke Benthow comments:
“In the coming months, the DOJ will announce with great fanfare that Trump had classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.”
I doubt it. Eric Trump publicly announced that despite the FBI ordering them to shut off the security cameras at Mar-a-Lago, they left them recording and caught the FBI “acting improperly” on camera. He made the announcement as insurance: now that the FBI knows everything they did is on tape, they don’t dare claim to have found anything because they know the recordings exist and will prove them liars.
It’s already majorly backfiring on the FBI. Even scum like Andrew Cuomo are calling them out for it (not due to any moral qualms, but because they realize that the raid severely damages their own cause and puts Trump in a safer position than ever before as far as prosecution and public smearing are concerned).
https://twitter.com/andrewcuomo/status/1556990308424028163
They already tried to frame Trump for Russian collusion, inciting an insurrection, and various other bogus charges. Yet they have consistently failed to harm him, despite creating multiple elaborate schemes involving fake evidence to take him down. Every time they try, he comes out of it smelling like roses and they expose more of their own corruption. What are the odds of this consistently happening again and again? Isn’t it entirely possible that there’s something providential about all of this? That divine intervention is making things turn out differently than they would under normal circumstances? That perhaps Trump, as flawed as he is, is appointed for a purpose that cannot fail even if he himself fails from time to time (as was Samson, who failed and yet ultimately succeeded in doing what he was appointed to do)?
Even the 2020 election theft had the side-effect of exposing government corruption on a level that even most of the awake couldn’t see before and exposing which supposed allies can’t be trusted and need to be gotten rid of so that Trump or some other patriotic future president can get things done without having his hands tied by RINOs like Trump did in his first term.
This could very well be playing out before our very eyes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_85VrWHQ-fo
Draining the swamp was never going to get rid of the swamp creatures in and of itself. It’s just the first step. The swamp has been drained. The swamp creatures are all still there, but without the water, there’s no place for them to hide any more. That makes them more vicious and desperate to employ every tooth and claw at their disposal, but it also means that they’re in a weaker position than ever before. Many of the Soviet Union’s most tyrannical measures were instituted not when it was at its strongest, but when it was starting to fall. Tyrants becoming more tyrannical is usually a sign that they are desperate to hold on to power that is slipping away.
My first reply:
Everything you just wrote is the diametric opposite of reality. The FBI does not care if they were caught on tape with their hands in the cookie jar. Even if such a tape exists, the MSM will bury it. Thinking it will protect Trump in court ignores the fact that similarly solid evidence didn’t keep the courts from aiding the coup against him.
As for Trump’s loyalty, tell that to the hundreds of his supporters imprisoned in his name for January 6. He could have pardoned them before leaving office but left them to rot. Instead, he released thousands of black felons onto the streets.
If the swamp couldn’t touch him, Trump would still be president right now. What may be providential is that he’s not.
His first response:
“As for Trump’s loyalty, tell that to the hundreds of his supporters imprisoned in his name for January 6. He could have pardoned them before leaving office but left them to rot.”
Pardoning them would have removed even the limited Republican Congressional and Senate support that he had during his impeachment trial, which was already barely enough to prevent him from being convicted. He would have been convicted in his impeachment and sent to jail for inciting an insurrection. The intelligence agencies would have tracked down thousands of other Trump supporters who were at the January 6 rally (using cell phone data) to arrest in retaliation for the ones that would have been pardoned. It would have been a suicide move; sometimes it’s necessary to live to fight another day.
My second reply:
That’s the problem with parroting talking points you hear online without stopping to think first. If you had, you’d have seen how the argument negates itself.
If a system is corrupt enough to tell the President “We’re illegally imprisoning and torturing these 300 people, and if you pardon them, we’ll imprison you and thousands more,” it is too corrupt to be bargained with. There are no checks to prevent it from prosecuting the President and his followers anyway.
Which is what we are seeing happen now. The FBI raided an ex-president’s home. Then they stopped a sitting congressman in transit and seized his phone. Leftist influencers are now calling for ordinary Trump voters to be arrested and crushed and their children orphaned. Who’s going to stop them? The same Republicans who threatened to convict Trump if he’d pardoned those same people?
The day the system proved itself illegitimate was the day Trump should have stood and fought (peacefully). Running to fight another day turned into just running. Now he’ll be jailed anyway. And so will many of his supporters.
Defending him now requires the same rationalization battered wives use to justify their abuse. It serves no one.
His second response:
“Now he’ll be jailed anyway. And so will many of his supporters.”
The surface-level events would seem to indicate the likelihood of that happening, but I still believe that there is something more at play. I have experienced many events in my own life that I believe to be miraculous; not in a blatantly supernatural way like the parting the Red Sea, but events coming together for good in a perfect way that is too unlikely – and too frequent – for me to believe them to be anything less than the hand of God. And I see the same types of patterns in the events of the last few years.
For instance, the recent repeal of Roe v. Wade would not have occurred if Ruth Bader Ginsberg were still on the Supreme Court, nor if she had been replaced with someone picked by Joe Biden. And she died just in the nick of time to be replaced with Amy Coney Barrett. Due to the tricky and contentious nature of the appointment process, it is very possible that if she had died only weeks or perhaps even days later, the process to replace her would have been been dragged out or postponed until Biden was in office (much like how Obama’s Supreme Court pick Merrick Garland didn’t make it onto the court and Neil Gorsuch was appointed instead). So the timing of her death was just as if she was mercifully allowed the maximum time possible to live (and therefore have the opportunity to repent of her sins and seek salvation) that would not result in her living long enough to prevent this year’s repeal of Roe v. Wade. Mere chance? Maybe. But I suspect otherwise.
Likewise, many incidents surrounding Trump bear what appear to me to be signs of Providence. For that reason, I am more optimistic than you regarding the events of the upcoming years and Trump’s role in them, despite his many flaws (God can, and often does, use the most foolish things to confound the wise).
Of course, it is entirely possible that I am seeing things that aren’t truly there and being betrayed by wishful thinking. I do not believe this to be the case, but I admit that it is a possibility. The one thing that I can say for certain is that time will tell.
My informed conclusion:
I thought it fitting to give my final analysis and theological guidance in a full-fledged post, since many are now struggling with the same spiritual crisis as our brother in Christ Hardwicke.
Contrary to some people’s misconceptions, I don’t use the term “cult” lightly. A defining feature of cult thinking is holding a fixed belief despite that belief’s falsification. When reality contradicts the cultist’s beliefs, he overrules reality.
It shouldn’t be necessary to point out how perilous that kind of delusion is. God gave man a rational soul. Reason is the faculty which tells us if our ideas correspond to reality or not. So a belief contrary to reason cannot be of God.
The main errors we see above are binary thinking and cherry picking. All positive outcomes are attributed to Trump-as-divine-instrument. All negative outcomes are a priori dismissed. This selection bias sets up a false binary in which the only two options are:
- Trump’s political career and its fruits are providential, therefore he will survive this current assault an win reelection, or
- Trump’s past successes were all due to mere chance.
But those aren’t the only rational conclusions we can derive from the facts. Maybe Trump’s election was an act of Providence whose chief fruit was overturning Roe v Wade. So now his job is done. The possibility that a divine hand guided Trump up to that point doesn’t dictate that he continues to enjoy providential guidance indefinitely.
Trump’s betrayal of his most ardent supporters, a grave failure of leadership, would indicate a loss of the Mandate of Heaven.
And on the flip side, implying that Trump is somehow necessary to achieve God’s plan verges on idolatry. It also requires more cherry picking. One could argue that Merrick Garland’s denial of a SCOTUS seat was, more than Trump, the work of Mitch McConnell. Roe was overturned after Trump was deposed, but McConnell is still in office. Why not single him out as a providential figure?
Or Clarence Thomas?
Or heck, Joe Biden?
Never forget that God is able to raise up sons to Abraham from base stones, and our hope should rest in the new and greater Son of Abraham, Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Might Trump escape indictment and incarceration to run and win again? We can’t rule that scenario out, because these are strange times when the impossible happens regularly.
But reason sets the odds of Trump emerging unscathed as an interplanetary long shot.
And that’s OK. Because if Trumpism is of God, no one can stop it. Nor does it need internet cheerleaders.
But if it’s not providential – or not providential anymore – we’d best discern that and comport our veneration accordingly.
Because cultism can arise from occultism: a disordered desire to control matters beyond our station.
The Qultism on display in some circles smacks of a desperate bid for the illusion of control from people shaken out of their complacency by their world flying apart at the seams. “Patriots in charge!”
Peace, brothers.
You are not in control.
It’s not your burden to be.
All authority in Heaven and Earth is given to Jesus Christ.
Be still, and know that He is God.
For more help living your faith in a disordered world, read this.