"The president of the United States disgraced himself and his office."

This paragraph is a problem:

“That the president couldn’t or wouldn’t simply condemn the event’s instigators in direct terms—that he preferred to justify his indecision and so give the impression that he has some sympathy for white supremacists and neo-Nazis—is a scandal for which there is no excuse and no mitigating factor.”

One can condemn two opposing sides without having sympathy for either.

“One can condemn two opposing sides without having sympathy for either.”

Well, one “can” do a lot of things, but that doesn’t make them wise. When one is being regularly questioned about where one’s sympathies lie and one’s sympathies don’t, in fact, actually align with where others are accusing…then it might just be a good idea not to muddy the waters additionally.

The man’s arrogance has made him the most tone-deaf President in history.

[DLCreed]

The man’s arrogance has made him the most tone-deaf President in history.

Oh, I don’t know; his predecessor was pretty tone-deaf and arrogant, too. ;)

Here is his statement (reproduced below, too):

I will dispense for now from discussion of the moral character of the president’s Charlottesville statements. Whether he intended to or not, what he communicated caused racists to rejoice, minorities to weep, and the vast heart of America to mourn. His apologists strain to explain that he didn’t mean what we heard. But what we heard is now the reality, and unless it is addressed by the president as such, with unprecedented candor and strength, there may commence an unraveling of our national fabric.

The leaders of our branches of military service have spoken immediately and forcefully, repudiating the implications of the president’s words. Why? In part because the morale and commitment of our forces—made up and sustained by men and women of all races—could be in the balance. Our allies around the world are stunned and our enemies celebrate; America’s ability to help secure a peaceful and prosperous world is diminished. And who would want to come to the aid of a country they perceive as racist if ever the need were to arise, as it did after 9/11?

In homes across the nation, children are asking their parents what this means. Jews, blacks, Hispanics, Muslims are as much a part of America as whites and Protestants. But today they wonder. Where might this lead? To bitterness and tears, or perhaps to anger and violence?

The potential consequences are severe in the extreme. Accordingly, the president must take remedial action in the extreme. He should address the American people, acknowledge that he was wrong, apologize. State forcefully and unequivocally that racists are 100% to blame for the murder and violence in Charlottesville. Testify that there is no conceivable comparison or moral equivalency between the Nazis—who brutally murdered millions of Jews and who hundreds of thousands of Americans gave their lives to defeat—and the counter-protestors who were outraged to see fools parading the Nazi flag, Nazi armband and Nazi salute. And once and for all, he must definitively repudiate the support of David Duke and his ilk and call for every American to banish racists and haters from any and every association.

This is a defining moment for President Trump. But much more than that, it is a moment that will define America in the hearts of our children. They are watching, our soldiers are watching, the world is watching. Mr. President, act now for the good of the country.

I voted for him in 2012, and I wish he were our President today.

You had people marching, just as in Charlottesville, under the hammer & sickle, and under the swastika, and both sides, just as in Charlottesville, were eager for a fight. All too often, as in Charlottesville, state authorities looked the other way and let them fight it out. Then, as now, too many thought they could deal with the problem by banning weapons instead of by arresting people—I’ve read von Hindenburg’s gun control laws, and the resemblance between that and the 1968 gun control law in the U.S. is striking.

We have a huge advantage over von Hindenburg, however; we know that both sides were hugely murderous. Are we man enough to say “never again” to both sides, and back it up with action? Are we man enough to tell mayors and governors that if they’re not going to shut down rioters and prosecute them, we will evict them from their offices and put them in the graybar hotel? Refusing to protect people from riots is, after all, a federal crime.

Like it or not, I think Trump has a much clearer view of what went on than does the media, sad to say.

On the “both sides” issue (read the transcript of this press conference here):

I think the distinction is between what is true, and what is appropriate. It is true that alt-left protestors were violent and insane in Charlottesville. It is also true that a white supremacist killed a woman, and injured several more. In this context, it probably isn’t prudent, appropriate or productive to blame “both sides.” This could have been a non-issue. My issue with Trump is not the substance of his remarks; its the propriety of those remarks given the context. They demonstrate he is not an effective leader. He’s not demonstrating strategic wisdom.

Strategic wisdom means having the maturity and experience to understand how to tackle a particular situation, given the context. For example:

• This is why you don’t tell an eager Christian grandma in your congregation that John Hagee’s books are “stupid.” You tell her, “I have some serious concerns about his writings, and here’s something that might give you a better perspective …”
• This is also why, when you’re giving a negative performance eval to a state employee who has threatened to file a union greviance against management, you don’t begin by saying, “Billy, you suck. You’re really bad at your job. Just quit and do all of us a favor.” Instead, you say, “Billy, there are a few areas where your performance hasn’t met expectations. We’ve met, as you know, and discussed ways to help you improve, but your performance still hasn’t gotten better. We need to talk about this …”

Trump showed no strategic wisdom in his remarks. He’s angry and combative. He’s a bull in a china closet, and I predict he’ll accomplish very, very little and end up polarizing this country even further. Romney’s brief message illustrates effective leadership, in my opinion. Romney’s statement demonstrated why he is a leader, and Trump is not. As Peggy Noonon wrote:

The public Mr. Trump is not without sentiment and occasional sentimentality, but the deeper wells of a broader love seem not there to draw from. Seven months in, people know they can look to him for a reaction, a statement, an announcement, but not for comfort, inspiration, higher meaning

Trump is exactly what he has always been and always will be unless God saves him. That’s why a bunch of us #nevertrumpers resisted and argued with others about the folly of voting for him.

And yes, we got a SCOTUS Justice out of the deal, but I still think it wasn’t worth it. This is why Christians shouldn’t make deals with devils.

Tyler, freely conceded that Trump has leaden personal skills—how he ever made it in real estate with those habits in Gotham is beyond me—but at a certain point, when two groups come together looking for a fight, both flying the flags of nations that killed millions of innocents, I’m reluctant to give a “corpse pass” to the side that lost the physical fight. Same basic thing as if my son picks a fight and ends up with a black eye—“son, what did you expect?”.

One big place I’d disagree with his statements is about “good people” being there. Well, except for fools, “good people” do not march near a swastika or hammer and sickle, and just as I teach my sons that there comes a time when people assume a physical fight might turn dangerous for them and respond accordingly, I think we all ought to be teaching people that when certain flags come out, your association with those people needs to end.

[JNoël]

DLCreed wrote:

The man’s arrogance has made him the most tone-deaf President in history.

Oh, I don’t know; his predecessor was pretty tone-deaf and arrogant, too. ;)

Oh, I had Mr. Obama fully in mind when I typed that sentence. I stand by it.

http://imgur.com/a/7vB4K

[Bert Perry]

Well, except for fools, “good people” do not march near a swastika or hammer and sickle…

I think we all ought to be teaching people that when certain flags come out, your association with those people needs to end.

While it is true that all human institutions are flawed, some are more flawed than others. Is Nazism more flawed than Communism? If, in the 20th century, the percentage of the planet that was Communist was, instead, Nazi, perhaps more than 90 million people would have been killed as was done so by Communists. Any answer to that question is pure speculation. What we do know is both are fundamentally anti-God/anti-Bible with regards to a proper value of human life. Both, therefore, should be equally condemned by Christians.

I’ve had some email back and forth today about why I’m so anti-Trump.

One of my replies…

I certainly do have a bias, both in favor of conservatism and against scumbags. It’s obvious to me what sort of man DT is, how he has behaved, and how he will continue to behave. I see no reason to give him anything like the benefit of the doubt (for me, he always had very little claim to that, and he smashed what little there was within his first two weeks in office.)

If that’s what “never trumper” means, I’ll wear that tag with enthusiasm. I’m pretty sure every almost every conservative will eventually, or will wish they had.

In the mean time, it might help you to know that I post these things not because I think I’ll win over any Trump supporters. For me, it’s about reminding people that there is a branch of conservatism that was never dazzled by this man and never considered him to represent their values and convictions. This will be very important to the survival of conservatism, and I’m a little bit comforted by taking opportunities now and then to contribute a little toward that end.

It’s also about offering a bit of comfort to the handful of us conservatives who see him this way. I wan’t them to know they are not alone.

Couldn’t agree more Aaron.

I feel I must express a contrary opinion to the blame and scorn against our President, Donald Trump, here and elsewhere. My ultimate premise is the old, biblical first principle of the absolute sovereignty of God and His decree of whatsoever comes to pass. Given that, nothing else makes sense for me regarding this world and the one to come. A paragraph of autobiography may be of help here.

I was born in the early part of the Great Depression into a God-fearing Arminian holiness community of farmers near Berne, IN. My youth was lived under the New Deal, the liberal, socialist, welfare state ideology of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt inherited essentially from Woodrow Wilson of Presbyterian Old Princeton, postmillennial vintage. At the time I was oblivious to what this was, except to say the farmers in our area were against it. A meaningful reprieve from the steady progressivism of the later years was the Ronald Reagan administration in 1980. Unfortunately, Reagan’s conservative ideology soon began to be unraveled by his successors George H. W. “read my lips” Bush, Bill “I never … that woman” Clinton, George W. “compassionate conservatism” Bush and Barak “I am a Christian and you can keep your own doctor” Obama. In 2016 Donald Trump brought the hope that the globalist, statist liberal swamp could be drained by his political, moral, economic and patriotic proposals. What ensued became an intractable lion and skunk fight.

In short, Donald Trump is our duly-elected, divinely-intended president (Rom 13:1). In fact his victory was a near miracle, confounding “in the know” pundits and political tea-leaf-reading and entrail-examining experts. He garnered 60+ million votes, swept the electoral college, and totally fulfilled the “secret will of God” to the last exchange of energy. This assumes that one does not resort to some kind of an open universe suspended on sheer blind irrational chance, caprice, randomness, pure contingency or some form of absolute human free will. But, in the words of the Genevan, good luck with all that.

I am also totally uncomfortable with the language used against Mr. Trump’s words, actions, family and a host of other perceived faults. I hear his assailants using the same terms and attitudes they ascribe to the man himself. For example, the charge that his first comments on the mess in Virginia were racist and should have been more elegant, nuanced, refined, stately, “presidential,” wise and appropriate. Instead his words, while acknowledged as verifiably true, still allegedly were heartless, divisive, polarizing, in favor of white supremacy, neo-Naziism, and the like. This is sentimental nonsense, even if Karl Rove, Charles Krauthammer, George Will and Bill Kristol paraded these things, to say nothing of flaming liberals and other assorted would-be gurus who also parroted the same. As it hath been said, only the Devil and Democrats would think that way. It would be profitable for the president’s opponents to read sources alternative to the current unreliable and unfair media. The facts have been gathered, published and available for all to see.

This is all to conclude that, if true, an ominous shadow is cast over those who say, “Trump is not my president,” or “he is so contemptible and vile as to deserve my support,” and the like. My observation is that it was manifestly not God’s plan to have John McCain or Mitt Romney become president in 2008 and 2012, nor to have Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders or one of the numerous wannabe candidates elected in 2016. It would be a little difficult, I would imagine, to find biblical support for always charging the president as noted. I often wonder how the Never Trump brethren try to fulfill 1 Tim 2:1-3 without blushing, fibbing or giving the Lord a wink for less than heartfelt obedience to His prescription here. Such folk could scarcely want to lecture Christ, Paul, John the Baptist or John Hus for not speaking in diplomatic circumlocution.

I write as a somewhat baffled member of the Church Militant and lawful citizen of the USA. I resonate more with respondent Bert Perry on this issue. As is often said, I am not especially trying to convert people to my viewpoint. The truth is I only wish to bring my experience and understanding into the present civic convulsion that in the opinion of some has for decades been finally honed to a Gillette Blue Blade’s edge of a literal civil war. One Navy Seal noted on Facebook that if President Trump is illegally and somehow forcibly removed from office, there is a multitude of those who have sworn to uphold and protect the Constitution from all enemies, foreign or domestic, that will rise up in physical resistance. I don’t think it will happen, but there is considerable angst over the possibility of a costly resolution of some sort to this civil impasse. Then will Never Trumpers get behind Mike Pence who stands behind President Trump’s policies and decisions? Or will it be déjà vu … according to that renowned wordsmith, Yogi Berra?

I will probably not personally see the end of this protracted and deadly wrangle “between truth and falsehood, ‘twixt that darkness and that light, for the good or evil side.” I will no doubt have transferred my ecclesial letter to the Church Triumphant by then. But I do ponder the civil fate of my greatgrandchildren out of all of this. I sometimes wish I could know the secret, sovereign will of God sometime well ahead of the day after everything comes down.

In light of our current political culture and climate, I am re-reading James McPherson’s masterful book, Battle Cry of Freedom, which is a history of America before and during the Civil War era. When I’m finished, I intend to read Potter’s The Impending Crisis, which deals specifically with the political divide and battles over the slavery issue and state’s rights leading up to the Civil War. I think there are lessons to be learned, and great parallels to today’s political and cultural climate.

Whatever else may be said, this much is clear - in times as politically and culturally fractured as these, we need an actual leader who can remind Americans of what we share in common, and somehow work to bring the warring factions together. Maybe it is possible. Maybe it isn’t. But, based on what I’ve seen so far, a leader like Trump will not contribute to a peaceful or productive solution for our country.

Rolland wrote:

Instead his words, while acknowledged as verifiably true, still allegedly were heartless, divisive, polarizing, in favor of white supremacy, neo-Naziism, and the like. This is sentimental nonsense, even if Karl Rove, Charles Krauthammer, George Will and Bill Kristol paraded these things, to say nothing of flaming liberals and other assorted would-be gurus who also parroted the same. As it hath been said, only the Devil and Democrats would think that way. It would be profitable for the president’s opponents to read sources alternative to the current unreliable and unfair media. The facts have been gathered, published and available for all to see.

It is always a bad idea to assume those who disagree with you are ignorant. No doubt, many people are ignorant and clueless. But, many more are not. There are several of us on this thread who appear to have reasonable and informed opinions about President Trump and his approach to leadership and his office. Don’t assume we’re ignorant. Perhaps (gasp), we just honestly disagree with you …