DEVIL OR ANGEL - WHICH IS IT?
Depends on Whom You Ask...
In another forum, two participants - I’ll call them Dick and Ray - have characterized Donald J. Trump in radically different ways.
Ray depicts Trump as a virtual devil, like this:
"I continue to think Trump to be awful. He meets those descriptions of xenophobic, isolationist, misogynist, narcissistic, vindictive, a prevaricator who is totally lacking in empathy."
Dick, on the other hand, assesses Trump more angelically as follows:
“I review what Trump has done, as businessman and as president; I see the quality of his children, I see the list of steps he outlines to be taken (his 20-point plan). I compare these to the issues and problems we face domestically and overseas. He is on point.”
My response:
Are these two gentlemen talking about the same man?
What explains these radically different perspectives?
Let’s take it apart…
Notice that Ray’s attack focuses entirely on what he deems to be Trump’s personal failings. Apparently without sin himself and willing to cast the first stone, Ray is willfully blind and deaf when it comes to the real world of what Trump actually accomplished for the country during his first term and what he has promised to accomplish us during his second.
For his part, Dick comments on the quality of Trump’s family - an obvious indicator of the man’s character - not perfect, but then whose character is? Dick then makes note of Trump’s first-term accomplishments and the current critical state of affairs for America at home and abroad (brought upon us by the utterly disastrous - and illegitimate - Biden/Harris regime), and how Donald Trump is focused on addressing these very issues. Dick, having reasoned his way along, concludes that Trump is “on point”.
Now let me ask the reader what I consider to be an obviously rhetorical question:
When one considers what I have previously argued (see “TRUMP VS. HARRIS - REASON YOUR WAY TO THE RIGHT CHOICE”) always to be the one overriding consideration voters should have in choosing a president - which candidate is likely to best serve the interests of the country? - which of these two contrary assessments - Ray’s or Dick’s - makes sense? Which passes the intellectual, moral and spiritual quality test?
A long time back now, I wrote a piece in Substack titled "THE LEFT'S DECEITFUL WAR OF WORDS" In it I pointed out how easy it is to blow the cover on the left’s deceitful, dishonest spewers of hate. Simply challenge them to put meat on the bones of their slander and calumny.
In Ray's case, all one need do is challenge him to explain with reason and evidence just how it is that DJT is any of the things Ray says he is - "xenophobic, isolationist, misogynist, narcissistic (what politician isn't to some degree?), vindictive and a prevaricator [liar]". To Ray I say, pick any one of those charges and lay out the case. The response from Ray of course will be either dead silence (discretion being the better part of valor), or more venom, ignorance, misrepresentation and deceit - but never an honest, fair-minded attempt at the truth.
In noting the distinctions between Dick’s thoughtful, reality-based observations about Trump, and Ray’s hateful, vacuous, slanderous, Trump-hating rant, you are really talking about two people who stand on opposite sides of the grand intellectual, moral and spiritual chasm that deeply divides America today - Donald Trump being the wedge that has split that chasm wider and deeper than ever before in our history since the Civil War.
Though the more diplomatic among us might shy away from such direct characterizations - “Can’t we all just get along?” - allow me to call a spade a spade.
Consider the person capable of characterizing Donald Trump (imperfect and a sinner like the rest of us) as a man who is "awful", is "xenophobic/isolationist, misogynist, narcissistic, vindictive, prevaricator [liar]" and is "totally lacking in empathy". I consider that person deliberately and maliciously detached from reality - intellectually, morally and spiritually corrupt. Intellectually corrupt because he refuses to employ honest informed reasoning with the objective of getting at the truth, morally corrupt because he, giving objective truth the back of his hand, is willing to condemn and spew calumny about an innocent man based on unfounded, trumped-up, politically motivated charges, and spiritually corrupt because, if he had any connection with the Transcendent - the source of conscience - he would know better.
"Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor."
Especially when Ray’s kind of false witness, sufficiently bandied about, can get people killed.
In a word, such a spewer of calumny is evil. Ray is evil. Intellectually flawed, he can't or chooses not to add 2 + 2 to get 4; morally deficient, he can't or won't tell the difference between right and wrong, truth and lies, good and evil; spiritually, he is obviously unplugged from the transcendent connections that enable and sustain both intellect and morality. Ray's may be a banal sort of evil, hard to detect at a superficial glance - it wouldn’t jump out at you if you passed him on the street - but it is evil none the less. Ray calls good evil and evil good - and Ray will vote. Writ large, the collective sum of this kind of evil at work among us may well spell doom for our country.
We'll get a good reading on November 5th.
Right vs. wrong, truth vs. lies, reality vs. fantasy, knowledge vs. ignorance, order vs. chaos, law vs. lawlessness, justice vs. injustice, patriotism vs. treason, light vs. darkness, good vs. evil, happiness vs. misery, God vs. the Godless…
Which box will you check?
If you can be fooled, you will be.
These are the times that try men’s souls…
Torquemada