I’v got into this bad habit of starting a post and working on it for so long that it becomes irrelevant. I’ve got a half finished post on the Donald Trump election that is now a week old and probably not worth posting anymore.
I still don’t know what to think of the whole thing. From what I’ve heard a lot of people are feeling that way.
It goes back to my fascination with moments in history that are viewed so utterly differently by different people. For all the people like me who are horrifed by Trump’s election and who are worried that this could be the beginning of something really bad, there are also those who are celebrating the victory of a maverick over the political establishment. How can people see something so differently? How can people see a man as a political saviour when so many others are seeing someone who is unfit for office?
Elections are funny things. If you had a committee of really smart and bipartisan people looking to fill a position and they posted a job opening, received applications and began a job search, Donald Trump would never have made the short list. I think his resume would have been chucked from the start.
Now, clearly democracy is designed to fill a job opening in a very different way. It’s set up to be an election not by a committee but by everybody so by design it’s never going to look like a job search. But as I wrote that last paragraph it occurred to me (has probably already occurred to most everybody else) that Donald Trump is so appealing to a certain segment of the population because he doesn’t fit that mould of the perfect candidate. They have lost faith in the type of people who would sit on such a committee and so they want a rebel who will speak his mind, and who will do what needs to be done in a new way, and they have found their man in Donald Trump.
So I guess that what this was all about from the start (whenever that was) was not really Donald Trump, but about a sense of frustration and anger and fear that is leading a lot of people to believe in lies rather than reason. Trump simply saw an opening and he got through.
It reminds me of that moment in the Last Battle by C. S. Lewis when Tirian and his small band of loyal followers have uncovered a wicked deception and are preparing to reveal the truth to all those suffering under the oppression of the lie. The ape Shift has found a lion skin and dressed up a donkey named Puzzle in the skin and is telling all the other animals of Narnia that Puzzle is Aslan, bringing him out of a stable each night so that the animals will listen to him and do what he says. But now Tirian has taken Puzzle, lion skin and all and is preparing to expose the lie.
But in a bitter twist, Shift tells the animals that he has just learned that a donkey has been seen wearing a lion skin and pretending to be Aslan. He tells them not to believe the donkey because the donkey is lying.
Shift takes the truth and turns it into a lie so that the truth is no longer believable. He pre-empts the truth and strengthens the lie. That’s the thing about lying – if you’re good at it you can say anything you want to suit your story. It seems at times as if we find ourselves in a similar situation with this election. The truth is difficult to find when so many people are holding up lies.
So what’s true then?
Truth. Airtight. Infallible. Rock solid.
Truth. Right. Good. Hopeful.
Find it. Learn it. Know it inside and out. Don’t take my word for it. Hold it up. Be prepared to explain it and to defend it.
Don’t hold it up like a club. Open it like a hug and never stick it in anyone’s face.
Wear it on your sleeve and make sure it’s worth dying for and pray you never have to.
