Where is God in this Presidential campaign?
When Hillary Clinton invoked the name of God in her speech last night: “one nation, under God, indivisible…” I realized I couldn’t remember the last time I’d heard the name of the Lord mentioned since Carson, Rubio, Kasich, Cruz, et. al., dropped out of the race. Donald Trump finished his speech last night with “thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you very much.” Not even a perfunctory “God Bless America.” And no one seems to care. This has, so far, turned into the most secular presidential campaign in decades.
I do not question the deep-held religious beliefs of Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz, but somewhere along the way there was also a political calculation that to succeed this time around, Republicans would have accelerate their efforts to bring more religion into politics and soften the division between church and state. In a campaign cycle with many miscalculations, this may have been one of the biggest (and most under-reported) miscalculations of all. Because, as I said, no one seems to care. (Donald Trump was unabashedly disingenuous on this from the beginning: when asked what his favorite verse in the bible was he said: “many, so many.” It only got worse from there: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/apr/14/donald-trump-favorite-bible-verse-one-jesus-specif/)
So why does no one seem to care? So far, have come up with 3 possible answers:
- Donald Trump thinks he is God. (Or at least almost as successful.) And has convinced supporters that he is, literally, their Savior.
- God — at least for some — was a smokescreen. While there are many good people, true believers out there, there were also some who aimed to twist religious principles to deny rights to people on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and religion. Now that Trump has made it OK to go about this business bald-facedly, the phony religious rationalizations just fell away.
- Trump is the Antichrist and his supporters are fervently hoping to hasten the end of days. This can probably be proven by a simple numerological analysis of key dates and statements in his campaign, correlated with biblical texts. Or maybe I’m overthinking it, and all you need to do to gather enough proof is watch The Omen (and sequels). Let me know what you find.
