From the time Donald Trump first started putting feelers out and thinking about running for President, I thought it was just a big joke. His campaigns, his single term in the White House, that ending, and subsequent events have proven, in my mind, beyond any shadow of doubt, that he is a big joke, and he is the least qualified candidate who ever ran for the Presidency in my lifetime. And among the jokes and con artists and nut jobs who have made runs for the White House since I remember following politics, that's saying something. RFK Jr. may take that title from Trump in my personal space, we'll see, but right now, Trump has the privilege of being the single most unqualified candidate for President in American history.
I'm going to link this to a social media post in the hopes of clearing out some of the right wing clutter that pops up there every now and then. So I'll divide my reasons up into different categories, just to make sure there's no mistaking where I'm coming from, or why.
I have, in the past, identified as an Evangelical Christian. Raised Southern Baptist, those are all terms that once had a much different meaning than they do now. I am Christian, not just in a cultural sense of the term, but by conviction and conversion. I no longer use the "Evangelical" label because the definition of that is now more political than religious. From a theological and doctrinal point, I still belong to an independent, non-denominational church and believe the core values of the Christian gospel, as established by Jesus and recorded by the authors of the New Testament, without a personal, denominational label or otherwise excluding myself from mainstream Christian practice. Those with whom I discuss my theology, beliefs, practices and values tell me I sound like a Quaker.
That's for those who are connected to me on social media, so they will understand who I am and why I feel the way I do.
My Reasons For Not Supporting or Voting For Trump From a Christian Perspective
Evangelicals coming into secular politics during the last years of the 20th century came down hard on former President Clinton, insisting that his personal character and morality was the primary reason for their pronouncements that he was disqualified to be President of the United States. Specifically, they dug up information about his alleged romantic trysts and affairs, attacked his character, and as a result, they clearly established high moral character, based on their standards, as a primary qualification for being President. The issues of education, economy and foreign relations were secondary to the moral character requirement, as far as political Evangelicals were concerned.
Many of those same Evangelical leaders are still around today. So what's happened? Gone are their ironclad, infallible, unbending moral qualifications for the presidency, replaced by a small handful of social, culture war issues most Americans don't even have on their political radar screen. They lied, and they are hypocrites. It wasn't about the morality or the character at all, it was about the fact that President Clinton, who was an active member of a Southern Baptist church, but who was a very fallible human being (aren't we all? The Apostle Paul says, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.") was also a Democrat. And that not only undermines their politics, it seriously undermines their credibility and calls into question the sincerity of their faith.
From my perspective as a Christian, which does have some influence over my vote, Trump loses my support on his total lack of trustworthiness. My Dad taught me to have respect for the women I dated and for the one I would eventually marry. He said that a man who would lie to, and cheat on his wife will lie to everyone else and is a deceitful, dishonest fraud.
Trump has cheated on all three wives, making him, by biblical definition, an adulterer, a cheat, a liar and a fraud. While each of his subsequent wives were "the other woman" to his previous wife, he also gleefully and proudly confessed to "hundreds" of affairs. We know of several high profile affairs, including Stormy Daniels, whom he paid off to keep silcnce in order to protect his political career. He has never apologized, shown repentance or remorse, or otherwise acknowledged his poor treatment of the women whom he married.
That kind of dishonesty and evil behavior is a disqualifier, as far as I am concerned, for a man who is seeking the highest political office in the land.
And my Dad was right about the dishonesty, cheating, lying and fraud. Trump has also disqualified himself from office because he is a pathological liar. That's a moral character flaw that Christians once condemned in politicians, Clinton, for example, but now seem to either gloss over and allow a pass, or they've changed their perspective, and erased the ninth commandment, along with the sixth, from the biblical text. I cannot respect, or listen, to self-proclaimed Christian leaders who downplay the lies, or who ignore them, or try to justify them, or explain them away. That includes chief apologists Franklin Graham, of Samaritan's Purse, and Robert Jeffress, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas, along with Trump's self-proclaimed "prophetess" spiritual advisor, prosperity gospel fraud Paula White.
Trump lied all during his 2016 campaign for the presidency, all through his term in office, in many cases putting the country in danger, and subjecting it to the mistrust of its allies, and proved himself to be a fraud and a phony. His claim that the 2020 election was "stolen," totally and completely proven to be "the big lie" that it was labelled, and all of the fraudulent activity that accomplished his attempt to overturn the Constitution's provision of the peaceful transfer of power, including the incitement of an insurrection against the people and government of the United States is not only disqualifying as far as holding office is concerned, but is justifiably being prosecuted as the lawbreaking criminal activity that it is. Justice can't move fast enough to put this lying, fraudulent criminal in prison where he belongs.
And for those Christians who want so desperately to believe he's one of them, and he's just being persecuted because of that, it's time to go find yourself in the fantasy world in which you've been lost for seven, going on eight years now. Trump has evaded, and resisted every opportunity to declare a Christian conversion experience. He says he reads the Bible and he does, on rare occasions, attend church services, as long as they make a fuss over him.
But the very core principle of a "conversion" experience, according to Evangelical tradition, that makes one a Christian, is the acknowledgement that one is a sinner who has experienced the full conviction of the Holy Spirit for their sin, admitted to their guilt and sinful condition, has repented, and asked forgiveness through Christ's sacrifice on the cross as the atonement for their sin. In spite of some of the best efforts of people like Franklin Graham and Robert Jeffress to get Trump to articulate this experience so they can validate his "salvation," he resists their efforts, resorts to his own language, declares his belief in God "in my own way," and states that he has not done anything for which he needs to ask God's forgiveness.
His character, and his ego, will apparently not allow him to admit to any mistakes. And so, while he loves the votes he gets from Evangelicals, and accepts some of their politics, he rejects their faith and its core values. He's a deceitful, lying, antichrist, by the definition that the Apostle John wrote in his first epistle, chapter 4.
A Book Would Be Required to List All of the Political Reasons I'm Not Supporting Trump
I'd have to say that the insurrection he led, and his anti-patriotic attempt to overthrow the Constitution and the government, is at the top of my list of political reasons I'm not supporting Trump. He doesn't know the Constitution, to him and his agenda, it's a bothersome restriction on the kind of power he wants to have and attempted to wield. And if the wheels of justice won't move fast enough to enforce the rule of law, convict him and send him to prison for all of the illegal acts he committed as President, then the people will have to do the job.
And I believe we will.
The very idea that a political outsider is what the country needs to resolve its issues and protect its citizens is, frankly, for lack of a better descriptive term, stupid. No patient facing surgery for a brain tumor would ask for a surgeon whose sum total of surgical experience was tonsilectemies and apendectemies. It was pretty clear that the crises being faced by the United States were not going to get resolved by Trump, the political outsider, who demonstrated his incompetence from day one, and then finished off his term in office with the most incompetent bungling of a real pandemic we could possibly imagine in the age of advanced medical science.
Even his Supreme Court appointments, and their overturning of the Roe decision, which most Evangelicals claim as his signature political accomplishment has been cluttered with all kinds of implications and issues which they didn't consider, and frankly, about which they showed little concern when Roe was the law of the land. The fact that abortion gets used as a method of birth control is as much the fault of Evangelical Christianity in America failing to achieve its own mission and purpose as it is of the fact that the law allowed it.
Women are not equals in Evangelical culture. So the consequences sof a political decision which denies them a reproductive choice based solely on a religious principle, and the manner in which all of this has played out is having dire political consequences for Republicans, and serious medical consequences for many women whose lives are in danger because doctors won't perform certain life-saving procedures for fear of prosecution.
Overturning Roe was a poor political decision because it allows states to overlook serious consequences and complications of legislating medical decisions that should only be made by the patient after consulting the advice of their doctor. But, of course, in Evangelical thinking and culture, women do not have the standing to make those kinds of decisions. That is up to the husband, and one of the consequences of not having a husband is that the state must then make that choice for them. I'm not exaggerating here. That's exactly the line of reasoning that's being used. For women who are considering abortion because they have been left pregnant, and alone, and without support, in Evangelical thinking, the responsibility falls completely on them, even though, biologically, there had to be a man involved somewhere.
Nor will very many of them have enough sympathy or compassion to help, even though they have the means and the resources. They've been fighting Roe for its entire history, and they've had a wide open opportunity to provide ministry to help bring down the abortion numbers for a long time, but they'd rather put their resources into politics, fighting against Roe, because, of course, getting pregnant is all the woman's fault. They're going to lose big on this single issue.
It's Simple For Me: President Biden is Just a Far Better Choice
I call it as I see it. Joe Biden has the public servant's heart, and the political experience to be President of the United States, a fact that is made obvious by the success of his first term in office. There's no argument against that.
I said earlier that I do have moral and character standards when it comes to choosing candidates for public office. I see nothing in Joe Biden that disqualifies him. I'm sure he's not perfect either, that's not the expectation. He's Catholic, and while he doesn't wear that on his sleeve, or jam it down our throat, it's pretty clear he lives his life by those beliefs and convictions. I don't really believe that the President of the United States has to be a Christian, and there are some that have been by tradition, but certainly not by practice. But if they are, then not being hypocritical about it is a demonstration of the kind of integrity and honesty necessary to meet the qualification of trustworthiness. And Joe Biden does.
The President has adapted well to the winner-take-all, no-compromise, our way or the highway attitude that now controls the Republican party. The Congress in which he started serving depended on bi-partisan cooperation, compromise, making deals, and getting things done for the good of the American people. Republicans are now focused on using the government's power to protect the turf of their special interests. It takes a skilled, experienced politician who is willing to make some personal and political sacrifices to get things done in that kind of contentious atmosphere. There aren't very many individuals around who are capable, or willing, to do that. Joe Biden is the man for the hour.
The world is becoming a more dangerous place, more than it has since the end of the Second World War. And the burden for protecting the peace and maintaining stability falls on the United States, because we have made ourselves into a superpower. Trump wants to trash the alliance that protects the stability and side with the dictators of chaos, confusion and war, because he thinks it will add to his wallet. He's a believer in American oligarchy, in the exact same way that Russia is now an oligarchy. And no matter what comes out of his mouth, it is clear he has nothing but contempt for anyone who is not wealthy. He has nothing but contempt for his own followers.
President Biden revived the NATO alliance and re-established America's leadership and credibility. They depend on us, and we need them. We share the same value of democracy and freedom. That's who we are, and most of them share those values because, over the past 70 years, they have picked them up from us and adopted them. In places like Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Czechia, Slovakia, Poland, and eastern Germany, the appreciation for democracy and freedom is a passionate overflowing of gratitude. And Joe Biden was the American politician who brought that back to NATO after four years of neglect. Hopefully, it was just in time to save Ukraine.
So, facing what we are now facing in the world, Joe Biden is the man we need in the White House to protect the security and peace of the world.
It's time for Americans to be committed to their future, and committed to re-elect Joe Biden as President of the United States, giving him a Democratic majority in both houses in order to achieve the goals of a democratic America.
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