“No one who practices deceit dwells in my hours; no one who utters lies shall continue before my eyes.” (Psalm 101:7)
By Pastor Rasheed Z. Baaith
He is a man who thinks like a kindergartner. He thinks in colors. And he believes colors should oppose each other. More than anything else, he believes the color white should be in opposition to every other color. In short President Trump governs increasing and aggravating divisions wherever and among whomever he can.
This is a country at war with itself like never before. Or at least not since the era of the Civil War. Race is once again the reason for the vicious enmity between us. The President is doing all he can to increase the growing feelings of anger in the country. His tweets and public statements reflect a determination to ignore the root causes of social problems and a decision to incite and not to inform.
There are of course reasons why he is being the conductor of this destructive behavior. He wants to shift attention from his ineptitude in handling the Covid crisis. He would rather see people die than admit the crisis is beyond his administration’s capacity to impact the pandemic in any positive meaningful way
He even incites those who don’t wear masks to vilify those who do. Further, he goads disbelief of science when it comes to Covid, which may be his greatest sin of all. He seems to be saying “just let them drink Clorox.”
He has plenty of divisions to stoke, a good number of fires he can light. There is always people of color against white people, Republicans against Democrats, men versus women, the uneducated despising the educated; he pushes red states against blue states. The older against the younger; the inner city versus the suburbs. That’s a lot of kindling that can be lit. Trump is focused on enlarging this list.
So he ignores police shootings that need to be questioned such as the firing of seven rounds into someone’s back. What needs to be questioned in that shooting is how the officer came to the decision to shoot. You have to be thinking the person you’re shooting is somehow less than a human, less even than an animal. After all who among us would shoot a dog seven times in its back?
So why is he not calling on his followers to stay away from protests they don’t support? Why is he not telling them not to kill people they disagree with? If you believe in law and order, why are you walking around with a long gun looking for someone to kill and why if such a person is an admitted Trump supporter, why won’t the President condemn the killings?
Because Trump doesn’t care is why and he won’t care until Black people start shooting back. And that of course is the scenario he dreams of. The country cannot let his dream of destruction become real.
During every Presidential election we hear the campaigns say “This is the most important election in American history.” In past years that statement was hyperbole. Not this time.
This is indeed the most important Presidential election in our time. The choice to make is obvious. Or you can wait until this experiment in democracy becomes an experiment in domestic American tyranny and authoritarianism.
