Don’t get me wrong, there is a little bit of genuine substance here. Just a little bit. I can see and agree with some of what Mr. Klein is pointing out here.
You can’t exactly accuse we three here at On The Rocks of being big fans of Donald Trump, yet the melodramatic music and the way Klein and Vox are turning their political disagreements with Trump plus the strong possibility that he could be the next President into a forecast of impending doom – it comes across like Klein is the doctor telling America we may have cancer but we’re waiting on the test results to come back. It’s just too much. It’s comical in its excessive moroseness.
Now I’ll be honest with you, I don’t follow Mr. Klein or Vox, so I may be off the mark in what I’m about to say. But this seems like the kind of stuff people who call for “safe spaces” in colleges and universities have going through their heads all day. God bless their sensitive little hearts. Donald Trump is a “racist” and “sexist” and whatever else they detest, and he’s not even sorry about it! Therefore he’s a big, bad, scary man and they need to dismiss his ideas and proposals as dark and sinister.
Yes, Trump being unapologetic and shameless is a problem when it comes to things he genuinely should be apologizing and ashamed for – like being crass and shady and unscrupulous in his business dealings and personal life – but it’s not a problem when it comes to his disagreements with the supposedly sacred tenants of liberal dogma.
Point of fact, where Trump boldly and unapologetically dismisses liberal dogma he is displaying what may be his only redeeming quality, and that is really all we should be optimistic about in his possibly or probably becoming the next President of the United States.
Donald Trump Is Scary
What’s scarier to me than Trump being shameless and unapologetic for the things he should be ashamed and apologetic for is that American culture in general has become shameless and unapologetic. Trump’s mass appeal and popularity is just a symptom of this general rejection of shame, with Americans seeing and being drawn to not just his anger and his political positions, but especially his flippant disregard for what people think. In short, a great many of us are simply fed up with being told we need to be ashamed of anything, especially for the sake of stupid political correctness.
Donald Trump is not the only one who has forgotten how to repent, he’s simply the most notable example at this moment of someone who refuses to apologize insincerely when he’s not really sorry. And, to be honest, there’s something refreshing about someone finally refusing to give scripted and insincere public apologies. I, for one, am rather tired of those.
Tragically, we as a society have shifted away from regarding God’s Word as authoritative in telling us what is good and evil, right and wrong, wise and foolish. We’ve rejected the Creator’s authority to rebuke sin in our lives and call us to repentance. At the same time, we’ve embraced a thousand little false gospels custom-tailored to a thousand little special interest groups.
There are now an endless variety of “microaggressions” you can display without even realizing it, thereby discriminating against all of these groups and hurting their feelings. Our obsession with political correctness has conveniently and not coincidentally filled the vacuum of shame in our society created by giving the Bible the boot. To the horror of people like Ezra Klein, Donald Trump doesn’t feel bad at all about trampling on all these hurt feelings. Instead he seems to absorb these hurt feelings and grow stronger with every accusation of political incorrectness hurled his way.
Where Mr. Klein and I would agree is that Donald Trump should have the humility and good taste to apologize when he does or says something inappropriate. Where Mr. Klein and I disagree, however, is in what is inappropriate, why it is inappropriate, and how we can know. Public opinion should not tell us what is right and wrong. People being offended should not be the ultimate standard of what is right and wrong. No, it is not to the hurt feelings of illegal immigrants and feminists and environmentalists that Donald Trump should bow, but to the Lord.
The fear of man lays a snare,but whoever trusts in Yahweh is safe.
