Month: October 2016

I’m cleaning up my home computer workstation. This is somewhat like cleaning out a refrigerator: if it hasn’t been done for a long time, it can be pretty repulsive. I’m a junk collector by nature; I save stuff. “This might come in handy one day.” Or, as my father once muttered about some worn out work boots which he’d long since replaced, but was reluctant to discard, “Them things would’a been like gold in the Depression.”  It’s hard to throw away good stuff.  Hence, it accumulates.

It accumulates; it becomes disordered, it collects dust by the cubic yard; it becomes the habitation of devils and every hateful and unclean bird; and in the case of a computer workstation, it develops a Gordian knot of cables and power cords.

I rented a Bobcat down at Home Cheapo and managed to get everything off the desk and the corner cleaned out and the cables untangled and wiped down.  Carried the dirt out back and filled in some low spots.  Got the walls vacuumed clean and everything shiny.  Now it was time to set things back in place.

As it turns out, I’ve had more on that desk and in that corner than I really had room for.  Some might say I had more than the Gross Domestic Product of a small Latin American country.  In any case, I needed to discard stuff, which isn’t easy.  See paragraph [1] above.

I decided I don’t need my printer, a hulking mammoth called an “all in one” model.  I seldom use it, it usually has a bad ink cartridge when I need it, and I wind up using Wonder Wife’s printer via the network.  So I got its original packaging from the attic (“See?  I told you it might come in handy one day!”) and boxed it up nicely with a note taped to the outside to remind me of its condition.  When I carried it back up, I got to looking at a large collection of computer equipment that I’m saving until needed.  I counted seven other printers.  Down in my “closet office” (which is now only a storage closet, but I still refer to it as Fort Cloffice), I have two more.

*Sigh*

A buddy disagreed with my last post and said that I was too smart to fall for the idea that Christians should vote for Trump.  I smilingly replied that one should avoid the term “too smart” when disagreeing with the likes of theologian Wayne Grudem, whom I’d mentioned as an advocate of the position I was taking.  Grudem is scary smart.

At the end of last July, Grudem published his now-famous article “Why Voting for Donald Trump Is a Morally Good Choice.”  He stated the essence of the article in an early paragraph:

I did not support Trump in the primary season. I even spoke against him at a pastors’ conference in February. But now I plan to vote for him. I do not think it is right to call him an “evil candidate.” I think rather he is a good candidate with flaws.

This article provoked a firestorm of opposing articles, blog posts, etc. in the Christian cybersphere.  After reading about ten of them, I saw that I could dispense with the other two hundred; they all said the same things.  A major objection was that Trump is bad in a way that the world doesn’t like rather than, for instance, Hillary Clinton, who is bad in ways that the world celebrates.  For nigh on seventy years, by my reckoning, Christian leaders have repeatedly been exclaiming “Oh, horrors! We can’t do/say/think that!  Why, what would Satan say if we did that???”  Subsequently, Christianity has become so conformed to the world now that its major distinguishing point seems to be how cheesy its rock & roll is.  So everybody jumped on Grudem (who, by the way, has a long history of standing against the decline of Christianity).

This presidential election campaign season has been the most entertaining carnival that has ever come to town. Repeatedly, when you think the show is over and you’ve seen it all, another act comes dancing across the stage and the frolics resume.  Last week the nation was shocked, shocked! to discover that Trump has lived as a sexual libertine who uses vulgar language as though he were a common plumbing contractor.  True, he bragged about his behavior in his books and broadcast media appearances for decades, but the Democrat-media confederacy has somehow managed to republish the data with enough fanfare now to trick the booboisie into thinking it’s a game-changing revelation.

On cue, a swarm of Republicans called for Trump to withdraw from the race.  Among them was Wayne Grudem.  His explanation is here.

I’ve never called Trump a good candidate with flaws (as Grudem did); I’ve consistently called him a bad man who doesn’t know much and isn’t very smart.  Despite that, my position is essentially the same as was Grudem’s.  He went to great lengths to demonstrate why a Trump administration would be preferable to a Clinton one.  The voter is faced with the choice of favoring the better option or not favoring the better option.  If he chooses to favor the better option, it will entail certain actions, although individuals might disagree over exactly what those actions are.  (Ordinarily, the entailed action would be to support Trump.)

This brings me to the accusation I make in this post’s title.  With his recent article, Grudem has adopted an incoherent position.

He begins with a condemnation of Trump’s 2005 remarks about sexual aggressiveness, and similar vulgarities on–who would believe it?–Howard Stern’s radio show.  Grudem states that such behavior is “hateful in God’s eyes” and that it “turned my stomach.”  On these bases, he calls for Trump to withdraw.

So far, Grudem’s position is coherent.  Trump is, indeed, deplorable; and if a voter realizes that he no longer favors a candidate (be the epiphany ever so tardy), he is at liberty to favor a different outcome.

However, for the remainder of the article, Grudem restates the patently obvious fact that a Trump presidency is seriously preferable to its alternative.   (And readers, please keep clearly in your logic the fact that Eggan McMuffin is not a third possibility.)  He asserts that he cannot and will not vote for Clinton.  In other words, Grudem as much as admits that his upset stomach hasn’t changed anything.

Grudem himself, though, has indeed changed something: he has changed the vote of thousands of Christian fence-sitters who were looking for a leader to confirm their gut instinct that Trump is preferable to the alternative.  Headlines immediately peppered the landscape announcing Grudem’s great reversal, part of a much grander narrative that the Dems have pushed for four months–that Trump is losing his support.  In fact, Trump has gone up and down in the polls and the recent trends were upward, apparently because Ted Cruz and others were finally admitting that someone they deplored was, sad to say, their only hope for avoiding a Clinton presidency.  Grudem’s move served only to decelerate any momentum that the idea was gaining among Christians.

That’s what is incoherent about Grudem’s present position.  He avers (still) that a Trump presidency is a better option than its alternative, but his actions favor the alternative.  To call upon Trump to withdraw is not an option because (1) obviously Trump will not and (2) if he did, his successor couldn’t possibly fare as well; so such a call is substantially a move to favor what he claims not to favor.  Even with the publishing of the vulgar recordings, and with the even more recent unsubstantiated (and highly suspicious) accusations of assaultive behavior, Grudem, I, and everyone else are left with the same choice we always had.  We may favor one of only two outcomes (any third outcomes are imaginary).  For weighty reasons (see Grudem’s original article) the preferable outcome is a Trump election.

Norman Geisler, a major Christian scholar and intellectual (now retired), recently came out for Trump, as did Ted Cruz.  They join an impressive list of people who, for various reasons, want Trump to win the election.

It is my opinion that we conservatives/Christians need to drop our opposition to electing Trump.  We have stood bravely, but our position is collapsing on all sides.  It’s time to sound the retreat so that we may live to fight another day, enduring a President Trump rather than a President Clinton.

Hundreds of articles and posts have argued against voting for Trump.  The objections amount to (1) he’s a bad man, (2) he doesn’t know much, (3) some of his positions aren’t conservative, and (4) his latest spouse, a model, has posed for some sexually improper photographs.

I would reply, “And, using that list, what objections against Clinton and her spouse can you mention?”  Even with the magnitude of Trump’s reprehensibilities, I think the comparison is laughable, myself.

Despite his outlandish claims, Trump is well aware that he doesn’t know much.  As president, he would hire knowledgeable people and delegate–as all businessmen do.  Look at his friends.  Look at the people he surrounds himself with and goes to for advice.  Now look at Clinton and her crowd.  Which crowd do you prefer?

And by the way, this “nuclear codes” business really, really needs to be put to rest.  The anti-Trumpers are trying to dupe people into picturing Trump practicing golf putts in the Oval Office, noticing a big red button on his desk, and muttering, “I wonder what this does?”  And whoosh, World War Three is underway!  It is mere scaremongering horse dung.  No president has the power to launch any attack without the concurrence of the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

It is sometimes alleged that evangelical Christianity will be besmirched unless we loudly disavow Trump.  I deny this; I think that it is an expression of the never-ending technique of guilt manipulation.  I certainly think that Christians would make a grave mistake if they should tout any candidate as “the Christian candidate” or “God’s choice,” but merely choosing Trump over Clinton does not tell anyone what we think about his character.  Understand this: for the rest of your life, you are going to encounter people who say, in essence, “Do as I say or I will call you a bad Christian.”  You cannot satisfy a guilt manipulator; ignore him.

Millions of people today are gung-ho on Trump.  If he wins, I’m afraid that many of them are going to be somewhat disappointed.  I don’t trust Trump to deliver on his promises.  He might; he might not.  Either way, I’d prefer him over Clinton (and he and she are the only real options).  Wayne Grudem was certainly right when he wrote “there is nothing morally wrong with voting for a flawed candidate if you think he will do more good for the nation than his opponent.”  In our situation, we might substitute the words “less damage” for “more good.”  The principle remains.