WAPO:Donald Trumps troubling politics of pride - Michael Gerson
Gerson paints Trump as the devil incarnate in "his ability to persuade people to support him by suspending their deepest, lifelong beliefs." Like the Devil, he has an enchanted tongue able to persuade the innocent away from the righteous path. But of course Gerson never tells us what that path is so we could compare it to Trumps.
In fact the only factual policy comment on Trump is: ".. he is an immigration restrictionist" He also claims that he is supporting Abortion not believing his ".. rationale for his pro-life conversion". He also claims (albeit indirectly) that he bragged about affairs with married women, but he only quotes hearsay.
Lastly, and most poignantly he quotes C.S. Lewis: “The essential vice, the utmost evil is Pride,” wrote C.S. Lewis. “Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere flea bites in comparison; it was through Pride that the devil became the devil. Pride leads to every other vice; it is the complete anti-God state of mind.”
It must be admitted that Trump does have pride, but whether that pride is "arrogance" we have really to see since he admits to mistakes (Abortion) and has always been a deal maker which is impossible at the arrogance level ascribed to him. To quote CS Lewis on Pride and the Serpent: "he arrogantly contradicted what God had said to Eve about eating the forbidden fruit and charged God with lying. ,,,. In the next breath, the devil drew her into deeper deception by contending that God’s reason for lying was to keep her from enjoying all the possibilities inherent in being Godlike. " See C S Lewis Institute
It is clear that Trump has warned us about following the losers in the White House or the Republican Leadership, but I hope they are not in Gerson's mind the equivalent of God.
He also gives us this precis about Trump's future:
"What does this mean for politics? A leader with an overweening, compulsive pride finds it difficult to learn or change: What of worth can others possibly teach? A narcissistic leader is always at enmity with other people and groups, and cannot be a unifying figure. As Abraham Lincoln displayed, the capacity to heal requires humility and empathy. A narcissistic leader is vindictive, keeps lists of his grievances and enemies and is vulnerable to the abuse of power. A narcissistic leader finds it difficult to feel sympathy for those regarded as failures and losers, for the wounded and disabled, for strangers, refugees and the vulnerable."
I believe this reflects badly more on Obama than Trump, after all:
1. Obama can't seem to learn from his foreign affairs disasters,
2. He cannot meet Congress half way, he takes what he can from them legally, and then even brakes the law to achieve his purposes through royal edicts.
3. Obama has no sympathy for people, stating that the deaths of civilians and our fear of being attacked by terrorists are but pinpricks that cannot hurt our nation! Who but an insensitive, narcissistic person could so inhumanly ignore human suffering.
4. Obama has certainly kept a list of enemies and used the power of the state to go after them. Right wing organizations denied 501(c)(3) status for years or forever while friends were benefited with the status. Congress has been dealt with utter contempt including illegal denial of oversight in Benghazi, Mrs. Clinton's private insecure email preserve, and Fast and Furious.
I have to thank Mr. Gerson for his precis on Trump. While it doesn't fit a deal maker at all, it fits a dogmatic, unbending ruler like Obama to a T.
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