Social and political escalation inevitably leads to de-escalation as it can only go so far until the crescendo requires declination. In America today we are escalating rapidly to a place of violent exchanges thanks in large part to the language used between the sides. Though criticism of the Bible has become en vogue with man, we might all want consider its wisdom:
Sin is not ended by multiplying words, but the prudent hold their tongues. (Proverbs 10:19)
The tongue is also a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell. (James 3:6)
You don’t have to believe in the Bible or be a Christian to see the truth in these passages. You need only to have watched the news or have been on social media where the evidence is undeniable.
We have allowed ourselves to become of culture of critique despite those warnings. The more we say, the more we text, the more we post the more we open ourselves up to saying, texting or posting something truly evil. As abstinence is the strongest antidote to unwanted pregnancies or STDs, silence likewise protects us from violating our or someone else’s humanity.
The attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump at the hands of a twenty year-old young man are the logical actions of anyone who believes Trump is akin to Adolph Hitler. In fact an assassination attempt on Hitler included the likes of one Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Christian pastor in Germany, who’s since been lionized in both film and print as a hero. Bonhoeffer’s motivation was in response to both what he was witnessing around him and what he was reading in his German newspapers. Whether one agrees he was justified in violating God’s commandment “thou shalt not murder” (Exodus 20:13) or not the point is, he was convicted Adolph Hitler was a threat worth murdering and ultimately he lost his life, just like Thomas Crooks, after failing to do so.
I can already hear our conservative readers who know both stories decrying the comparison. Thomas Crooks was no Deitrich Boenhoffer! Yet in the sense he was willing to sacrifice his life in an assassination attempt of an apparent Hitlerian threat, yes he was. However that is not the comparison being made. The real question is about us.
If we’re honest, the heated rhetoric has been coming from both sides, including from Donald Trump. No, I am not blaming the victim. For as much as his cavalier style has won over the hearts and minds of a conservative movement looking for a champion with the toughness to stand up to a recalcitrant and refractory government who seemingly had stopped listening to the will of we the people, it included many, many incendiary and insulting statements. Donald Trump has trouble taming his tongue as much as anyone. Granted, the left-leaning media, if it’s been liberal about anything, it’s been their taking his words and using them out of context in order to paint him as “literal Hitler”.
Two examples come to mind, and one of them has become a favorite of Joe Biden. Biden has repeatedly misused Trump’s “bloodbath” comment to mean he would enact political violence in America on American’s who opposed him. He may have come by it honestly as the media was the first to misrepresent Trump’s actual statement, which was “it will be a bloodbath” for the American auto industry if we don’t bring manufacturing back from Mexico. Even if Biden was unaware, the media and Biden’s staff certainly knew they were letting him be dishonest and even reckless by allowing it to continue. Which of course was the point. In order to beat Donald Trump, who is so far ahead in the polls he is about to lap the competition, it’s time to pull out all the stops. Or, as Biden put it “put Trump in a bullseye.”
After the assassination attempt, conservatives and Republicans seized on this comment as proof Biden was calling for Trump’s murder. Only that’s a misrepresentation too. The full context of the quote indicates Biden was talking about political strategy and focus after failing during the debate. Conservative media rushed just as quickly to distort the context is if Biden, who they’d also maligned as demented and incapable, suddenly possessed the canny of a mob boss. Folks, no one is the better in any of this.
We have witnessed some eight years of character assassination of Donald Trump, but if we’re brutally honest, he wasn’t exactly known for his character. He was known as a playboy, casino and hospitalities magnate who was both generous and brutal as a businessman. His critics said he’s a narcissist and the gold emblazoned “TRUMP” signs on his properties confirmed it. As the leader of the free-world he denigrated entire countries as “sh*tholes”. Megyn Kelly confronted him on his demeaning and abusive name calling of the fairer sex as “pigs”. Audio confirms he waxed jokingly about women letting celebrities “grab them by the p*ssy”. I could go on, and on, and on.
This is the man we chose to be our president, but for good reasons too. The quintessential salesman, he sold us on something we all love dearly – America. The America that we know and love and that the world loves too. A world that will sacrifice their life and savings to migrate here from as far as Venezuela, Iraq and China. They have come here by the millions for a chance at a better life only to find they are coming to an America that is quickly resembling the banana republics they fled.
So much of the equation centers around power and prosperity. Trump’s idiomatic promise to “drain the swamp” is a promise to remove the corruption and waste within our government. What we see as corruption and waste are jobs and livelihoods of those working the system – it’s a matter of how you see it. Perhaps more it’s a matter of how we say it.
“The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit.” (Proverbs 18:21)
We find ourselves careening toward civil war and at the speed of the spoken word. It may be inevitable if author of the book “The Fourth Turning”, Neil Howe, is correct. Societies move through seasons, or turns, and the fourth is marked by violent upheaval after years of prosperity lead to corruption and fracture. Both world wars were, by his theory, fourth turnings. With American intervention in the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Palestine wars we appear to be entering a third global conflict.
However, as individuals we still possess the power to engage our political enemies with honor and integrity at a time when both of those appear to be passé. I encourage us, they are not. Again, even if you don’t adhere to the Bible as the word of God we are seeing people’s words result in their cancellation. What once was the fate of conservatives has now befallen Democrats who have the bad taste to wish Trump’s shooter hadn’t missed. I’ve already seen nearly a dozen people in well-paying positions from public servants to doctors being let go because they couldn’t stop themselves from posting something as short as “too bad he missed”. Four little words set their whole life on fire.
“But I tell you that everyone will have to give account on the day of judgment for every empty word they have spoken.” (Matthew 12:36)
Choose wisely.
You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. (Romans 2:1)
