The election of President Trump, as well as rightward movements in Europe, are prompting US conservatives to speak of the death of socialism. This is abject blindness. It is socialists that are being rejected, not socialism.
America has already embraced socialism in the forms of public education, social security, and even healthcare, where we choose between the socialism of Obamacare on the Left and the socialism-lite of Trumpcare on the faux-Right. Our President is a pragmatic populist, not a principled conservative. Hence, when he ran for office he named conservatives to his cabinet because his base wanted them, but once in office has embraced socialism in healthcare because the electorate at large wants it. As for the philosophical differences between the two, they don’t matter to a self-styled dealmaker-in-chief.
Our nation’s political choices mirror the people’s mood, not their convictions. That’s because mood has replaced conviction, just as celebrities have replaced heroes. Our worldviews—and Christians have been lambs to the slaughter in this regard—are shaped, not by books and reading, but by videos, short social posts and the like. In turn, this enables demagogues, from Trump to Sanders, to disrupt our elections, if not our entire culture.
A sleeping man never sets his own alarm, hence cold-water posts like this one. American Christians had better awaken quickly. Facebook prayer requests accompanied by pictures of Jesus’ arms wrapped around President Trump are the Velvet Elvis of evangelicalism. They’re not merely corny—they’re offensive, because they portray both bad theology and bad taste. Did we post such requests for President Obama? Nope. But why? Was it latent racism? Contrary to the sincere beliefs of many African America Christians, (whose worldviews, as sloppily formed as those of their white brothers, but by different forces) the answer is another Nope. It wasn’t brown skin but the pink politics of Barack Obama that offended the intuitive, blind sensibilities of politically conservative Christians, whereas President Trump merely dulls those sensibilities. But Novocain is never a good subsitute for an alarm clock.
Want to hear the alarm? Ring, ring: it was Bernie Sanders’ popularity amongst the young, not Trump’s election by aging Boomers, that portends America’s future. And American Christians had better start putting a sharp scriptural lens to politics, economics and a host of other subjects if we want to avoid the paradise that used to be the Soviet Union and is now Venezuela.
It’s time to put the flag back in its stand and pick up a Bible.