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Why did Trump win the election?

2024-11-14 Wolf Paul

For eight years, I have made it no secret that I do not consider Donald Trump qualified to be the head of state and government of the most powerful nation in the Western world—primarily due to his character and temperament—and I have therefore been criticized by many of my American evangelical friends. They claim American politics is none of my business since I am neither a U.S. citizen nor a resident of the U.S. I have always disagreed—sometimes sharply—and insisted that I am very much entitled to have an opinion on U.S. politics and to express it because America, as the most powerful country (at least in the “Western” world), influences all our lives. I have also been a lifelong admirer of America, who has never forgotten that without the decisive involvement of the United States in World War II, I probably would not be living in a democratic country today. Additionally, I grew up in a home funded by the Marshall Plan, so the fate of this country is very dear to my heart.

Unfortunately, my enthusiasm and sympathy for the country have significantly diminished in recent years because I couldn’t understand how a country with around 300 million citizens, about half of whom are eligible to vote, could not find better candidates in the last three presidential elections than Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris—a real indictment. Other weaknesses have also come into sharper focus: the inability to curb the gun epidemic and the resulting mass shootings in schools and elsewhere, the inability to ensure an affordable healthcare system, especially for the poorer and more disadvantaged sections of society, and the increase in racially motivated attacks by police, to name just a few examples.

I have also become severely disillusioned about American Evangelicalism which has been a very formative influence in my life: It is incomprehensible to me how around 82 percent of American Evangelicals could, encouraged by many of their most prominent leaders, vote for a foul-mouthed serial adulterer who boasts of sexually harrassing women, demonizes his political and displays his dehumanizing disdain for people of color, women, the handicapped, members of the LGBT community, and immigrants.

Throughout it all, I never imagined that my very vocal opposition would have any effect on the outcome of the election, and sure enough it didn’t: Donald Trump won the election by a landslide, and if nothing unforeseen happens, he will steer the United States’ affairs as the 47th president for the next four years, thereby also exerting a great deal of influence on the rest of the world.

For a long time, I looked at Trump supporters among my friends, and especially among evangelical leaders, with great incomprehension, and in some cases, I was tempted to break off contact. However, I have since revised my stance on this, especially concerning ordinary voters—though I remain very disappointed and critical of evangelical leaders who brush aside Trump’s character deficits with sometimes bizarre theological arguments (it seems character only matters in political opponents, not in our own candidates).

This lengthy process of changing my attitude is difficult to describe and is probably still incomplete, but on the Monday before the election, and then three days afterward, I came across a few articles that reflect my thoughts better than I could describe them myself and that have also given me further food for thought.

First, there was a lead article in the news magazine profil on Monday by Robert Treichler titled “America Wants to Dream”(4), in which he describes Trump’s appeal to voters:

What is Kamala Harris’s great promise? No, I don’t mean a list of proposals from all kinds of fields, but a big idea that can deeply resonate with 150 million people.

I fear there isn’t one. The only issue Harris addressed in an emotionally stirring way during the campaign is the right to abortion. But that’s not an overarching idea for the entire nation.

Trump has such a promise: “Make America Great Again.” This simple slogan, with which Trump has campaigned for a third time, embodies many motives that create a political sense of identity. The desire for strength, a return to old, disreputable ideas, a commitment to ruthlessness toward opponents, and defiance of moralistic objections…

Trump intertwines his slogan with his numerous character flaws. But the vow to make America great again apparently still outshines all the unspeakable things.

In the same issue, Siobhán Geets and Robert Treichler answer 47 questions about the U.S. presidential election in an article titled “Do You Understand America?”. It begins:

Would you vote for a black woman or a man convicted of sexual abuse, who is also suspected of attempted election fraud and inciting an uprising? You may not have to think long. The trickier question is: Why does the above-mentioned convicted felon—you’ve recognized him by now, it’s Donald Trump—have a good chance of being elected the 47th president of the United States next Tuesday?

Trump’s ongoing popularity and political success are baffling. But there are explanations: It is a fact that Trump recognized the problem of illegal immigration early on and made it a political megatopic, similar to right-wing parties in Europe. In his unique style of grotesque exaggerations, he demonizes migrants as murderers and rapists, even going so far as to claim that immigrants from Haiti “eat other people’s pets.” Nevertheless, even though Democrats have since imposed restrictive measures against illegal immigration, a large portion of the population grants them no credibility on this central issue.

Additionally, the politically charged question of identity politics comes into play. Democrats fight for diversity, LGBTQ rights, and abortion rights. John Della Volpe, director at Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics and a former advisor to Joe Biden, warns that they are neglecting men in the process. These men increasingly turn to the Republicans, who promote a carefree role model with limited tolerance for patriarchal and sexist behaviors. It’s entirely normal for one half of the population to want something different than the other half.

However, the problematic aspect is that the two halves no longer seem to meet on any level—not even figuratively. Trump supporters believe the 2020 election was rigged, dismiss court rulings, ignore warnings from his former associates about Trump being dangerous or even fascistic. Thus, all accusations from the other side fall flat.

Although Trump himself says outrageous things, such as wanting to use the military against “enemies from within”—meaning his opponents within the U.S.—his supporters dismiss these as typical exaggerations. Meanwhile, the other half of the country shudders in horror.

Similar reflections to these during the past year have led me to try to understand ordinary Trump voters better and to approach them with more tolerance.

Finally, three days after the election Jonah Goldberg’s newsletter titled “Stop Bashing Democracy!” arrived in my inbox. He writes:

And that, in a nutshell, is the grave error people are making. People vote for candidates—any candidate—for lots of different reasons. If you think Trump is a fascist, fine. We can talk about that. But just because you think he’s a fascist doesn’t mean someone who voted for him agrees with you and voted for him anyway. I know dozens of people who voted for Trump. None of them are idiots or fascists or fascist idiots.

This argument works every bit as much in the other direction. You may think Kamala Harris is a “communist” or “Marxist,” etc. Whether she is or not is a debatable proposition in the sense that it can be debated. But if you want people to agree with you, you need to make the argument, not just hurl the accusation. If you’re sure she is a communist, no one can deny you the right to say so—but saying so doesn’t mean everyone has to agree with you. Very few of the 68 million people who voted for Harris did so because they thought she was a Marxist or a communist.

I still believe I am correct in my assessment of Donald Trump, and that Trump’s supporters are mistaken, but I now understand them better, especially since Kamala Harris (just like Hillary Clinton eight years ago) was only a marginally less problematic candidate.

Now, lets jump back across the Atlantic to my country, Austria. Much of what Robert Treichler and Siobhán Geets write can be applied almost one-to-one to our situation, where Herbert Kickl, in my opinion a completely unsuitable candidate, won the most votes in the parliamentary election. Fortunately, he did not receive a governing majority, and no one wants to form a coalition with him, so there is a good chance we will have a coalition government, possibly involving the ÖVP, SPÖ, and perhaps NEOS.

But one thing is clear: if the new government continues with “business as usual”, Kickl will garner even more votes in four years, and perhaps even an “absolute majority”, enough to govern. Blaming it on stupid voters won’t help then either. Because the problem here, as in America (and many other countries), is the same: a political class, an aspiring elite too committed to their own interests and ideological pet issues to care about the concerns and fears of ordinary citizens. It may take different forms in America and here, but at its core, it’s the same.

Footnotes:

- Note 1: These figures are estimates from 2020 ↩️
- Note 2: Robert Treichler was born in 1968 in Graz, studied French and philosophy, and has been a journalist with the news magazine profil since 1997, serving as deputy editor-in-chief since 2021. In 2024, together with Gernot Bauer, he published the book Kickl und die Zerstörung Europas (Kickl and the Destruction of Europe) with Zsolnay. ↩️
- Note 3: Siobhán Kathleen Geets, born in 1984 in Vienna, studied cultural and social anthropology at the University of Vienna with a focus on gender studies, international development, philosophy, and religious studies. She completed her thesis on ladyboys in Thailand and was awarded her degree in May 2008. From October 2008 to September 2009, she attended a course at the Vienna School of Photography. In January to February 2008 and February to March 2009, she conducted field research in Thailand, interviewing ladyboys for her thesis and a radio feature for Ö1. Since 2020, she has been part of the foreign affairs team at profil. ↩️

Terrorists killing hostages is MURDER, not execution

2024-11-09 Wolf Paul

The Austrian Broadcasting news portal ORF Online reports that Qatar has asked members of the terrorist organization Hamas to leave the country, reportedly at the urgent request of the United States.

The report includes this paragraph:

«The recent U.S. decision was partly influenced by the execution of American-Israeli citizen Hersh Goldberg-Polin and five other hostages by Hamas at the end of August, according to a U.S. official speaking to the ‘Times of Israel.’»

In the German original the word here translated “execution” is “Hinrichtung, which like “execution”, describes, in its narrow, original sense, the carrying out of a legal death sentence.[[Regardless of what one thinks of the moral status of capital punishment there is a big difference between a sentence being carried out after a trial an a verdict by lawful authority on the one hand and the wanton killing by criminals and terrorists (not that I think there’s much difference between these two categories) on the other.]]

I consider it very problematic that these two terms, “Hinrichtung” and “execution” is regularly used to describe the illegal killing of people by criminals and terrorists. In reality, this is murder. The killing of hostages is nothing but cowardly murder.

Describing such acts as “executions” gives both the act and the perpetrators a veneer of respectability and legitimacy they do not deserve.

The language we use, as well as the words we choose, is very important.

Donald Trump now champions “reproductive rights”

2024-08-28 Wolf Paul

Peter Wehner, senior fellow at the Trinity Forum and a former Republican speechwriter points out some inconvenient facts and asks disturbing questions, but I doubt somehow that this will sway many of Trump’s followers.

If I were an American I could not in good conscience vote for either Trump or Harris come November, and in the absence of a credible and viable third party candidate would simply not vote, but I don’t really have a problem with those who would vote for either one of the candidates as the lesser of two evils–that is a legitimate prudential judgement.

My issue is, rather, with those of my fellow evangelicals (and Christians of other traditions) who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and/or 2020 because they consider abortion the most significant of all issues, and did so while holding their noses with respect to Trump’s character, and who now, in the wake of January 6 and when Trump has had the Pro Life plank removed from the GOP platform and repeatedly expressed his support for “reproductive rights” and greater abortion access are still Trump loyalists defending their champion and their support for him. Unfortunately this group includes many prominent evangelical leaders (such as Al Mohler, Franklin Graham, Tony Perkins, Robert Jeffress, Michael Brown, and many others) as well as most of my American evangelical friends.

Here are the two, in my opinion most important paragraphs from Wehner’s article:

Now ask yourself this: How could an evangelical who claims to be passionately pro-life vote for a presidential candidate who now promises that his administration will “be great for women and their reproductive rights”? Especially when that person has cheated on his wives and on his taxes, paid hush money to porn stars, and been found liable of sexual assault?

And how can those who profess to be followers of Jesus cast a ballot for this candidate, once the excuse of casting a pro-life vote is gone? For a convicted felon and a pathological liar, a man who has peddled racist conspiracy theories, cozied up to the world’s worst dictators, blackmailed an American ally, invited a hostile foreign power to interfere in American elections, defamed POWs and the war dead, mocked people with handicaps, and encouraged political violence? How can they continue to stand in solidarity with a person who has threatened prosecutors, judges, and the families of judges; who attempted to overthrow an election; who assembled a violent mob and directed it to march on the Capitol; and who encouraged the mob to hang his vice president?

I feel an immense sadness for this once great country which in many important areas increasingly looks like a third world nation and which out of a population of 335 million could not find two suitable candidates for the nation’s, if not the world’s, most important office. Unfortunately neither of the current candidates will make America great again.

And I feel an even greater sadness for that segment of the American church which seems to have lost its moral compass.

Bre-Entry? I don’t think so …

2024-06-22 Wolf Paul

EN / DE

According to today’s Daily Telegraph, “Labour will reverse Brexit if it wins the general election, UK Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch has warned.”[1]

As a convinced Remainer I would welcome this if it happened, but I am not sure this is more than Kemi Badenoch‘s desparate attempt to warn voters against a Labour government. I think that if Keir Starmer actually believes he can do it he is highly delusional.

Britain joined the EU in 1973,[2] and eventually secured several very favourable concessions, such as a major rebate on the country’s financial contribution to the Union[3]. Yet in the years since then a very vocal faction of Eurosceptics mostly in the Conservative Party has kept agitating against membership, culminating in David Cameron’s ill-advised 2016 Brexit referendum and the UK’s eventual departure from the EU at the beginning of 2020.

During the Brexit negotiations Britain very much took the attitude that the EU needed the country more than the UK needed the Union, and demanded all sorts of continued membership privileges despite wanting to leave. In the years since then the UK keeps demanding changes to the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement — with the result that many in the EU, both politicians and bureaucrats, have become sick and tired of the British and are not very keen on re-admitting them to the club.

Since re-admitting Britain to the European Union would very likely re-start all the same phenomena of the UK’s 47 years of EU membership (i.e. vocal Eurosceptic agitation, etc) and sooner or later result in Brexit 2.0, any suggestion of a Bre-Entry[4] will meet with little enthusiasm in Brussels. I am afraid it is nothing but a pipe dream.

__________

Starmer will reverse Brexit, warns Badenoch[↩]
UK Membership[↩]
UK Rebate[↩]
British Re-Entry to the European Union[↩]

The Two-State Solution Isn’t One

2024-03-22 Wolf Paul

The obsession of many international politicians with a two-state solution in the Middle East is largely motivated by cynical, domestic political damage control. As a solution, the two-state solution is dead on arrival.

I am very pessimistic about the attitude of most politicians towards military conflicts and political or other crises abroad:

They make proposals for solutions that will not work but are meant to show their voters that they (the politicians) are not just sittin on their behinds and perhaps also bring a short-term relaxation so that the terrible images disappear from their voters’ TV screens, and which ideally do not produce any domestic political problems. Whether these “solutions” are viable in the long term or even worsen the situation in the longer view is not so important, because “by then I will have long been out of office, and others may worry about it.”

We see this in the attitude of many politicians and governments towards the current conflict in Gaza and their proposed solutions:

Apart from the absolutely necessary short-term measures to avert a hunger disaster (and the delay of which is primarily blamed on Israel, although the well-known facts suggest otherwise[1]), nearly all major international actors (USA, EU, UN, etc.) are pushing the so-called “two-state solution”, which would give the Palestinians their own state (in Gaza and the “West Bank”). This approach has only one serious disadvantage that will torpedo its implementation from the outset:

The “two-state solution” is rejected by the majority of both the Israeli and Palestinian populations (with over 70% each) — this according to current surveys by Israeli and Palestinian pollsters.

Palestinian leaders repeat—almost like a mantra—the supposed command of the Prophet to annihilate the Jews and their own claim to the land “from the river to the sea” — but only on Arabic media channels, to the West they convey a different image. According to a current survey – by Palestinian pollsters – 73% of the population of Gaza approve of the massacre on October 7th, despite the immense suffering it has brought over them[2].

The Israeli population was predominantly in favor of a two-state solution in the 1990s; the continued Palestinian refusal to recognize Israel’s right to exist, as well as about 30 years of continuous shelling of Israeli villages and cities and countless other terrorist attacks, with the climax on October 7th, have turned this approval into rejection: The trust of Israelis of all political stripes that there could be a relatively peaceful coexistence or even just cohabitation with a Palestinian state is virtually at zero. A survey from February showed that 44% of Israelis believe that terrorism would increase if a Palestinian state were realized; in a survey at the beginning of this month, 79% of Jewish Israelis and 39% of Arab Israelis agreed with the statement, “There is no chance for a peace agreement with the Palestinians in the foreseeable future.” After October 7th, a two-state solution is seen as a reward for terrorism.

The obsession of many international politicians with a two-state solution clearly contradicts the will of the Israeli public and certainly does not match what the Palestinians want. It is primarily motivated by a cynical desire for domestic political damage limitation[3].

Sources for this article: “Who Wants a Two-State Solution? Not Israelis or Palestinians” by Israel Kasnett in “Israel Today“, March 22, 2024, as well as my extensive reading and media following on the topic.

__________

Israel’s position is clear and justified: a ceasefire and thus easier provisioning in exchange for the release of the hostages from October 7th; so far, Hamas has demanded a permanent end to hostilities; there seems to be some movement on this issue now. Moreover, blaming Israel seems to be generally de rigueur: Although it is an open secret that Hamas embeds its terror infrastructure within civilian facilities and residential areas, and partly prevents the civilian population from seeking safety in order to propagandistically exploit the inevitable civilian casualties, and that Hamas seizes a significant portion of the international aid payments and deliveries to arm themselves and supply their fighters, and although the civilian casualty numbers, as published daily by the Health Ministry in Gaza, are statistically impossible and therefore unlikely (after all, the Health Ministry, like all official Gaza, is in the hands of Hamas), everything that comes from there is taken at face value by most international media and politicians, and Israel is blamed for the suffering of the civilian population[↩]
From the Palestinian perspective, what was done on October 7th was simply obeying what they believe to be the Prophet’s instruction (namely, killing Jews), so they naturally see the Israeli counterstrike as completely unjustified.[↩]
Currently in the USA, it’s about limiting the loss of votes in the presidential election in November ’24.[↩]

Putin — A Religious Fundamentalist?

2024-03-16 Wolf Paul

This was an interesting conversation between Piers Morgan and Slavoj Žižek.

I would disagree with Slavoj Žižek on one major point:

I don’t think Vladimir Putin is a religious fundamentalist. He has a mixed motivation of Russian nationalism fuelled by imperialist delusions, and a limitless ambition and lust for power. He merely uses religious fundamentalists as tools, as useful idiots.

In that he resembles Donald Trump, who also has a mixed motivation, of American nationalism fuelled by American exceptionalism “MAGA” delusions, and a limitless ambition and lust for power, and he uses Evangelicals and Christian fundamentalists as tools and useful idiots.

The big difference is of course that Putin has invaded a neigbouring country and has had more than one political opponent locked up and assassinated. Trump hasn’t done that, but judging by some of his campaign rhetorik, the locking up at least no longer seems impossible.

Oh, and I agree with Mr Žižek that the political establishment on both sides of the aisle have made Trump possible because of their failure to listen to the real needs and concerns of the people they are supposed to represent, instead being preoccupied with their pet ideological projects.

Politics or God — Whom do we trust?

2024-01-21 Wolf Paul

A guest post by James Kushiner of Touchstone Magazine

“So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth:
it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish
that which I please, and it shall prosper
in the thing whereto I sent it.”

The future is the only thing in man’s field of vision that appears enticingly within his power to shape. So the present is dominated by plans for and promises about “the future.”

This is all grist for the rhetoric that will dominate media in another election year in the U.S. (where it officially began this past Monday) as well as in other countries. Candidates talk about what they will do in the future to change things for the better. The only problem is they can rarely deliver on their promises.

This does not stop the promises and predictions. Some of the predictions are also of what will happen if one’s political opponent is elected instead. Sometimes a candidate really believes he will be able to stop crime and lower taxes. At other times, a candidate will just say what he thinks he needs to say to get elected, and then, once in power, do what he wants, not keeping to his previous script.

In other words, “Put not your trust in princes, in the sons of men in whom there is no salvation.” Even the best, honest, and wisest candidate cannot control the future. And any president or prime minister may find himself (and his country) in circumstances not previously envisioned or prepared for (e.g., George W. Bush on 9/11 or Benjamin Netanyahu on Oct. 7). We cannot announce the future—unless we are a prophet.

Our grasp of the future is illusory, unless we base it on the Word of God. By that I mean recognizing not only that God alone has the final say, but that he has also shown himself to be clear about what will happen in the future, unlike the sons of men and unlike their adversary, the devil, who lies about the future to deceive us.

The adversary told Eve “you will surely not die” if the forbidden fruit was eaten, and “you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” A proposal was made with an assurance. Well, Man does, sort of, know good and evil in that he experiences them, but surely does not know what to make of evil or how to explain it to our satisfaction.

God, on the other hand, from Genesis on, clearly announced to man what he will do and what the consequences will be for man for the deeds man does. To Adam and Eve, he declared, “In the day the you eat of [the tree of knowledge] you shall surely die.”

Prior to the Fall, God needed to make no promise to mankind; only directives: “Be fruitful and multiply…I have given you every green plan for food.” It was all “very good.”

But after the disobedience, God began weaving a lifeline for man, who had severed himself from God like an astronaut drifting off into deep and deadly space. God began to speak of what he would do in the future; he made promises, in the form of covenants. “I will put enmity between you and the woman…her offspring…shall bruise your head.”

He made promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; promised a scepter to Judah; promised deliverance from Egypt to Moses, and a ruler of the line of David to redeem and save us. In all cases, God is able to call the shot, make it happen, and retrieve mankind from the jaws of death.

We have a choice: to place full confidence in God or mammon; in the Lord or the rulers of the earth. God has announced that the end of men’s delusions will come and none of their schemes will abide, while the kingdom of this world will become the kingdom of Christ.

Modern man denigrates all this as “pie-in-the-sky” religion. Perhaps he has it backwards: politics is pie-in-the-sky optimism. God delivers. He has not hidden his purposes. He warned Israel that they would suffer in the Land if they did not keep the commandments. That they would be exiled. The Lord said not one stone of the Temple would remain on another and all would be swept away. He said, and we confess, that he will come again with glory to judge the living and the dead, that his kingdom shall have no end. That is our anchor.

Who are you going to believe? Trust? Jesus said he would build his church. He did that. It struggles when it is faithless and sins (as warned), and shines when faithful to the Word and commandments of God. No other ruler can claim such an influence on the world, and Christ is not done yet. He is coming to clean house and make a final end to the devil and his works.

That’s the only right side of history to be on.

James Kushiner is Director of Publications for Touchstone Magazine — A Journal of Mere Christianity.

This article was first published in First Things’ e-mail newsletter for subscribers, on Jan. 20, 2024.

West Bank Settler Violence Discredits and Harms Israel

2023-12-10 Wolf Paul

Despite my support for Israel, and perhaps even because of it, I deplore the increase of Israeli settler violence against the local Palestinian population in the West Bank since the Hamas massacre.

While the desire to exact revenge for the atrocities committed against innocent men, women and children, even babies and old folks, on October 7 is humanly understandable, the folks in the West Bank were not the perpetrators, and vigilante-style violence unchecked by police and military is wrong and dangerous.

By tolerating it rather than cacking down on it Israel risks joining its enemies in the moral gutter, and also risks losing the support of its allies.

While Israel is currently a secular state, the settlers in the Westbank appeal to God’s promise of the Land to the people of Israel; they should not forget and ignore that the same God said, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay.”

Proportionality

2023-11-16 Wolf Paul

British author and journalist Douglas Murray was asked on Talk TV whether Israel’s strikes in the Gaza Strip constitute a “reasonable, proportionate and moral response”.

Murray replied, “There is some deep perversion in Britain whenever Israel is involved in a conflict, and it is the word you just used: Proportion, proportionate, proportionality. Only Britain is really obsessed with this. I’ve heard in for the last few days incessantly.”

“Proportionality in conflict rarely exists,” he stated, and then explained that insisting on a proportionate response “would mean that, in retaliation for what Hamas did in Israel on October 7th Israel should try to locate a music festival in Gaza, for instance – and good luck with that – and rape precisely the number of women that Hamas raped on Saturday. Kill precisely the number of young people that Hamas killed on Saturday. They should find a town of exactly the same size as a town like Sderot, and make sure they go door-to-door and kill precisely the correct number of babies that Hamas killed in Sderot on Saturday, and shoot in the head precisely the same number of old age pensioners as were shot in Sderot on Saturday, just to choose one town.”

“Proportionality in conflict is a joke, and it’s a very strange British concept which we’ve had, that only the Israelis in the conflict, when they are attacked, are expected to have precisely the proportionate response,” added Murray.

And I (Wolf Paul) would add:

This is, unfortunately, not a specifically British problem; the entire West and of course the United Nations demand this, especially from Israel.

The civilian casualties in the Gaza Strip in the weeks since October 7 are largely attributable to Hamas, which places its terror facilities (which are legitimate targets under the laws of war) amid the civilian population, in and under schools and hospitals, in order to then present the world with the corpses of dead civilians, including children, as evidence of Israeli war crimes. And when the Israeli army, incidentally the only one in the world, warns civilians of impending attacks, they are sometimes prevented by Hamas from seeking safety.