Donald Trump is a breath of fresh air. His ideas may be simplistic. His statements sometimes outrageous. But he clearly believes in what he is doing. And his heartbeat resonates with the deepest streams of the American national psyche. This man is the message. When he says he wants to make America great again – he absolutely means it.
Of course the liberal New Zealand media can’t stand him. As usual they are doing their best to reduce him to caricatured package they can deliver to us whilst they smirk at how ridiculous he and the millions of Americans who support him are. Their reporting is more a reflection of their own small-mindedness and immaturity than it is an accurate portrayal of politics in the United States.
Perhaps the most telling point Trump makes is the criticism he has received from all sides about his “tone”. As he points out, ISIS are committing atrocities and perpetuating barbaric cruelty in a manner not seen for centuries. And yet he is the one being criticised for his “tone” in denouncing them.
Trump has the courage to say what needs to be said. In so doing he is breaking the media stranglehold on what is permitted to be said in our national debates. The fear of being of being media roasted for giving voice to ideas that offend the established paradigm, intimidates most politicians into bland platitudes. The result is the stifling monotone that prevails in political debate in most western countries.
Trump is one of those leaders who breaks the monotone. He says things that are not “allowed” to be said. Doing so breaks open the room and lets fresh air in.
Bono of U2 sings in one of his US concerts of how he loves America. “You got soul!” he cries.
Donald Trump has soul. I like him.
Ewen McQueen
February 2016
RenewNZ 
Your right, he relates to the common person. This is why I have supported him for
So long
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Well said. I think Trump’s biggest social contribution to date is that he has broken the gag on free speech. He has ignored the stereotypical tags – racist, sexist, Islamaphobic. The great debate has really begun and the politically correct opponents of free speech are powerless .
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It is bizarre how instead of talking about Trump’s actual flaws the bulk of the coverage in New Zealand is all about how Trump is an extremist and “downright scary” (Theresa Gattung, Herald, 10 February). It is not as though Trump’s candidacy does not have real shortcomings. He is hardly an Abe Lincoln having been a major investor in casinos, had some of his businesses go through chapter 11 bankruptcy, and having had 3 marriages.
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The latest article I saw about Trump (mercifully not from New Zealand) was all about how “Trump can never be taken seriously again.” Why? Is it because his ban on Muslims entering the US might be impractical and unconstitutional? No, it is because he ordered well done steak at a restaurant!
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Hi! I saw your post on Facebook and happen to be studying Trump and his campaign with my class at the moment so I couldn’t resist! I think it’s good that you’ve allowed some dialogue on this and you aren’t afraid to actually speak your mind on it! But I’ve come to be pretty certain that as a Christian, I can’t support his views or the way he speaks about others, and I also think he’s a bit ignorant with a lot of what he says and it’s disappointing that it’s appealing to so many people. So I thought I’d jump in. Sorry if it’s a bit direct! I tend to do that in my writing, but would be keen to have a good chat about it in person 🙂
1. “He is a breath of fresh air.” If you mean that he is different from standard ‘boring’ politics that are too intricate and complicated, then yes, he’s fresh air. Donald Trump calls it as he sees it, he speaks his mind. This is refreshing. He doesn’t care what people think, he isn’t constrained to financial backers to keep his message on the page. But this doesn’t negate his constant negative rhetoric of demonising the “other”. Whether it’s Mexicans, Muslims, women or people he believes are “losers”, the “other” is always the problem. He points the finger and shifts the blame to people outside of whatever circle he wants to draw at the time. He constantly evades talking about the complexities of issues and uses grand but ultimately hollow statements like “make America great again” and “we’re going to win” and calls people (such as the entire state of Iowa) stupid when they don’t agree with him, rather than address the reasons why.
2. “He clearly believes in what he is doing.” Yes. Protecting his own interests from people that are labelled by him as the enemy. I think we can safely assume that he believes in his message, but his message itself is what we really need to look at properly.
3. “His heartbeat resonates with the deepest streams of the American national psyche.” Well, yes and no. There is a very strong group that resonate with what Trump is saying. They tend to be white, uneducated and the working class poor, who are frustrated by the economic system that hasn’t delivered on its promises to give them the realisation of the American Dream. He is capitalising on their uneducated and misinformed fears around Islamic extremists and their grossly misinformed generalisations about immigrants, and their limited grasp on international tensions and the problems that face the world. He glosses over all of this with a triumphalistic and violent rhetoric that makes his “solutions” (I use this word very liberally here) seem so appealing. Just because it resonates with people, does it make it right? Hitler resonated with a significant portion of his population too…
““When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending the best. They’re not sending you, they’re sending people that have lots of problems and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bring crime. They’re rapists… And some, I assume, are good people… I will build a great wall – and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me – and I’ll build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words.”
Can anyone give me a “love your enemy’? The words of Jesus are so important to listen to here, and are so much better than this talk of “They’re the baddies – let’s get them!”
4. “Their reporting is more a reflection of their own small-mindedness and immaturity than it is an accurate portrayal of politics in the United States.” Actually, I think he does this all by himself. There is simply no easy way to make him into any kind of viable option for leading the most powerful country in the world, and the fact that he is even taken seriously is just symptomatic of the xenophobic culture that exists within certain demographics within the United States. You only have to read his own Twitter page to see how immature he is with his swipes at people and the way he responds to failure.
“The other candidates — they went in, they didn’t know the air conditioning didn’t work. They sweated like dogs…How are they gonna beat ISIS? I don’t think it’s gonna happen.”
This is schoolyard bully talk in my opinion.
5. “ISIS are committing atrocities and perpetuating barbaric cruelty in a manner not seen for centuries.” I think we need to really think about this one carefully. The history of ISIS and Western intervention in the Middle East is super complicated with America and the United Nations killing millions and committing atrocities. These aren’t reported in the same way because it isn’t our people getting killed. This is a product of our media’s focus and blinds us to the fact that there is no moral high ground for us to take when it comes to violence and terror. One quick google search to find Osama Bin Laden’s views will not find mindless terrorist views built on the Quran, but frustration at breaking point at the complete disparity between uses of power. Just have a read of this, there has NEVER been an innocent good guy in the matter:
http://www.quoteauthors.com/osama-bin-laden-quotes/
Trump oversimplifies the problem of ISIS by pandering to the popularist view and oversimplifying incredibly complex international tensions. The US are not the good guys here, it isn’t as simple as this. We just happen to be on America’s team and so it’s easy for the media to paint these people, just as Trump does, as the “other” and bad.
6. “Trump has the courage to say what needs to be said… The fear of being of being media roasted for giving voice to ideas that offend the established paradigm, intimidates most politicians into bland platitudes.” Courage or just brazen arrogance and ignorance? Not hard to be brave when you think you’re right and people who disagree are idiots.
Simply put, Trump’s message is so inconsistent with the message of Jesus that I think it’s actually really astounding that any Christian would support him. We follow a God that would lay his life down for his enemies, constantly embrace the outsider, befriend and forgive the sinner and give himself up to violence and death and rather than respond to it with even more violence, and forgo retribution to choose forgiveness. Trump is anti-gospel. Yes, he says what he thinks. But when we raise up an ideal or value like “speaking your mind” above the self-giving person of Christ, we miss the destructive undertones of what someone like Trump is saying. Jesus is what God is really like, and this is great news – it transcends our systems of retribution and revenge. I’m really angry that he would attach Christianity to his ideology. All of this from a guy who has solutions that look strangely similar to the atrocities we were talking about before:
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/donald-trump-inspired-tale-bullets-pig-blood-article-1.2538283
Quite frankly, I can think of nothing more terrifying than the idea of Trump with his finger on the button of a nuclear weapon. This guy can’t lose, and if he does, he has to always bite back harder. The prospect of him having so much influence on the global-political landscape is all feeling a bit 1932 to me…
Anyway, would be interested to hear your thoughts! In any case, this guy says all of this way better than I ever could:
http://johnpavlovitz.com/2016/02/21/donald-trump-is-a-christian-leader-south-carolina-and-the-gop-just-said-so/
I hope this was heard in the right way! Like I said, i just couldn’t resist responding, and I’m really interested to see what you think in response to my reflections on it all. See you on Sunday hopefully!
Sam
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Totally agree Sam. Well said. Glad you wrote a response to this. Everything you have said ‘resonates’ with me, as a Christian and a concerned onlooker as this circus continues to perform.
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