In his inaugural speech yesterday, Donald Trump talked about God. A lot. Here is just one of various times he invoked the (to use his words) almighty Creator:
“We will be protected by the great men and women of our military and law enforcement and, most importantly, we are protected by God.”
He uses this framework as part of an argument that America’s priority should be to look out for itself, and that, essentially, all those other nations we currently trade with can just go screw themselves.
So as far as I can tell, what he is saying is this: We will beat out those nasty Chinese and other competing nation states because God is on our side.
I am trying to follow his logic here. If God is the major reason for our greatness as a country, why do we need to make America great again? Has the Divine Creator somehow been slacking off?
Even worse, since China is doing so well and has been making all our stuff, is Trump suggesting that God has been moonlighting, sneaking over to those godless asian countries and showering His divine bounty upon them when He thought we weren’t looking?
Maybe somebody can explain it for me.
The reasoning goes something like this. God is on our side, generally speaking. But when the people fall away from righteousness then the country is beset with floods, earthquakes, global warming, and unrighteousness. The solution is to return to God and do the right thing in his Name, such as destroying health care, killing women, and murdering children. Then God will forgive us and return the country to greatness. That is my understanding of these things.