Transcription
Hey everybody. So, this is the last of three videos that I've been making responding to what I called three obnoxious ways that Christians defend Donald Trump. And as I said in the earlier videos, basically I'm responding to hundreds of similar comments that I've received in this channel. And even though some of these comments might not intend even to defend Trump, they're pushing a defense of authority for authority's sake that I just find to be unbiblical, unhelpful, and frankly dangerous. And I'm including these videos in this playlist that I'm doing on fascism because I think that it's this kind of thinking that makes Christians really useful to authoritarians.
And so I've talked about one comment in particular to explain all of this because this comment came from somebody who's not a Trump supporter, but he warned me that I've been overstepping in my criticisms of Trump. And again, the fact that he doesn't support Trump, yet he wants me to be more respectful of Trump because, you know, authority, uh, that's just a perfect example, I think, of how authoritarians manipulate Christians into supporting some obviously wicked things.
Basically, for a lot of believers, if Al Capone were still alive, they would say, "Well, yeah, he's obviously a terrible guy." But if somehow he managed to fool enough Americans into voting for him for president, then they'd say, "Well, he's God's man, so I'm not going to criticize him." And just everything inside of me recoils at that kind of thinking. It's unbiblical and it's absurd on its face. And that's how we end up with a criminal as president.
So, I'm not going to dwell on this specific comment today because I shared I shared all of it in in the previous two videos that I did, but I am going to point out just a little bit about it. So, I'm going to show that the commenter objected to a few phrases that I've used to describe Trump and his administration. And he wrote, "Insulting the Trump administration as a clown show and the president as a fascist mob boss are not only beneath you, brother, they insult God's choice and resist his will." And then later in the comment, he wrote, "Please be careful regarding how you think and speak of this and every president. As Christians, we are to honor the king. Your words dishonor whom God has chosen for his own national and international purposes."
So today I'm talking specifically about why I have zero reservations about telling the harsh truth about Donald Trump and why it's necessary to mock him. People like him and his goons and the horse they rode in on if Christine Noom hasn't shot the horse in the face yet. So since I'll be talking about mockery, I will just say um I can take it too. I don't, you know, I know some of you are going to want to say some things in the comments and I just don't have a problem with that. You know, I've heard it all and and I just I'm going to tell you though that whatever you say in the comments, you are not going to do better. I don't mean this as a challenge, but you are not going to do better than my favorite comment I ever got, which was very simply, "Shut up, Baldi. Shut up, Baldi." That's the best ever. That comment. Seriously, when I got it, it made my day and I might just be built different, but I just I thought it was really funny and I laughed and I just kind of enjoy that sort of thing.
So, I just need to say about this comment, you know, I hate to break it to you, but anyone who's spent some time with me is going to know that calling Trump a fascist mob boss is not beneath me. I mean, I got hauled out of the Target Center in October of 2019 for standing up, you know, in front of thousands of people by myself during a Trump rally and shouting that sort of thing at him while he was speaking. So, I've been doing this for a while and I've said worse things than that about him because they're true. I have no regrets because everything I've said about him has been true and it's been proven to be true. And if these things are true, then how dare we pretend that they're not true? And how dare we downplay these things about him just because he's in a position of authority when millions of people are being hurt by Trump and his policies? How dare we not point that out? And worst of all, how dare we go all quiet and respectful and call that Christian maturity? I'm just not willing to do that. And I'm not going to pretend that I have any respect for that kind of authoritarian teaching from the Bible. It's wrong. And it's an indictment on the evangelical church in America and other churches, too. That they've convinced millions of Christians that complicity is somehow spiritual maturity. So, no, it's not beneath me to call Trump a mob boss or a criminal because that's objectively what he is. Or else the English language just stops meaning anything.
So, believe it or not though, I don't enjoy controversy. I don't like having to speak directly like that. And someday, I'd love to not have to talk about those things, but for now, God made me truthful. And when I tell the truth, I feel his pleasure. What about outright mockery, though? Isn't mockery a bridge too far? Psalm 1 warns us not to do the things that sinners do or to to sit in the seat of mockers, it says. So, I understand why some people would say that that's a slam dunk. We just dare not mock anyone. But the context of that psalm makes it explicit that the mockers are mocking God and they're mocking the way of God. And of course, we don't mock God. But then the next psalm, the very next one, Psalm 2, shows God mocking the kingdoms of the world who rage against him. It says, "Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth rise up and the rulers band together against the Lord and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their chains and throw off their shackles." The one enthroned in heaven laughs. The Lord scoffs at them. So mockery and scoffing in and of themselves are not out of bounds. And if mockery isn't beneath God, it's certainly not beneath Pat from Mano.
But the psalm does show a pattern for the sorts of things that God mocks. These arrogant kings of the earth, you know, that are banding together against God. Mockery and scoffing in the Bible pierce the pretenses of wicked rulers. And so if I had more time, I could lay out about a dozen examples from scripture. For example, Jesus mocked the religious leaders of his day, the religious leaders. And he called Herod, a civil leader. He called Herod a fox. But I'm sure I'll return to that topic another day and go deeper into it. But I do want to say this for now. In general in the Bible, mockery is something that the prophets do and they do it to take down false power, corrupt power, you know. So there we've got this example of Elisha mocking the prophets of Baal. He challenged them to prove the power of their god, Baal. And when they couldn't get Baal to bring down fire from heaven, in the ESV translation, Elisha says, "Cry aloud for he is a god." Either he's musing or he's relieving himself. I mean, that's kind of a rude thing to say about somebody's false god. You know, maybe he's relieving himself. That's why he's not bringing down fire from heaven. Or maybe he's on a journey or perhaps he's asleep and must be awakened. So, he was mocking them. And we see that pattern in the prophets. They use mockery as one tool to help people to see the ridiculousness of a situation. They use it to expose the powerful as frauds. It's sort of like the emperor has no clothes. You know the story. Everyone's afraid to say out loud that the emperor has no clothes, but then a little kid says it out loud and everyone else then gets the courage to say it.
Except Trump isn't naked. Thankfully, he's a criminal clown. That's his problem. And too many people are afraid to say it. But I could see a kid standing in the Oval Office and listening to Donald Trump talk and just innocently pointing and saying, "Look at that clown. Look at that clown with the big red tie and all that makeup and the crazy hat. Why isn't everyone laughing? Listen to all the nonsense he's saying. Why aren't you laughing?" But then the kid might look closer and say, "Oh, wait. He's like that clown from that Stephen King movie. That that movie I'm not old enough to watch yet, but I saw the preview." The thing is that kid needs some adults to say, "Yeah, he is a clown. You're right." And those adults need to go further and say, "And and you know what? He is a bad clown. You're right about that, too." Because if we don't mock the ridiculous, we normalize it. And not only that, when we're afraid to mock what's obviously ridiculous, we empower it. And we teach everyone around us that you have reason to be afraid of this clown. Fear is one of the greatest weapons of an authoritarian. And when we give into fear, when we let it silence us, it just feeds into more fear in the people around us.
Donald Trump is, he just is the most ridiculous figure to hold the office of the presidency. And not by just a little bit, but by several standard deviations from the mean. And if we don't mock him, we become him. And that's exactly what's happened to the Republican party. They thought they could just cuddle Trump and they thought they could just welcome Trump's voters into the party and not call out the absurdity of the cult. But by not calling out the absurdity, they became the cult. And just like in every other authoritarian movement, one by one, all the independent thinkers have been pushed out. And now some of the worst people in America, the ones who who are willing to go along with with this ridiculousness, those worst people in America are in the cabinet. It's a farce. And to not call it a farce is to normalize it. It is a clown show.
So I will talk about this a lot more in the future, but I'm just want to end with a couple of maybe helpful ways to think about this. First of all, I don't think it's okay to mock just anyone just for mockery's sake. I obviously think that's terrible. And I don't think it's okay to mock people who are less powerful than yourself. As a general rule, I'm talking about mockery here as a specific tool that prophets and others I think comedians are pro. I think Stephen Colbert is playing the role of a prophet in our culture right now. Prophets use mockery as a tool for exposing corrupt power. And one of the worst things about Trump is that he does the opposite. He punches down at people who are already suffering. He punches down at people who are less powerful himself, but he praises people like Vladimir Putin because he's afraid of Vladimir Putin. He sees in Vladimir Putin a man who's more powerful than himself, you know, but he gives nicknames to anyone that he views as less powerful and he sicks his crowd on anyone who dares to oppose him. It's just another way that Trump shames himself and he shames our country every day. So that's one thing I would say. Don't punch down. Don't mock people who already have a hard enough time getting through life.
I'm talking about a specific use case for mockery to expose corrupt power and to take away the fear of he who shall not be named. If you've got a guy sitting in the Oval Office who, for instance, doesn't understand that the Oval Office is decorated a certain way throughout history to show that a president is an executive, not a king. So he sits there, this guy does, and brags about all this cheap goddy gold decoration that he's brought in while his pancake makeup oozes off his face. And he brags about making himself the head of the Kennedy Center and talks about loving musicals like cats. You could quietly, fearfully reflect on everything that's wrong with that scene. But if you just do it quietly and fearfully, then you just feed into the fear of he who shall not be named. Or you could name him. You could call him the low rent Liberace from Mar-a-Lago and an awful lot of people would feel less crazy because you said what they're all thinking and you'd be doing the Lord's work. So thanks for listening.