I have never really understood my fellow Americans who vote for or against a politician based on their personality. I mean, at some level, you want to vote for someone you’d like to have as your next door neighbor–you don’t have to think too hard to understand why Kamala Harris’s poll numbers are deep underwater. But when I look at politicians, I’m thinking principally transactionally–what is that politician going to do that is going to make America better or make it worse? The Trump phenomenon is especially enigmatic to me: Trumpians that absolutely adore Mr. Trump no matter what he says or does, and those that hate Mr. Trump, mostly because of what he says or does, I don’t quite understand. Now words do matter, but policies matter a lot more–at least to me. As an obvious example, Republicans are historically against big government spending and Democrats are in favor, yet Mr. Trump embraced spending vigorously with many Republicans silent, and Democrats still hating him. This I don’t completely understand.

But the hatred of Donald Trump I can understand, at least in part. It’s always been a part of politics (at least in my lifetime) to vilify your opponents at some level: Republicans vilify their political enemies as wanting to destroy America and the values we hold dear (Ted Kennedy, Barack Obama, AOC & the Squad), and the progressive left does the same (with a slight twist of the animosity being a bit more personal, i.e., hating Newt Gingrich, or Mitch McConnell and especially Donald Trump because they are bad people, which is reflected in what they want to do).* Political fundraising letters and attack ads are almost always going to have some variant of “if you don’t send me money/vote for me, so and so is going to destroy what you hold dear.”

Yet this reality was taken to an off-the-charts level with Donald Trump. Well before the stain of his presidency of his post-2020 election behavior, many Americans seemed to enjoy hatred of him before he ever took at step into the White House. The general public is increasingly learning what most of us knew all along–the Russian collusion story was a Clinton concoction from Day One. But why was it so willingly embraced? Because hating someone else from a moral perspective, i.e., I’m angry at this person because their values are rotten, makes me feel better about myself.** First, because my anger at them totally takes the focus away from me and any shortcomings I have. And second, because my anger is a righteous anger, I know that I’m true to my moral principles, and that makes me a better person. This is a danger for all of us; certainly for me. It’s easy to hate those who hate God (and at some level we should***), but we need to remind ourselves that our enemies are blinded by the evil one****, and we need to pray that God would open their eyes to the truth and give them the gift of repentance.

This past week saw continuing examples of the progressive negative fixation on Donald Trump. In the milder case, consider Mr. Obama’s repudiation of Mr. Trump at the climate summit. To Mr. Obama’s credit, he did not invoke a visceral animosity to Mr. Trump, but he nonetheless called him out as a locus of the forces that are threatening to destroy the planet. But Mr. Biden put on the strongest of emotional tirades against Mr. Trump, when he declared:

if because of the outrageous behavior of the last administration, you come across the border either legally or illegally, and you lost your child! You lost your child! He’s gone! you deserve some kind of compensation no matter what the circumstances. (emphasis by Mr. Biden)

You really need to click through to the link (the clip is short) to get the righteous anger that Mr. Biden displayed (sorry I was unable to embed it directly). The interesting thing is how Mr. Biden is able to totally (in his mind) transfer any blame of his administration’s pursuit of paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to illegal immigrants because of his revulsion to Donald Trump’s “outrageous behavior.” I’m quite sure that whatever millions of dollars the administration adds to our children’s national debt for “some kind of compensation” will be blamed on Donald Trump. They have already convinced themselves that this settlement will be cheaper, even though in negotiating with the ACLU lawyers they are negotiating with themselves (with your tax dollars). And to their base, it will likely give another reason to hate Donald Trump–not only did he do this to these children, but we have to pay for it. And in the stewing of their anger at Mr. Trump, they can feel just a bit better about what kind of good person they are.

There is surely a time to be angry at what our political enemies have done, but the outcome of that anger at should be prayer and lament. And then we all need to get to work to make future policies better.

* Thomas Sowell elaborates on this point in his fantastic book, Conflict of Visions. Those of the unconstrained view (which fits most progressives) highly value intentions, and generally will not credit those of the constrained worldview with good intentions. The people who fit the constrained view, however, are much more willing to grant good intentions, with the focus on the fact that intentions are not enough. Yes, I generally fit in with the constrained view.

** Yes this “righteous anger” leading to moral superiority can affect us all, as I wrote about here.

*** But remember how the imprecatory Psalms should be viewed.

**** Ephesians 2:1-3: And you were dead in your offenses and sins, ² in which you previously walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. ³ Among them we too all previously lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the rest.