by Talmadge Jarratee
Just as the 14 incredibly shrinking men and the shriveled wicked witch running for the GOP presidential nomination fawn over and pander to and curry favor with the billionaires usurping the power of the people for money, they are now trampling all over each other as they pander to and fawn over and seek favor with Jesus. All the incredibly shrinking men have made it resoundingly clear that Jesus is THEIR friend and inspiration. Huckabee, the Christ-crazed huckster, appears to have stamped his patent on the Jesus factor, therefore herding evangelicals and rhapsodic worshippers. Whiter-than-white, pencil-neck Governor Walker, whose feeble presence seems a minute notch above Jeb Bush, smugly claims his adoration of Jesus because his father was a clergyman who obviously set his
son on the course of the single-handed ruination of the state of Wisconsin. Others, like Santorum and Cruz, who would love to abolish all manner of abortion, same-sex marriage, as well as voting rights, Obamacare and anything else that might aid the poor, seem almost biblical in their praise of Jesus.
As a party, the GOP has gotten down on its hands and knees before the sanctimonious American public and observed Jesus as their savior and the moral compass of the Greatest Nation ever in the world! When questioned a few years back at a debate on whether they believed in Jesus, every hand went up, accompanied by beneficent smiles.
The Donald takes another tack. The Donald momentarily notches down from his stern terse nonstop bombastic dominance and sweetly admits he likes church. The Donald says he liked Sunday school, a place hated by most kids growing up because public school was enough and Sunday school was on a par with church and sermonizing when it came to interminable and insufferable boredom. The Donald likes the bible. The Donald talks of his past and current church with the warmth and appreciation of an astute businessman schmoozing a stern and imperious bishop or pope. How else could the Donald fill a stadium in Mobile, Alabama, with a horde of more than 30,000 fat God-fearing white folks and perhaps a three or four black Baptists?
When asked how often he attended his church by a sharp and leery inquisitor of the media, Trump casually claimed “as much as he could,” which seemed odd from a nonstop busy, mercurial, expedient and impatient person as Trump, a person who seems incapable of enduring the humbling of himself before anybody, much less lose the center of attention to a cloaked and gowned ecclesiastic droning on about such stale subjects as sacrifice, salvations, quotes from the bible, and other assorted lectures aimed at guilt-mongering and money-snatching; the former something the Donald will ignore, the latter he will fulfill as he has the coffers of those he needs for future exploitation.
I was starting to really like the Donald in all his swinishness because I felt deep down inside he thought all this Jesus stuff is bullshit, just another charade by typical phony politicians trained to pose and lie, and would spank these incredibly shrinking hypocrites for their cheesy hero-worship of The Man, because Jesus would never in His right mind approve of their mean-spirited behavior and dehumanizing comments and treatment of immigrants, something an unshackled nonbeliever like I thought the Donald was could get away with.
I wonder if at some point the Jesus punditry so commonly seen on cable news stations
begin issuing doubts about the Donald’s devotion to Jesus. Will they not be happy until the Donald walks among the nut-house zealots as a skulking born-again like the blundering Bush who corralled the entire evangelical born-again populace to win office in 2000 and go on to wreck the country? Like Bush, will he allude that Jesus talked to him about his major decisions, and especially the one to go to war and bomb the living be-Jesus out of Iraq?
This remains to be seen. Trump continues to climb in the polls. He is becoming a brighter and bigger star every day, delivering riveting speeches without notes and showing his mental agility and feel for the podium each passing day as he lands in his own plane and addresses huge crowds as a savior/potentate. The question is, will the Donald at some point feel he is bigger than Jesus? The 14 incredibly shrinking men and the shriveling wicked witch certainly hope so, because it might be their last gasp to jump on him and accuse the seemingly unstoppable and indomitable Donald as a thrice-married, draft-dodging, money-grubbing, sinning heathen.
Talmadge Jarratee writes about politics and occasional sketches of San Francisco and, because of his views, may soon be homeless. For more on Talmadge, visit dellfranklin.com
