My critics swear I hate Donald Trump. Set the record straight: I do not hate Donald Trump. After writing two books opposing his rhetoric and actions, The Immaculate Mistake and Good and Evil in the Garden of Evil, and more than 600 articles, I have never felt an ounce of hatred. I simply don’t like Trump.
Like Sam of “I don’t like green eggs and ham” fame, I don’t like Donald Trump. I can’t take him on television, at a live rally, on the radio, in person, in the White House, or outside Trump Tower. I do not like him.
I usually find liking people a cheerful and easy task. After all, I am a trained minister. The church and seminary taught me to be nice. I have expended a lot of energy attempting to like everyone, but I don’t like Donald Trump.
My people like Trump. I grew up in Union Parish, where 73.2% of voters cast ballots for Trump. I don’t understand why so many of my relatives voted for a bullying, blustering, bragging loudmouth reality television star. I have been fretting over this reality for eight years.
My wife says I should tell somebody. Here lately, worry and anger over this mess takes over a percentage of my sleep right off the top. So, I’m telling you, OK?
A Little League coach, old school borderline abusive, screamed at a group of 8- to 12-year-old boys: “This is my team, and you will do as you are told. You are a bunch of losers. You are slow, fat, out of shape, and you can’t play. Nobody in this league respects you. Your parents can barely stand to watch you on the field. You are going to shape up, and you are going to become real ballplayers. You are going to run until you drop. And if you don’t like it, you can take your glove and go home.”
All the kids, heads hanging to the ground, remained stuck to the bench in horrified silence. Except one 12-year-old boy. He slowly stood up, picked up his glove, walked out of the dugout, climbed over the fence and went home. We never saw him on the baseball field again. Some people don’t like being yelled at and degraded.
America doesn’t need to be made great again. America only needs to embrace its potentialities and release its vast emotional energies of empathy, generosity and concern for others.
The story returned from my subconscious history because I am sick and tired of listening to one of our politicians rant and rave about what a loser America is. I have never heard a president or ex-president talk that way about our country. This is a great country, flaws and all, and among the nations, it is the greatest country.
America doesn’t need to be made great again. America only needs to embrace its potentialities and release its vast emotional energies of empathy, generosity and concern for others, along with its imaginative and creative scientific spirit. A greater America is a good which would make all nations stronger. Just stop telling me we are a bunch of losers.
Bottom line, I’m not sure we will ever finish with all that mess about Trump’s lies, sordid affairs, impeachments, insurrection, vulgar and profane language, and awful policies. Even if Trump is pissing on the Constitution, repudiating the republic, and getting away with all his crimes, those are not the primary reasons for my refusal to support him. I don’t like loudmouth bullies.
I tend not to pay attention to preachers or politicians going on and on ’til Judgment Day with the constant repetition of messages of fear and the good old days. I’m OK if President Biden pardons Trump for all his manifold wickedness. I just can’t listen to the man.
One summer Saturday night when I was 17 years old, I dressed for the revival service at Antioch Baptist Church. The guest evangelist had been preaching every night for six nights, and I knew Saturday night he would preach on hell. This marked the last time I ever would willingly enter a church to be told what an awful sinner I was and scared into thinking I was going to die at any moment and go to hell.
For years, I had resented the endless parade of excessively loud — in voice and clothes — uneducated reverends screaming at me. With their rolled-up black leather King James Bibles, they punctured the air like aging boxers desperate to land one knockout punch.
On this Saturday night, the preacher would have no idea why I was grinning up at his twisted, tortured face, no idea I’d made up my mind never to suffer through another of his meaningless, meandering hellish sermons.
Such sermons were, in my mind, worthless, of no use to any one as they grew up in a 45-minute explosion of divisive phrases, hyperbole, untruthful and often incoherent claims, attempting to whip the crowd into a fearful frenzy, leaving us no choice but to thunder down the aisle to grasp the preacher’s hand and be saved from the certainty of a sure hell before dying like grass in the relentless 100-degree heat of August. The sermon withered there on the vine, living out its dying gasps of a desperate preacher pleading, “One more verse of ‘Just As I Am’ to keep some poor young soul from the pits of hell.”
I took my seat on the back pew, left side with the rest of the teenage boys of our country church. None of us was thinking of hell. We were thinking of beer, rolled cigarettes, catfish, purple hull peas cooked in bacon and girls, always girls.
It had been branded into my brain: “Before this time tomorrow I may be on my way to glory.” The preacher had endlessly suggested I might have a wreck in the one mile between the church and my house, die in the flaming wreck and go to hell because I had turned down my last chance to get saved. Never mind I had made the trek down the aisle every summer for five years because I would feel badly for the preacher because nobody was “getting saved.” I no longer believed the car-wreck story.
There’s too much hell here and now and not enough good Christians doing all they can to make it less hellish.
I don’t begrudge those souls still fretting over hell. I quit the belief 57 years ago. I believe I’m covered by blessed assurance. I’ve been fretting over this for all these years. I’ve never really credited any type of hell as an eternal destination. There’s too much hell here and now and not enough good Christians doing all they can to make it less hellish.
I just don’t tolerate preachers or politicians telling me I’m a loser, or sorry, or that nobody respects me.
Perhaps I am merely bored by speakers who only have one stump speech. Trump has been saying the same awful thing for eight years. He can’t stop yapping about the border, the immigrants, the losers, the crazy people, the sick people or how awful our country is.
So, I’ve stopped listening.
Trump is a bully Little League coach. Trump is a hellfire and damnation preacher. Trump is a boring politician characterized by harsh words, violent imagery and scary language. I tried to like him for the sake of all my first, second and third cousins who asked me to give him a chance. I’ve read his speeches. I’ve watched him at his rallies, in his televised appearances, his inaugural address and his Jan. 6 speech. They all sound the same. I don’t like him.
There. I told you. You deserved to know. I feel better. Thank you.
Rodney Kennedy
Rodney W. Kennedy is a pastor and writer in New York state. He is the author of 10 books, including his latest, Good and Evil in the Garden of Democracy.
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