End times rhetoric shows GOP’s distorted reality
Michael Gerson The end is near. Or not. At various points in our history, popular preaching has warned that history itself was about to culminate and cease. Many sermons of the revolutionary era (with more patriotic zeal than theological sophistication) identified King George III as the Antichrist and associated the founding of America with the onset of the Millennium.
This was enough to frighten Thomas Jefferson’s 11-year-old daughter, Martha, who received a comforting letter from her father. “I hope you will have good sense enough to disregard those foolish predictions that the world is to be at an end soon,” he wrote. “The Almighty has never made known to anybody at what time He created it; nor will He tell anybody when He will put an end to it, if He ever means to do it.”
Martha certainly would be losing sleep today. “Our country is going to hell,” according to Donald Trump. America is headed for the “cliff to oblivion,” according to Ted Cruz. America is “very much like Nazi Germany,” according to Ben Carson. All are apparently running for president of a dystopia.
Some of this is rhetorical laziness — employing hyperbole as a cheap substitute for genuine passion.
But there is a cost to using the apocalypse for emphasis. It hardly needs to be said (though apparently it does) that Trump, Cruz and Carson are wrong. We are not like Nazi Germany, even a little bit. We are not teetering on the verge of national oblivion. And there are immigrants who risk everything to reach the country Trump consigns to hell.
Apocalyptic rhetoric is more than the evidence of historical ignorance and bad speechwriting. It leads to a distorted politics. If America has reached its midnight hour, it means that the institutions that have gotten us here are utterly discredited. Proposals for incremental policy change are so much deck-chair arranging. What we really need is to call a constitutional convention. Or to conduct a massive police action removing 11 million immigrants here illegally. Or to elect a really strong leader who knocks heads and sets everything straight.
Many candidates have used apocalyptic language. But it is Trump who seems to understand its true potential. If, as he says, we are “losing the country,” then the country needs, not a policy wonk or a legislative strategist, but a deliverer. Build the wall. Take the oil. Defeat the Islamic State. Put the Chinese in their place. With details on everything to be worked out by minions.
Trump and Carson can succeed only if the end times are upon us. And I don’t mean that in a theological way. In normal times, innovative policy and governing skill would matter most in selecting a president. Successful governors and legislators would naturally rise to the top. Only in a crisis of institutional legitimacy does the outsider become the savior. Since the politicians have made such a hash of things, they insist, a businessman or a neurosurgeon couldn’t possibly do worse. Oh, yes they could. It may be possible to convince a good portion of the Republican primary electorate that American institutions have gone to hell. If so, during the general election, the institution in crisis would be the Republican Party.