This week’s Mediahuis Irish regional newspapers’ column.
Michael Commane
After the Super Tuesday elections in the US when Donald Trump became the only Republican candidate left standing for the party in the upcoming November election I listened to an hour-long rally he held in Dayton, Ohio.
It was horrific, yes, total horror. A woman with the name Fanni Willis is Georgia’s prosecutor in the state’s election interference case against Donald Trump. At his rally in Dayton Trump made outrageous comments about the woman, making the most vulgar and inappropriate remarks about the woman’s name. I can’t believe what he said.
The hour-long diatribe was a lesson in how to be nasty, how to say vile and outrageous words about people. But what scared me most about his rally was the more extreme his vileness and nastiness was, the more the crowd cheered and screamed in adulation.
Some days later I listened to a speech Adolf Hitler gave on the seventh anniversary of coming to power on January 30, 1940. I know full well it is totally taboo to compare anyone or any situation to Hitler but the more I hear Trump, the more I think of the German dictator.
There is another similarity, the nastier Trump gets, the louder are the cries of approval from the crowd and so it was with Hitler. It is all beyond frightening.
How the world has changed. In 1988 Gary Hart’s bid for the US presidency was derailed after journalists reported on one of his affairs. Innocent times indeed.
Trump’s sheer outrageousness gets more outrageous.
Did you know he is now selling Bibles? I heard him say he has many Bibles at home, and what’s wrong with America today is that it has lost religion. You couldn’t make it up.
The day after the terrorist attack at the Crocus City Hall in a Moscow suburb, where 143 people were killed, Russian president Vladimir Putin was seen lighting candles and blessing himself in church.
Trump and Putin set me thinking of religion, the good and the bad of it and how it can be misused to ruin and fool people.
I’m worried about the ever-growing influence that right-wing religion is playing in Ireland at present.
When I see tele evangelist-style preachers coming here from the US to spread the word of God as they see it, I get nervous. I watched one on YouTube last week. I was anything but impressed. It’s that brand of religion that seems to have all the answers. There’s even an aspect of smart-alekyness about it all. They know best and everything in the world is wrong and bad and we are all heading for damnation, that is, unless we listen to them.
When I was a student we were more interested in the divide between rich and poor and what was happening in Vietnam than in how many candles should be lighting on an altar. The world is a funny old place, religion too.
Pope Francis has spent his pontificate trying to nudge us in a healthier direction. One senses he knows how divided we are and the need for bridges to be built, for common sense to prevail.
No comments:
Post a Comment