"Let no one be mistaken - Donald Trump's candidacy is a cancer on conservatism, and it must be clearly diagnosed, excised and discarded," Perry said.... "It cannot be pacified or ignored, for it will destroy a set of principles that has lifted more people out of poverty than any force in the history of the civilized world - the cause of conservatism.... [M]ost telling to me is not Mr. Trump's bombast, his refusal to show any remorse for his comments about Senator McCain, but his admission that there is not a single time in his life that he sought the forgiveness of God... A man too arrogant, too self-absorbed, to seek God's forgiveness is precisely the type of leader John Adams prayed would never occupy the White House."November 25, 2019: "Rick Perry says Trump is the 'chosen one' sent 'to do great things'" (The Hill).
"God's used imperfect people all through history. King David wasn't perfect. Saul wasn't perfect. Solomon wasn't perfect,” Perry said in the clip. “And I actually gave the president a little-one pager on those Old Testament kings about a month ago and I shared it with him... I said, 'Mr. President, I know there are people that say you said you were the chosen one and I said, 'You were.’ I said, 'If you're a believing Christian, you understand God's plan for the people who rule and judge over us on this planet in our government.'"It's all in the plan, including cancer.
If you make it to the top, you're the chosen one, that time. As for John Adams, who prayed that a man like Trump would never occupy the White House (according to Perry), he must have been the chosen one in 1796 when he won the presidency, but being chosen once doesn't mean you'll be chosen twice, and he was not the chosen one when he ran for reelection in 1800. So even if you subscribe to this notion that the winner is necessarily the chosen one, it doesn't mean that "chosen one" Trump will win in 2020.
The plan is always a mystery until we see what happens.
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95 comments:
Rick Perry is smart. This was a master class in speechifying...
Oops...
Oh, Ann. The headline "Sometimes God chooses cancer" doesn't met your cruel neutrality standard.
Perry was campaigning against Trump and he was attacking Trump's weak spot: his arrogance and overblown style. It was all opinion.
Perry and Trump reconciled. Perry learned.
I wasn't in Trump's corner in the beginning, but I've been totally won over since the election. He's 10x better than I ever imagined. He's taken on the poor economy, Dems, the Fake News, the Deep State, the CAGW scam, illegal immigration, China, Russia and ISIS and won every battle. He's the best President. Ever!
Nobody cares about 2016 campaign speeches. A lotta ugly inflammatory stuff is said during the campaign, but once the vote happens, and a candidate is selected, all that stuff goes poof and is forgotten.
I don't have to like the man. The policies acted upon are what matters.
It's all in the plan, including cancer.
The Problem of Occam's Butterknife.
Rick Perry has been corrupted, that's how corruption works.
Obama was the Chosen One. Hillary wants to be the Chosen One. Adam Schiff wants to be Hillary.
Trump is the President. Everyone else is just another commenter.
You're our only hope Obi-Wan.
The big guy giveth and the big guy taketh away.
Dave Begley said...
“Oh, Ann. The headline "Sometimes God chooses cancer" doesn't met your cruel neutrality standard. “
Oh, David. That headline exactly fits Althouse's “cruel neutrality” standard.
God doesn't tell us ahead of time what is going to happen because if he did we would insist on helping.
Unlike God, we have no idea how things are supposed to go.
CNN stumbled (unwittingly) into the truth in their article saying the world is upside down:
"(The rest of the nation is on an entirely different planet from Washington, DC, with voters more worried about lost industrial jobs, how to pay for healthcare and mountains of student debt.)"
I thought Jesus was busy throughout autumn helping out winning high school and college football teams.
A lot of us have changed our minds about Trump. His personality is the same, but if one simply looks at the effect of the policies he's implemented it's hard for any conservative/Republican to complain. Unless you're Jennifer Rubin. Who has taken leave of her senses.
Perry -- eh, he couldn't remember which cabinet departments he wanted to cut. Dude was never ready for prime time.
Maybe its God's plan to not answer prayers. Maybe its God's plan to pick his spots, and intervene when and where he chooses, and otherwise gives people free will. Anyway, if you want to know why Trump won the R nomination just read Perry's speech. Its hysterical and laughable. Trump is cancer. Trump was mean to John McCain. Trump is a Godless Heathen who wants to renegotiate NAFTA.
Miss Lindsey was doing the same thing in 2015/2-16, and like Perry, dropped it the second Trump became President, because it was all an act. All his accusations of racism/sexism/homophobia against Trump were insincere, he was using those labels as a weapon, just like the Left does.
"Oh, Ann. The headline "Sometimes God chooses cancer" doesn't met your cruel neutrality standard."
Because it's too cruel?
If you believe in God in the way Perry is talking about believing that it's all in the plan, then God is choosing cancer for millions of people, continually, even little children.
Perry also used cancer as a metaphor for Trump, and then God chose Trump.
The headline is perfect.
@David Begley
“The headline is perfect”
Told ya so.
Okay, these guys came over to my house; and they told me that Donald Trump is a deranged maniac, that spends his time watching Gorilla TV, and drinking diet sodas.
I told them i was concerned, and needed to know more:
WHAT Channel was this Gorilla TV on? What BRAND of diet soda was Trump drinking?
I NEEDED to know,
So that i could buy cable subscriptions, and cases of this diet soda for my OTHER republican politicians
I can't lose this man, he fights
Perry always struck me as a blockhead, but he could be one of those guys who just aren't quick on their feet or good at making speeches. Like Jerry Ford.
Those two quotes lay bare why Rick Perry and so many others failed themselves to be the standard bearers of conservatism. The vacuity of the first underscores the obsequiousness of the second.
For so long and for too many in the Republican Party establishment conservatism was membership in a club, not a set of bedrock principles which to fight and defend.
Few are prepared to take up that battle after Trump.
Ann
Imagine that in 2007 David Duke had decried Obama as “just a n*****” and then a few years later called him God’s chosen one. Would your headline have been, “sometimes god chooses a n*****”. Why not? Because you wouldn’t feel right applying that word to Obama. Yet you feel so right applying cancer to Trump you make a great flourish about it.
Hence Begley's point.
People don't pray to God to win football games. They pray to stay healthy and play their best. Left-wingers don't pray at football games, they run on the field and shut it down because of Climate Change. Which is THEIR substitute religion.
Nobody gives a fuck about David Duke.
Trump was mean to McCain.
God chose to give McCain cancer.
Draw your own conclusions.
Tevye:
I know, I know. We are Your chosen people. But, once in a while, can't You choose someone else?
Any decent politician speaks to his audience, in language they understand. Perry said his spiel about Trump being God's Chosen instrument to the audience of Fox & Friends. This is standard Christian (& Jewish & Muslim) rhetoric about so-and-so being where he is to work the Will of God. It's not like 85% of the Fox audience hasn't heard this language before.
Now, I'll admit that "X is an instrument of God's Will" is a statement that's a wee bit tough to empirically verify, but when has that ever stopped anyone? It always amazes me how the press will seize --- nay, not just seize, but, pounce!, pounce I say! --- on the most most historically common of Christian tropes, and pull a just perfect Gomer Pyle imitation out of their hat --- "Well, Goooooooool-Leeeee!" -- as if it's never been heard before.
We have discussed the lack of governors running for president. Perry was a popular and successful governor wasn’t he? But obviously unfit for president.
Good summary Althouse. I wrote something very similar in comments last week, to the effect of “if you are in position to rule, by vote or might, then by definition God has chosen you for that time. Apparently God knew we needed Obama. Not me. I voted against him. Now Trump has been appointed to lead for a time. This clear scripture-based understanding, reflected in Perry’s quotes, is the biggest reason I reject all the writing of allegedly Christian “Nevertrumpers” because to me they’re putting their own ideology ahead of their professed Faith. Yes Gerahty, I’m looking at YOU!
Perry is not very smart. That's a fact.
In college I read Susan Sontag's "Cancer as Metaphor." Great book.
God doesn't give cancer to people. Bad people aren't given cancer as punishment. Good people aren't spared cancer based upon their goodness. If that was the case, then my mother and Fr. John Schlegel, S.J. would be alive today. They both died from cancer.
Heck, I had cancer and beat it. I suppose some think I deserved to die or that I'm a saint because I lived. Actually, modern science saved me. And all my doctors went to Jesuit schools.
Ignatius said it best, "Pray to God as if everything depended upon Him and work as if everything depended upon you."
YH
Go er Pyle! You date yourself! And me, for understanding...
Funny how it works differently when Buttigieg gets all bible-y though.
"The plan is always a mystery until we see what happens."
[Rimshot]
Susan Sontag was a Communist, mentally ill, a plagiarist, and a lesbian. And for most of her life she lied about being any of that. That people think she was a great intellect, makes me nervous.
Good ol' heroic cancer.
Ken B,
Funny how it works differently when Buttigieg gets all bible-y though.
Buttigieg gets all bible-y after the manner of Progressive Christianity, which is a much more recent phenomenon. It's repertoire of tropes is much more threadbare because it's a much more recent phenomenon. Its adherents rarely actually believe God's Will shapes human history in the details, & so they don't seek providential explanations.
Nothing is more nauseating then reading some non-believing Christian or non-Christian self-righteously telling Trump supporters they are being hypocrites or "Betraying God" by supporting Trump. Just one step down from that, on the vomit meter, is someone like Glenn Beck or Rod Dreher, making the same phony/fake charge. We don't have a religious test for public office. Nor can anyone peer into another man's soul and see his relationship with God. Sometimes those who pray loudest in public are the worst Christians. Or like Mittens, are of the "Pray on Sunday, Cheat on Monday" types.
Trump is an instrument of political hygiene.
Every the left does, even their religion, is in service to "The Cause". Howard Dean was a big Church member until it opposed a bike path. I wonder if Mayor Pete was a big Christian before Gay Marriage was sanctified.
@DB,
God doesn't give cancer to people.
No, but He permits it to happen, which since He has the power to prevent it is perhaps much the same thing.
We're not going to resolve the Problem of Evil in a blog exchange, but you come much too close to letting God off the hook not just for me, but for the history of Western Theodicy.
There's Evil in the world & God lets it happen. Why we may never understand, but it's the case.
There's Evil in the world & God lets it happen. Why we may never understand, but it's the case.
Which is basically the conclusion of the book of Job.
Left Bank of the Charles: "Rick Perry has been corrupted, that's how corruption works."
...................?
Why dont you take a moment to lay out precisely which corruption you are talking about.
Thanks in advance for having no answer at all.
LOL
(Dont worry. I am sure another hoax dossier will drop any day now for you to read while sucking your thumb)
We just need a picture of Trump with a halo 😇 like they did for Obama.
rcocean.
Read the book. It is intellectually honest. Well researched. I think it stands the test of time.
The title is "Illness as Metaphor." Buy it through the Althouse AMZN portal.
And I knew nothing about Sontag in 78-79. I just read the book in a cruelly neutral fashion.
"Read the book. It is intellectually honest. Well researched. I think it stands the test of time."
I have. Or rather skimmed through it, since Sontag's verbosity annoys me. Anyway, Honest men can disagree. Nobody has to dislike what I dislike.
"The plan is always a mystery until we see what happens."
It is. Until we happen to see that there is no plan and therefore no mystery. That life is just seeing what happens. Death, too.
“There are 3 reasons Trump is a cancer:
One, he has no short term memory.
Two, he tweets and stuff.
Three, um, Er, um ... what was number 3 again?”
— Rick Perry
No, it's not "that he made it to the top", it's that once he got there, he governed they way he told the voters he would govern.
A politician who actually keeps his promises? It's almost enough to make me believe in God.
Does Trump shoot off his mouth and say stupid things? Yes. Do you need to figure out how to take him "seriously, not literally"? Yes.
But he ran as a Jacksonian who would appoint conservative (i.e. honest) judges, and that's the way he's actually governed.
Compared to GHW "Read My Lips" Bush, or John "Build the Damn Wall" McCain, Trump is a model of respect and trust for Republican voters.
And that's why Perry changed his opinion. Because Trump has earned it
@Ken B
I saw your comment — "Oh, David. That headline exactly fits Althouse's “cruel neutrality” standard" — after I wrote my comment.
Thanks for getting it!!
"Perry always struck me as a blockhead, but he could be one of those guys who just aren't quick on their feet or good at making speeches."
It's like the way some of the best actors are actually quite dumb.
Maybe saying the scripted lines without to much internal distraction (thoughts) is the best way to make the text sing.
It was a perfect phone call.
It was a perfect headline.
The plan is always a mystery until it happens.
Epstein didn’t kill himself.
"Would your headline have been, “sometimes god chooses a n*****”. Why not? "
No. I would capitalize "God."
And I would not use the n-word (even with the asterisks). There's nothing bad about using the word "cancer." Cancer is real and a terrible burden and problem in this world. There's nothing wrong with talking about it. It's not an epithet.
If I were writing the post in your hypothetical, I'd need to phrase it so I was only referring to someone else's use of it. I wouldn't use it myself!
Sontag nailed it when she said our culture is style over substance. Perfect example is this website. Have you seen any in depth posts here about trump's policies like tax reform or immigration? No . But there have been many posts here about Trumps speech, hair, mannerism (weird),etc.
"If you believe in God in the way Perry is talking about believing that it's all in the plan, then God is choosing cancer for millions of people, continually, even little children."
Ann do you think it was God"s plan for the average life expectancy to increase dramatically the last 100 years?
Oooh, ohhh, call me! Call MEEEEEEEE!
I'm the one, I'm the only one who knows what God wants.....
- Loony Tunes
There’s this: Daniel 2:21
“He changes times and seasons;
he removes kings and sets up kings ....”
And this: Romans 13:1-2
“Submission to the Authorities
Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.”
Pretty elementary stuff for believers. I particularly like the “incur judgment” bit.
Life is a combination of faith and reason. Or science, if you prefer.
My best friend from high school had a massive heart attack three years ago. He was in perfect shape and had just come home from a run. His wife luckily arrived in time. If should would have been five minutes later, he'd be dead on the kitchen floor.
She had the wits to call my ex-wife, the doctor. She sent him to the heart hospital rather than where the rescue squad was going to take him. The right docs then came in on the weekend and stabilized him.
He was in a coma for four weeks. Unheard of; even today. The machines kept him alive.
Lots of prayers for this Catholic guy. His roommate from college is a priest and was then the novice master for the Jesuits. Lots of prayers there.
He's perfectly fine now. Not broke because of the modern risk shifting device known as medical insurance.
Funny story. He complained to me that he had lost some of his math ability. He graduated, with honors, and a math degree from a top university. His math ability on his worst day is top 1%.
At the hospital, the doctors and nurses called him "The Miracle Man."
One can say that it wasn't God's plan to take him or you can say that modern medicine and some luck saved him. I say both.
There's Evil in the world & God lets it happen. Why we may never understand, but it's the case.
If you posit the existence of a being you couldn't possibly understand, with perfect omniscience and the power to change reality on a whim, then, yeah, a lot of things are going to seem mysterious to you. So maybe you shouldn't do that?
Trump was refreshing- he attacked and was attacked during the primary battles. Sure, this upset the country club political class, and Perry's was a response at the time, but I think, perhaps Republicans learned something since Trump won the nomination and then the White House. I have written here many times over the last few months- the Democrats running for the nomination today need to be a bit more like Trump vis a vis their primary opponents, and so far none of them seem to do so. Even Bloomberg in his new on-line ad isn't doing what is necessary- you have to attack the opponent standing in your way, not the one you hope to face in a subsequent battle. Trying to be the most ant-Trump candidate in a the Democratic field is just a pointless exercise, and spending precious time an money on it is a sure way to lose.
Jeff: “...then, yeah, a lot of things are going to seem mysterious to you. So maybe you shouldn't do that?”
It’s much better to pretend that you are The Omniscient One. Then you understand everything including that you are likely predestined to be a Democrat.
"Adam Schiff wants to be Hillary."
Is there any doubt in the mind of anyone who has watched him for even just a little while that he is a cross-dresser, akin to the serial killer in The Silence of The Lambs?
“Cancer” is not a neutral word when applied to people. I think calling someone or some group a cancer is close enough to using an epithet. There is of course one particularly infamous example. If David Duke had decried Jewish immigrants as a cancer, and then had a conversion and called them the chose people, would you use that headline? I think not. So perhaps “cancer” is not as, ahem, benign as you say.
Let's see how Althouse and others react to God's Cancer Plan for RBG.
Althouse wrote: “If you believe in God in the way Perry is talking about believing that it's all in the plan, then God is choosing cancer for millions of people, continually, even little children.“
That would be an oversimplification of God’s will which may include decretive, perceptive and permissive will. It may not involve “choosing” as we think of it.” Isaiah 55:8, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD.”
That is not to say God’s will is not His will, only that its manifestation is not necessarily within our ken.
Birkel
That wasn’t nice.
“If you believe in God in the way Perry is talking about believing that it's all in the plan, then God is choosing cancer for millions of people, continually, even little children.“
Ann do you think it's God's plan that we all die?
Birkel said...
Let's see how Althouse and others react to God's Cancer Plan for RBG.
11/25/19, 12:31 PM
HAH! Now that's the Reversal of the Week, and it's barely even started.
That said, I enjoyed the title of this post, and I even like the existence of "Trump idolatry" as a category, even when it horribly fails to understand Christian philosophy or why so many Christians love Trump. He's the Artist Formerly Known as Saul to us.
Besides, anything that gets me to a classic Donktum meme about Kaepernick is, by definition, a good thing.
David Begley,
Why wasn't it nice?
Can you explain your reasoning?
I am following the Kurt Schlicter rule that there can only be one rule.
I am willing to let my opponents determine the one rule.
And then I will apply that rule like a modern day Kant.
Kind of snarky about an old woman although it was aimed mostly at hypocrite libs who pray to God that RBG lives forever. Considering that she beat pancreatic cancer (horrible survival rates) the argument can be made that God spared her to continue to work on the Court.
I'd just leave her alone. Not excited about bringing God into this.
And I'm the King of snark.
Pick one rule.
If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans. Or try to infer His plans.
“Pick one rule.”
Laugh at Birkel.
Done.
Ken B is a liar.
Axiomatic.
"That would be an oversimplification of God’s will..."
It's not my idea. It's Perry's.
@Jeff,
So maybe you shouldn't do that?
I notice that your snarky comment fails to posit an alternative notion.
'Cause it's all contingent matter-in-motion doesn't have a look of explanatory power in the great cosmic scheme of things, either.
Or, maybe, you're a deist?
"And I would not use the n-word (even with the asterisks)."
You just did. When you wrote "n-word".
[M]ost telling to me is not Mr. Trump's bombast, his refusal to show any remorse for his comments about Senator McCain
As I call it, McCain started the fight with Trump, not Trump with him. McCain shouldn’t have started a fight he wasn’t prepared to lose.
Children getting cancer in natural, normal, part of this wonderful world created by nature. Children crying out in pain from disease, hunger, and the anguish of being devoured by a meat eating animal while the parents look on in anguish is all natural, as natural as Whole Foods. Murder, tribalism, the subjugation of women as weaker than men, racism, war, torture, survival at all cost is all natural, the most normal and natural world that exists. It's nature's wonderful gift to inflict suffering, to kill, to crush, to maim, without purpose, without meaning, without a god to blame.
But, a civilization was able to cast off the Roman and Greek Darwinian world and invent science, modern medicine, political and church institutions that said to hell with nature's natural way of the world. The Medieval world never accepted nature's wonderful plan for man in nature. Yes, they are mocked today for their faith, but the modern world would not exist without them. The atheists have always been parasites on the world created by civilized Christians.
Ken B said...
“Cancer” is not a neutral word when applied to people.
Oh no, "cancer" is fine, but "scum" is deeply problematic.
Nichevo
Good catch! Yes, the difference with “human scum” is pretty good evidence about the supposed neutrality here ... especially as it was the word “human” which drew AA's ire.
What does God know about RBG that we don't. On one hand, He gave her a long and celebrated life, but, contra that, He is giving her a lingering and difficult death. There are pros and cons and you can argue either side about whether God favors RBG. I think the only fair way to judge the matter is to wait until she dies. If she dies in the near future and Trump gets to appoint her replacement, this will be irrefutable proof that God wants Trump to have a large Supreme Court majority. If, on the other hand, she lasts until the summer or after the election of a Democratic President. then most fair minded people will have to agree that God is firmly in the pro-RBG camp......I have recently discovered that on the issue of marrying your deceased brother's widow, God is strangely ambivalent. In one Biblical verse, He enjoins it and in another He prohibits it.
Perhaps the point of the exercise was to help make England Anglican in accordance with His divine plan. ...It is frequently difficult to ascertain the will of God, especially as regards cancer, deceased brother's widows, and Supreme Court appointments. I hope my comments have helped to clarify these thorny theological issues.
God loves RBG and wants her to learn to make good use of her free will, to love good and eschew evil.
God loves Donald J Trump and wants him to learn to make good use of his free will, to love good and eschew evil.
Because every breath that we have is a gift from God and because God can step in and overrule on anything at any time, the only possible conclusion about what is going on is that, in the end, the entire thing of life for each of us is a holodeck program. It doesn’t matter what happens really, it only matters what we chose to do in a given situation and how we choose to react to the things that happen to us that are beyond our choice.
We came to get a physical body and for the experiences. Being member of SCOTUS or the POTUS is an experience. Cancer is an experience. Since the objective is to gain experience and learn what brings peace and joy and what brings turmoil and sorrow, all lives and all experiences are meaningful and valuable.
That is “God’s plan”.
The President is a Cancer
No, Howard, he is a Gemini.
“Perry also used cancer as a metaphor for Trump, and then God chose Trump.”
God must’ve chosen Obama too.
And then all of Obama's misdeeds were revealed.
And all his policies overturned.
That's the rest of the story.
And God must be allowing all of Trump’s misdeeds to be revealed in the Impeachment hearings, so it goes. God knows best.
'If you're a believing Christian, you understand God's plan for the people who rule and judge over us on this planet in our government.'
Same thing the Nazis said about Hitler. They might have replaced the tetragrammaton with Odin, but whatever. Same thing.
Amazing what people will justify when they outsource their own moral and political agency to whomever they happen to see as "powerful" and vindictive. It's pathetic.
As for biblical kings, the tetragrammaton was famously against allowing any of them, likening the practice to other unsavory pagan ways. But he relented. The first three were ok, the rest famously mediocre to downright wicked. And eventually even they couldn't keep their nation from being plundered and exiled.
If there's any rational ethical message in the OT, it's that nationalism is over-rated and you should never outsource your own or your community's moral agency to some fancy bastard who comes along and demands it on account of his own strength or wealth. Precisely the message that the Trumpists and the right in general are in a constant state of rebellion against. Sad.
I consider trump to be like chemotherapy. Toxic, nasty, potentially deadly stuff. And OK, as long as it is only attacking the cancer. But if and when it attacks the healthy part of the body politic, then it needs to be dialed back. Most of Washington DC is cancer. So their reaction to Trump doesn’t bother me much.
Read more on:www.worldplogger.blogspot.com
A lot of y'all need to come spend some time here in the South. (sips tea)
#AssaultMinistry
Perry thought he was talking about Hillary, but he got confused.
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