A sad day for truth

Trying to figure out what motivates Donald Trump and his followers presents real challenges. One must dig deeply into their behavior from a Christian perspective to arrive at an understanding of their thought process.  Understanding their support despite him having so many short-comings/character flaws deserves, indeed requires deep-thinking to come to an understanding of this behavior. Attributes that right-thinking people feel should disqualify him from the office of President of The United States and their support appear to drive his behavior. What motivates Trump and continues to drive and support his behavior is certainly puzzling and deserves close scrutiny. Trying to figure out what motivates him by watching cable TV, and surfing the Internet is probably a waste of time, given the fact that much of his behavior is designed to get media coverage and deflect from issues that must be addressed.
Let us look at Trump’s behavior from the perspective of Blaise Pascal, (1623-1662) a man who spent many years looking at what motivate men from a christian perspective. In his writing Mind on fire Article 48, he penned the following. The characteristic of human nature is to love oneself and consider only one’s self. But what else can it do? It cannot help its own love being inconsistent and miserable. It wants to be great and see that it is only small. It wants to be happy and finds it is wretched. It wants to be perfect and see itself full of imperfections. It wants to be the object of other people love and esteem and sees that its faults deserve only their dislike and contempt. Finding itself in this predicament, it reacts in the most unjust and criminal passion imaginable. For it conceives a deadly hatred for the truth that would rebuke and convince it of its faults. It would like to eliminate this truth, and not being able to destroy it, it represses it as much as it can in the consciousness of itself and of others. So it takes every precaution to hide its own fault from itself and others, and cannot bear to have them pointed out or even noticed.
Pascal continues: Unquestionably it is an evil to be so full of faults, but it still greater evil to be full of them and yet unwilling to acknowledge them, since this results in the further evil of deliberate self-delusion. We do not want others to deceive us. But at the same time we do not think it is right for them to think well of themselves more than they deserve. It is therefore not right either that we should deceive them or want them to esteem us more than we deserve.
There must be an awakening in the mind of Trump supporters. An awakening to the fact that his carelessness with the truth has dire consequences-consequences, many yet untold and unrealized. The realization that lies have consequences applies to everyone, including so-called liberals.

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