Politics Without Religion

Maybe it's not possible

Earlier this year, when Trump was asked by The New York Times whether there were any limits on his global powers, he answered: “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.” This hyperindividualistic approach to global politics appears entirely divorced from conventional Christian morality. There is meant to be a universal arbiter of right and wrong who presides over us all from on high, but I don’t think Michelangelo painted him with a bad spray tan and a combover. 

Politicians of days gone by approached things a little differently, calling on God to give them guidance to make their political decisions. Tony Blair was always invoking his Christian faith, attesting that thoughts of God influenced his decisions when he sent British troops to fight alongside US forces in Iraq. For Ronald Reagan, faith was central to his politics, with him describing America as a “shining city on a hill” under God, clearly looking to conform to a more conventional set of moral values than Trump. America was meant to be a beacon of light, a force of good on the global stage, the world’s protective big brother, fighting our battles for us. But now, Trump shouts into his keyboard, “I DOUBT NATO WOULD BE THERE FOR US IF WE REALLY NEEDED THEM,” appearing to have completely forgotten NATO support in Afghanistan or Iraq, and its human and political cost. But, when you have only your “own mind” to answer to, what difference does objective truth make anyway?

Even George W. Bush, who, decades ago, was dubbed one of the crassest presidents America had ever seen, at least feigned to care about the welfare of the world’s citizens, and, even if insincerely, maintained that his intentions were good. After invading Iraq, he stated: “We come to Iraq with respect for its citizens, for their great civilisation and for the religious faiths they practise”. If Bush was crass, what is Trump bulldozing into Venezuela, all guns blazing, looking to “run everything” and “take our oil back?”

Now Trump covets Greenland, or “that piece of ice,” saying that if he’s unable to acquire it “the easy way,” he will have to “do it the hard way.” There’s no invocation of God, or Christian morality, or even an insincere attempt to care about displaced citizens. Trump, guided only by “his own morality,” with the weight of the world’s most powerful military behind him, can quite simply do whatever he wants. 

Trump’s deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller spoke of Greenland: “We live in a world, in the real world,” he said, “that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power.” The “moral arc of the universe,” which Barack Obama once spoke of, which “bends toward justice,” appears to have been erased from the rules of the game. Justice is now whatever those with the most power decide, bowing only to brute force, not universal morality.

This lack of religious guidance, and in its place only adherence to a flexible system of personal morality, leaves a deep ethical void in Trump’s policy. Perhaps this is why America has become a place in which armed policemen can shoot down citizens. 

If Trump has already rejected divine law, now he’s doing away with human law too. He told The New York Times, “I don’t need international law,” and when pressed about whether his administration would adhere to international law, he answered that it “depends what your definition of international law is.” Again, what once was universal is now malleable. At the core of Trump’s definition of international law is just this: he is free to deploy any military, political, or economic power necessary to grant him global supremacy. He decides what is right and what is wrong, and either way, he’ll do it anyway. So, perhaps Michelangelo did get it all wrong. God isn’t a bearded man surrounded by adoring angels; he’s an orange one surrounded by sycophantic idiots.  

Illustration from Wikimedia Commons