On July 22, 2023

NOTES ON PRINCES, PRESIDENTS, AND PETTY TYRANTS: AMERICA CHOOSES HER NEXT KING

SCRIPTURE. “When you come to the land which the Lord your God is giving you, and possess it and dwell in it, and say, ‘I will set a king over me like all the nations that are around me,’ you shall surely set a king over you whom the Lord your God chooses; one from among your brethren you shall set as king over you; you may not set a foreigner over you, who is not your brother.” – DEUTERONOMY 17:14-15, NKJV

KEY TERMS. Possess; Set; Choose; Foreigner

QUOTATION. “‘The sign of a good leader is easy to recognize, though it is hardly ever seen.’ For the greatest leaders are those who share as equals in the trials and struggles, the demands and expectations, the hills and trenches, the laws and punishments placed upon the backs of those governed. A great leader is motivated not by power but by compassion. Therefore, he can do nothing but make himself a servant to those whom he rules. Such a leader is unequivocally respected and loved for loving.” ― RICHELLE E. GOODRICH, Making Wishes: Quotes, Thoughts, & a Little Poetry for Every Day of the Year, 2015; edited

DEFIANCE. “A daring; a challenge to fight; invitation to combat; a call to an adversary to encounter, if he dare it. A challenge to meet in any contest; a call upon one to make good any assertion or charge; an invitation to maintain any cause or point. Contempt of opposition or danger; a daring or resistance that implies the contempt of an adversary, or of any opposing power. ‘Men often transgress the Law and act in defiance of Authority.’” – NOAH WEBSTER, American Dictionary of the English Language, 1828; edited

Selah.

I. FIRST THOUGHTS

A PERSONAL MATRICULATION. My fascination with American presidential politics started at a very early age. To the best of my recollection, it was in the 1956 second race between Republican President Dwight David Eisenhower and Democrat Adlai Ewing Stevenson II when I got my first taste of ‘The Fever.’

My first tasks were inauspicious: Dad driving his old column stick shift Ford sedan slowed down to about 12 miles per hour on the South California desert two lane roads with me hanging out the right-side passenger window, slapping up campaign posters on the metal reflector plating that used to be common on telephone poles back then.

An Event that had a major impact on me and the entire world came when John F. (“Jack”) Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald in Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963. I remember losing all sense of time and purpose and joy the following weekend as a freshman at Long Beach State College, my entire rather optimistic outlook on politics being rocked as Oswald’s bullets entered President Kennedy’s brain that singularly terrible, dark day.

When my Dad was appointed San Bernardino County Campaign Manager for Robert F. (“Bobby”) Kennedy in 1968, my hopes were renewed when the vibrant young Senator from New York was about to capture the Democrat nomination for President. Then another bullet to the head on the evening of June 5, 1968, in the hotel kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, as Palestinian malcontent Sirhan Bishara Sirhan ended Bobby’s quest with just one headshot at close range.

I was beyond shattered by that second assassination. I remember driving angrily in my 1967 VW bug, weeping in outrage, slamming my fist on the steering wheel with the blow glancing off into the windshield, breaking the glass.

I have always been a passionate man.

In the aftermath of the killing of my generation’s last best hope, just weeks after the April 4 assassination of Martin Luther King, something died in us. I recall taking all my ivy league frat house duds and tossing them in favor of a Navy Surplus store’s restocking of my entire wardrobe, along with canceling barber shop visits and growing my mustache for the first time.

A personal microcosm of the Boomer Rebellion against what I now call the ‘Great American Denouement’ – The unraveling of a Grand Story of some kind.

CODA. After an abortive stint with the Marxist Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in 1969 and brief tenure as a radicalized campus Senator with the College’s Student Government, I would not return to political activism until my post-Christian conversion involvement with the presidency of Ronald Wilson Reagan in the 1980s, the subsequent campaign of Virginia Governor George Felix Allen in the 1990s and the election of George W. Bush in the 2000’s.

And that was pretty much it for this old political soldier – until the Rising of DONALD JOHN TRUMP in 2016

II. THE RADICALIZATION OF AMERICAN POLITICS

Something nearly indescribably profound has taken place in American Politics since the emergence of Donald Trump on the scene. As a student and participant of presidential politics for the past 50 years and more, I am astounded, gob-smacked as they say across The Pond, at how one deeply flawed man has transformed our politics here at home and abroad, inside of just a few years.

AN HISTORIC PERMISSION. After reading a dozen or so post-mortems on the Trump Presidency, I found one DEFINING THEME that best represents how the Trump Presidency has impacted America. In a word, this one man in those short, few years has given the American citizen permission to be:

“LAWLESS.” ‘Anomia’ [ἀνομία]: “Wickedness; iniquity, disobedience, sin; illegality; a violation of God and His Law; transgression or gross [sustained] departure from the ordinances of the Lord; utter contempt of righteousness; unrestrained, uncontrolled, unauthorized; as with lawless men or tyrants.”

Perhaps the most lamentable and existentially dangerous developments in American life during the last seven years or so is the undeniable increase in both the spirit and practice of Lawlessness everywhere. A superb piece by DAVID SMITH writing for Politico (“Lawless Leaders,” Oct. 3, 2022) focuses on a key Point of Origin of such a trend.

Republicans’ own claim to be the “Party of Law and Order” is this time undermined, critics say, by the behavior of its party leaders. Former president Donald Trump, who is under myriad criminal, civil and congressional investigations, is not alone. Many senior Republicans have rallied to his defence or displayed their own contempt for the Rule of Law.

“The Republican Party is quickly becoming a party of Anarchy and Lawlessness,” said LARRY JACOBS, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota. “This is supposed to be the Party of conservative principles, of tradition, of respect for customs and rules that make society governable.”

So we have so called “leaders” such as Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Marjorie Taylor Greene, Loren Boebert, and dozens of others who flaunt the law in increasingly brutal terms. They are the Advanced Guard of what is coming to America, beloved, as surely as the sun shall come up tomorrow.

A SECOND TERM UNDER TRUMP. After a lengthy search for a piece that would describe what a second term under Donald Trump would look like, I discovered a gem of an analysis by MILES TAYLOR, former chief of staff of the Department of Homeland Security, author of the forthcoming bookBlowback: A Warning to Save Democracy from the Next Trump.

Writing for Time magazine in a piece entitled, “A Second Trump Presidency Would Be Worse Than You Think” (July 12, 2023; edited), he lists THREE PREDICTIONS that we can expect if and when Donald returns to power.

WEAPONIZATION. First, ex-officials I spoke with warn that the Executive Branch will be weaponized by another MAGA president in previously unreported ways. “The damage Trump did in the first term is reparable,” said former national security advisor JOHN BOLTON, but he said the next Trump “would do damage that is not reparable, especially in a White House surrounded by fifth-raters. Intelligence agencies and the military are of particular concern.”

NEUTRALIZATION. Second, the legislative branch will be neutralized, and GOP objectors muzzled. Former Tea Party Congressman REID RIBBLE said Congress’s checks and balances against the presidency “will be undone entirely” by another MAGA White House. Current and former Republican representatives like him projected that another Trump would actively obstruct Congress, from bypassing the Senate by installing unqualified “acting” officials to run government agencies to simply ignoring subpoenas.

RETRIBUTION. Third, the Justice System will be used to punish the MAGA Movement’s enemies. Former FBI leader ANDY MCCABE and others worry that purging the FBI of “the Deep State” has gone from an unserious Trump refrain to a mainstream GOP position. They fear the Bureau will be used for revenge. “You will see them cock the weapon and aim it at a new target,” explained TOM WARRICK, a Trump-Era counterterrorism czar. “I assume we are going to see the invention of domestic terrorist enemies,” he said. Warrick predicted political opponents would be harassed under the guise of counterterrorism — “one of the scariest aspects of what a ‘Trump Two’ would bring into office.”

DK. Beloved, we are on the brink of an Unprecedented Darkness in America, the likes of which the world has not experienced since the German Reich a century ago. And here’s the greatest danger of all, as brilliantly summed up by the good Mr. Miles. Listen ever so carefully.

“The only scenario scarier than a wayward president deploying troops on U.S. city streets [as President Trump would surely do, again] is the scenario in which ‘no one is brave enough to say anything.’”

In my studied view, a wiser, truer Prophecy has not likely been uttered since the New Testament Era.

III. THE TEACHING

KEY TERMS. As always, we now move to the Deep Dive of the Key Concepts that define this important passage.

POSSESS. ‘Yarash’ [יָרַשׁ]: “To take possession of, inherit, dispossess; to occupy by driving out previous tenants [who have no legitimate right to the land or place]; to seize [by violence, either spiritual or literal, depending on context and covenant]; to have the just and legal title, ownership or property of a thing; to own; to hold the title of, as the rightful proprietor, or to hold both the title and the thing.”

SET. ‘Sum’ [שׂוּם]: “To appoint, or call; to cast, charge or commit; to designate or choose; to direct or select (for an appointed time or purpose); to fix [firmly in place]; implicates the absolute sovereignty of God over earthly matters; applies especially to the rise and fall of leaders; to issue forth a decree or command that a certain thing take place.”

CHOOSES. ‘Bachar’ [בָּחר]: “To select an excellent or acceptable [individual]; to take a keen look at by thorough examination; to prove, test; to desire someone or something in which [God] takes delight, giving the Lord pleasure; a Divine choice, Providence; refers to the selection of a ruler or warrior.”

FOREIGNER. ‘Nokri’ [נָכְרִי]: “Strange, adulterous, different; alien, outlandish; refers to someone who is not part of one’s family; generally regarded in this context as unholy; emphasis placed on avoiding such individuals; less pejoratively, a sojourner; special connotation for ‘a foreign woman’ [as in temptress]; unknown, unfamiliar [thus a risk].”

COMMENTARY: 17:14-20. “God Himself was in a particular manner Israel’s King; and if they set another over them, it was necessary that He should choose the person. Accordingly, when the people desired a king, they applied to Samuel, a Prophet of the Lord. In all cases, God’s choice, if we can but know it, should direct, determine, and overrule ours. Laws are given for the prince that should be elected. He must carefully avoid everything that would turn him from God and Religion. ‘Riches, honours and pleasures, are three great hinderances of godliness’ (the lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eye, and the pride of life), especially to those in high stations; against these the king is here warned.

The king must carefully study the Law of God and make that his rule; and having a copy of the Scriptures of his own writing, must read therein all the days of his life. It is not enough to have Bibles, but we must use them, use them daily, as long as we live. Christ’s scholars never learn above their Bibles, but will have constant occasion for them, till they come to that world where knowledge and love will be made perfect. The king’s writing and reading were as nothing, if he did not practise what he wrote and read. And those who fear God and keep His Commandments, will fare the better for it even in this world.” – MATTHEW HENRY, Exposition of the Old and New Testaments, 6 vols., 1708-1710; edited

From this it becomes eminently clear that God always desires His people to be governed by a godly, wise and Divinely-chosen king. The only time that would not be the case is when the Lord raises up an ungodly king or nation as a means of Judgment of an unruly, rebellious people.

“For behold, I am rousing up the Chaldeans, that bitter and impetuous nation who march through the breadth of the earth to take possession of dwelling places that do not belong to them.” – HABAKKUK 1:6, AMPC

This bring us precisely to the Present American Moment, beloved, so far as I can tell. I believe God is about to raise up the most Wicked King in American history, as the Divine Instrument of Final Judgment for a Nation that has been increasingly Going Rogue since the turn of the 20^th Century.

IV. LAST THOUGHTS

AMERICA’S LAST KING. “The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved … He shall speak pompous words against the Most High, shall persecute the saints of the Most High, and shall intend to change times and law. Then the saints shall be given into his hand for a time and times and half a time.” – 2 THESSALONIANS 2:9-12; DANIEL 7:25, NKJV

When I wake up each morning early, usually by 5:00 AM or a little before, I am generally in an encouraged frame of mind and spirit.

A good portion of that is because as I move closer to my 80th year on the planet, I know much more now about who I am and who I am not than ever before. Vastly more importantly, I know who God is much more intimately than I have ever known Him before. And from all that, I have come to better understand my particular role and calling in this rather terrifying Grand Scheme of Life more than ever before, even in an Age of Crisis that would otherwise find me utterly overwhelmed.

TRUTH. More practically, the deep-water Rudder (or Keel) that keeps my small boat mostly steady and true is Truth. God’s Truth. In the context of these alarming and chaotic times, I have found Truth a much stronger companion when Reality is harsh then a pretty little pile of lies telling me everything is just fine.

So once again and begin to close our conversation today with some Hard Truth this time forged by brilliant scholar of the times, BRIAN KLASS, Associate Professor of Global Politics at University College, London. Writing for what has become perhaps my favorite journal, The Atlantic, the title of his piece is telling: “America’s Self-Obsession is Killing its Democracy” (July 21, 2022; edited).

Rather than paraphrase his remarkably incisive observations, I shall quote him at some length, then finish with a brief take when he is finished.

In 2009, a violent mob stormed the presidential palace in Madagascar, a deeply impoverished red-earthed island off the coast of East Africa. They had been incited to violence by opportunistic politicians and media personalities, successfully triggering a Coup. A few years later, I traveled to the island, to meet the new government’s ringleaders, the same men who had unleashed the mob.

As we sipped our coffees and I asked them questions, one of the generals I was interviewing interrupted me. “How can you Americans lecture us on democracy?” he asked. “Sometimes, the president who ends up in your White House isn’t even the person who got the most votes.” “Our election system isn’t perfect,” I replied then. “But, with all due respect, our politicians don’t incite violent mobs to take over the government when they haven’t won an election.”

For decades, the United States has proclaimed itself a “Shining City upon a hill,” a beacon of Democracy that can lead broken nations out of their despotic darkness. That overconfidence has been instilled into its citizens, leading me a decade ago to the mistaken, naïve belief that countries such as Madagascar have something to learn from the U.S. rather than also having wisdom to teach us. During the Donald Trump presidency, the news covered a relentless barrage of “unprecedented” attacks on the norms and institutions of American Democracy …

‘American democracy is dying’ …

We may not be doomed. But we should be honest: The optimistic assessment from experts who study Authoritarianism globally is that the United States will most likely settle into a ‘Dysfunctional Equilibrium’ that mirrors a deep democratic breakdown. It’s not yet too late to avoid that. But the longer we wait, the more the Cancer of Authoritarianism will spread. We don’t have long before it’s inoperable.

CODICIL. Professor Klass penned his essay exactly one year ago, in July 2022. Much additional dark and murky political water has since passed under the American Dam since then. Not the least of which has Trump currently facing over 80 felony charges of one sort or another, some already resulting in indictments.

By all rights, America looks very likely to be rid of its worst political villain in history. But is it, beloved, is it really?

For THREE REASONS, I predict Donald Trump will not go to prison, even if indicted, and will ascend to the Oval Office one last time to utterly devastate not only what is left of this shattered Republic, but the World Order itself.

I believe that America has wasted her “120 years” of the Lord’s striving for us, waiting for us to Repent. But we have not even come close to such Contrition (Genesis 6:3).

In the Medieval Era, the Church was referred to “The Queen of the Sciences.” Tragically, unspeakably, today’s American Church is better described as the “Consort of the Culture,” cheapened slave to the world spirits of Power, Mammon, and Pleasure.

Finally, I don’t believe that Donald Trump is just another wicked king, but rather the Promised One who would emerge at the End of History to become the Abomination spoken of by Daniel and John. Even Antichrist, that Man of Sin, the Lawless One who will take the nations into their Final Battles against the True Christ, soon to unleash His arsenal of Fiery Judgments on all the nations.

IF I am right, America shall yet have her King Saul, by all that is unholy, and damned be the consequences! KING DONALD: ‘First and Last, Divine Repairer of the Breach, Restorer of National Greatness, Defender of the Faith, and Viceroy to Jesus Christ.’

IF I am right, then it is high time indeed to get our respective houses in order, in preparation for His Arrival on Scene – though most will not do so, no more now than in the Days of Noah and Lot. But some will, beloved, and to their eternal honor, turn some from The Darkness and Rescue as many as they can from The Fire (Jude 1:22).

So may it be with your houses, beloved, for everyone who will read these words as if they are from our Blessed Sovereign, and not just from this old man, who without His Imprimatur, is as no one.

Cliff Kelly, Ph.D.

Digital Circuit Rider

YOUTUBE: https://youtu.be/ljDM4lP5G8s