The last two weeks have been excruciating for Trump voters.
Virtually all major media, the intelligentsia, all the Democrats, and even many Republicans tell us that the man we supported for
President is guilty of "sedition." That he led an
"insurrection" in an "attempted coup" or "putsch" that sought to
destroy democracy in America. We are
guilty by association with cretins wearing "Camp Auschwitz" shirts who
attacked the high citadel of America. We should cower in silence and shame over
the travesty and horror that we aided and abetted. We must be fired from our
jobs, cast out of polite society, and have our social media accounts
shut down. Even more so, if we dare to
continue asserting that there were serious questions about the election that were
never properly resolved. In fact, all such
claims have been thoroughly “debunked”; all the lawsuits Trump’s team brought
were tossed out of court for lack of evidence.
Senators Cruz and Hawley, who (while denouncing the rioters in the
strongest terms) persisted in objecting to the certification of the elections,
should be thrown out of office and perhaps charged with sedition.
Moreover, as religious Jews, we are being scolded that we
ought to be ashamed of ourselves for supporting such a monster – whom the smart
people knew all along was the second coming of Hitlerימ"ש . We
should engage in a cheshbon
hanefesh (personal spiritual accounting) for the terrible 'חילול ה (desecration of G-d’s honor) that we caused by advocating for such
an obvious degenerate. We must hang our
heads in shame before the wiser, all-knowing liberals who always knew that Joe
Biden and the Democrats were morally superior. After all, they have long been
warning us that Trump is a rabble-rousing, incompetent, corrupt, arrogant white
supremacist who has now proved to be the greatest imaginable danger to America
and the world. We must submit to the silencing of our voices and accept our
deserved lot as defeated and "canceled," while our political
opponents use their now unbridled power to change America forever.
I believe that it is crucial for us – the 71 million who
voted for Donald Trump and against Joe Biden – to refuse to allow ourselves to
be written off due to the awful actions of a RELATIVELY tiny bunch of
criminals. (They were only one or two
percent of those who came to the Trump rally, let alone the many millions who
were not there at all.) Those misguided morons did so much damage – not so much
to the United States – but primarily to Trump supporters and the legacy of
Trump himself. It is crucial that 70
million-plus people not feel that their voice has been stolen from them – which
is exactly what the left is now trying to do in every possible way.
I fully recognize that as an independent person living in
Israel, I have the luxury of being able to speak my mind freely. Was I still employed as the Rabbi of an
American synagogue; I would undoubtedly be pressured to not publish this essay
for fear of the repercussions to the congregation. (Even so, I must think twice about publishing this essay as it will possibly discourage people in the future from using
my services as a tour guide, if they still remember this when COVID is finally
over). But the truth does not die. And
those forced to be silent will not accept their lot forever.
This week we read Parshat Bo, in which the Exodus from Egypt comes to a crescendo. As a symbol of freedom, the Israelites were instructed to bring the Pesach offering, with great Mesirut Nefesh (self-sacrifice). In many places, the Hasidic literature quotes the teaching of the Ari z"l, based on the Holy Zohar, that the word Pesach is a conjunction of the words Peh and Sach – a mouth that speaks. One of the most painful injuries suffered in Egypt (and later in many other terrible times such as the Holocaust) was that the victims were rendered mute, unable to express themselves. Unable to express their pain, forced to bear their suffering, they could not cry out and protest for fear of making their lot even worse. (We all know of survivors who, for years after their trauma, were still unable to talk of their suffering). At the time of Pesach, their mouths were freed. Indeed, on Pesach, we have the mitzvah to talk and to talk, to communicate to our children; to tell our story as an expression of freedom. Indeed, כל המרבה לספר ביציאת מצרים הרי זה משובח, the more that we talk about it, the better.
We must stand for respectful ways to disagree when necessary. We must demand that reasonable voices on all sides deserve to be heard, and that all have the opportunity for freedom of speech and expression, providing that it is not an explicit call for violence.
We must refuse to be silenced. We cannot let the guilty few steal our self-respect, nor accept the twisting of the truth to dismiss our legitimacy. We must hold our heads high, knowing that the tragic events of January 6th changed NOTHING about what we believe to be true. We cannot let those hypocrites – who for months and years excused and even praised the many violent protests BLM and Antifa, who repeatedly called for and engaged in acts of violence against their political foes – lecture us with their selective, newfound outrage. We must stand for respectful ways to disagree when necessary. We must demand that reasonable voices on all sides deserve to be heard, and that all have the opportunity for freedom of speech and expression, providing that it is not an explicit call for violence.
This essay cannot fully present the many powerful counterarguments
to the charges of the left.
Nevertheless, a few things must be stated.
Millions of people are not convinced that the election of
Joe Biden was legitimate and proper. Contrary to the oft-repeated lie, the vast
majority of the courts did NOT rule on election fraud evidence. Rather, virtually every case held either that
Trump’s advocates had no standing to bring the lawsuit (as in the US SupremeCourt) or failure to file in a timely manner (the ruling in
the Pennsylvania Supreme Court). Thus, the many bad acts that were testified to
by the thousands (mail trucks of fake ballots delivered, suitcases of
ballots being brought out after hours, ballots of the dead and missing, keeping
observers far away thus rendering them useless, etc.) were never presented in
court. The constitutional arguments that
the courts changed election laws rather than by the legislature were
never given a fair hearing. The recounting of possibly fraudulent ballots with
the envelopes that might have proven fraud was never done.
Did President Trump act improperly in the lead-up and
during the riot at the Capitol? In
short, yes.
·
He was wrong to
demand that Vice President Pence overturn the certification. The Twelfth amendment grants the Vice
President no such right; it is purely a ceremonial role. By contrast, the Senators and Congressmen DO
have a right – and even duty – to object if they conclude that the election
should not be certified. (If they have
no such right, the twelfth amendment is entirely valueless.) However, the President
was wrong to pressure his Vice President to overturn the vote and wrong to mock
him for not doing so.
·
Immediately upon
hearing that things had gone awry at the Capitol, the President should have forcefully
sent a message for the rioters to leave the building and stand down. He should have known that his message –
which was directed primarily not to the rioters but to the hundreds of
thousands who had come to the rally – “Go home, we love you … Go home in peace”
would be misconstrued by his enemies (and by some of the rioters). They would claim
that he supported the violence, though he specifically said the opposite (“Go
home now, we have to have peace, have to have law and order, we have to respect
our great people in law and order, we don’t want anyone hurt”)
·
He should not
have engaged in personal verbal attacks against his political foes, which
unduly raised passions in the crowd. (This
is not a new criticism of Trump; I believe that had he not engaged in this
behavior during the disastrous first debate with Biden, he would have won the
election hands down.) He, and the
hundreds of thousands who came to support him, were right to exercise their
first amendment rights to protest and voice their concerns. However, he erred in turning up the
temperature to make it a personal fight against evil. The extremists on the far right (like the
extremists on the far left) did not need much motivation to commit acts of
violence. Less violently than BLM'sactions and other militants on the left for the past four years, the extremist morons of the right (many of whom are as anti-semitic as the extremist morons on the left)
engaged in very damaging behavior that was foreseeable. (In fact, there is growing evidence that most
of those who broke windows and entered the Capitol were anti-Trump Antifa
activists, who planned a false flag operation to make Trump
and his supporters look bad). I believe that most of those who entered the Capitol
were just regular law-abiding people caught up in a mob mentality and followed
the crowd where they should not have.
Was the second impeachment thus called for? Many argued that all these together added up
to an impeachable offense; perhaps they are right. Nevertheless, impeaching the President one
week before the end of his term and slandering his behavior as having engaged
in sedition, insurrection, and treason was an act of political vindictiveness
that sought only to silence him and his supporters forever, as described
earlier.
The truth is that although Mr. Trump’s actions on January
6th are rightly criticized, we were right to support a president who – despite
unending hostility, enmity, and attacks since the day he was nominated – managed
to accomplish a great deal of good for the United States. I did not vote for him in 2016 (neither did I vote for Hillary). But he earned my vote in 2020, despite his
personal flaws, for his many important accomplishments, and for standing up
against the bullies of the left. He
restored much sanity to America’s economy, foreign policy, and national
pride. He appointed excellent judges who
will leave their mark for a long time.
He restored much balance taken away by the radical left (which they are
now trying to grab back). And, of
course, he was the best friend Israel ever had in the White House.
We also voted against a man with substantial ethical and
competence questions hanging over him that the mainstream press kept from the
citizenry. We also fear that much of the
good that was done under the Trump administration will be undone, both foreign
and domestic.
It is an epic tragedy that the Trump presidency ended
this way. Perhaps his behavior can be
understood as having snapped after the relentless opposition pushed him past
his breaking point – not many people would have been able to continue
functioning on such a high level under such relentless attack for so long.
I hope that President Biden will somehow have the wisdom
not to attempt to use these circumstances to silence his political foes, as Congress's radicals are demanding.
Pesach teaches us that being robbed of the ability to speak goes against
our basic human nature, and it will not last.
Let us hope that the very divided country will find healing rather than
the frightful prospect of hot or cold civil war. Let us be at the vanguard of
helping in the healing – not by submitting to the excesses of the left – but by
confidently holding by our convictions while respectfully engaging with our
ideological foes.