[Vision2020] Cyrus the Great and Trump the Small

[Nicholas Gier]

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Cyrus the Great versus Trump the Small


              Joining Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Trump’s clueless press
secretary, 55 percent of white evangelicals believe that God has sent
Donald Trump to save the nation. Jerry Falwell, Jr., president of
evangelical Liberty University, believes that King David is the model for
Trump’s reign. Falwell claims that even with all of his faults, David was
still chosen by God to found the lineage from which Jesus would come.

David was a great writer, allegedly giving us some of the best poetry in
the Hebrew language. He was also a renowned musician, and he was called to
play his lyre when Saul fell under the spell of an evil spirit. Trump is
neither poet nor musician, and we have great need of a harpist to rid him
of his own malevolent spirits.

            David was also a great warrior, although scholars dispute
whether he actually ruled over as large an area as the Bible attests. He is
most famous of course for slaying the giant Goliath with his sling. Trump
might say that he could hit any giant in the middle of the forehead with
his expert golf swing, but that would be one of his many baseless boasts.
Recently, however, he did hit the Omelete Bar at his Mar-a-Lago resort.

            David would never have made an excuse not to go into battle,
especially if it was a few bone spurs. We now know that Trump’s four
deferments might have been a hoax. The daughters of a Brooklyn doctor
reported that their father received rent reduction for  his Trump-owned
office in return for the medical exemptions.

In addition, draft-dodging Trump claimed, in a 1997 interview with Howard
Stern, that his “personal Vietnam” was the “real danger” of STDs in the New
York dating scene. He warned that vaginas were “potential landmines,” so
that’s why he now apparently prefers the safer practice of grabbing private
parts instead.

            David’s greatest sin was of course his seduction of Bathsheba
and the conspiracy to kill her husband Uriah the Hittite. As far as we
know, there have been no allegations of murder in Trump’s many sexual
escapades, but he has paid off at least two women for their silence. Since
then, I’m sure that he has regretted not hiring a hit-man for Stormy
Daniels.

            A writer for the conservative *National Review*, which has
never supported Trump, speculates that King David’s head priest would have
declared: “Fake news! The king was nowhere near the fighting.” He
attributed the rumors to “Saulite (=Barackish) holder-overs” still in the
court, and he reminded people that King Saul “had consulted witches”
(=Hillary?) during his reign.

Many preachers are insisting that the best biblical model for the Trump
presidency is Cyrus the Great, a Persia king from the 6th Century B.C.
Pastor Lance Wallnau claims that in 2016 God spoke to him and told him to
look at Isaiah 45. That is the chapter where God had anointed Cyrus as a
messiah, because he had let the Israelites return to Palestine and rebuild
their temple.

Wallnau explained that “Trump’s obvious faults and flaws only confirmed the
prophecy: Cyrus, like Trump, was powerful, rich, and pagan, not at all
godly.” At least Wallnau has seen through Trump’s claim to be a Christian,
not even a “baby Christian,” as Focus on the Family founder James Dobson
once suggested.

            In the eyes of Cyrus’ God Ahura Mazda (Wise Lord), he was very
godly indeed. In his conquests of neighboring lands Cyrus was known as
merciful and kind. Instead of slaughtering people and executing their
rulers in gruesome ways, he left them in place and hired many of them as
his advisors. I’m sure Cyrus would have disagreed with Trump about
waterboarding, and the even more brutal ways of torturing terrorists that
he has promised.

Another problem with this comparison is that Trump does not like Iranian
leaders. His side-kick Mike Pence calls the current government a “murderous
regime.” Kim Jong Un, Trump’s favorite dictator, has killed far more people
than the Iranians, who at least allow elections and have negotiated a
nuclear deal with the U.S.  Obama made sure that inspections have verified
Iran’s compliance, but the “unartful” Trump appears ready to have given
away most of the leverage we have with Kim.

Biblical numerologists are going crazy about the coincidence of the 45th
chapter of Isaiah and the 45th president. Referring to the famous jibe
against Freud that “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar,” I say that
sometimes a coincidence just that and nothing more, unless of course if it
is a small cigar.

Nick Gier of Moscow taught religion and philosophy at the University of
Idaho for 31 years. Email him at ngier006 at gmail.com.

-- 

A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they
shall never sit in.

-Greek proverb

“Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity.
Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance
from another. This immaturity is self- imposed when its cause lies not in
lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without
guidance from another. Sapere Aude! ‘Have courage to use your own
understand-ing!—that is the motto of enlightenment.

--Immanuel Kant
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