(Disclaimer: This Prophetic Intelligence Briefing is not intended to make political statements concerning U.S. presidential candidates or the politicians that have currently or previously held the high U.S. office. It is intended to describe the present circumstances in the American political landscape from a prophetic point of view)
The U.S. Republican Party’s “Trumpian meltdown” has the party officials in disarray and unsure of what to do. The party elites do not support Donald Trump in his bid for the Republican nomination, yet there is little they can do to find someone to beat a Democratic challenger while adhering to their political platform.
What is underlying the rise of Donald Trump in American politics? In summary, American politics has become increasingly polarized since the Reagan era, and the more polarized it has become the more dictatorial its leaders have felt they have had to be in order to accomplish their goals. Consequently, their supporters have become less compromising and more irrational in their demands and their choice of leaders.
What feeds the Trump phenomena today is at least two things, 1). the disconnect of the Republican Party from its own grassroots support base, and 2). the liberal politics of the Obama-era.
The “Trump uprising” is first and foremost a Republican and conservative problem: there would be no Trumpism if George W. Bush’s presidency hadn’t cratered, no Trumpism if the party hadn’t alternated between stoking and ignoring working-class grievances, no Trump as front-runner if the party leadership and his rivals had committed fully to stopping him before now.
The Donald Trump “spring,” however, is also a product of the Obama era, which erupted as a reaction after eight years of a liberal president that has dominated the cultural landscape. It is no surprise then that the Obama era ends with a reality TV demagogue leading a populist, nationalist revolt.
But the Obama administration was partly a reaction to the eight years of conservative dominated era of George W. Bush, which was partly a reaction to the liberal era of Bill Clinton, and so on. And the presidential office has become increasingly more authoritarian. It was one of Bill Clinton’s staff advisors, Paul Begala who famously remarked, “Stroke of the pen. Law of the Land. Kinda cool,” referring to the use of executive orders. Though the use of executive orders started with George Washington, their increasing use as a tool to accomplish the president’s social or political agenda is a result of an ever more polarized and gridlocked political reality. President Obama’s chief of staff Denis McDonough recently said the White House desired that its actions will “not be subjected to undoing through [Congress] or otherwise,” leading some to question whether the White House wants tyranny.
Furthermore, American politics has long had an “escalating celebrity component, a cultish side that’s grown ever-more-conspicuous with time.” President Obama is the most celebrity-oriented president so far, capturing the support of liberal Hollywood and television personalities, using a quasi-religious imagery and rhetoric and the “Great Man” iconography.
Trump uses nearly the same celebrity factor as President Obama did in 2008. And voters in both parties have increasingly become used to an ever more imperial presidency, something that Obama’s policies have accelerated. Obama once campaigned on his predecessor’s power grabs (through executive orders), but has expanded executive authority in every direction, including “launching wars without congressional approval, claiming the power to assassinate American citizens, and using every available end-around to make domestic policy without any support from Congress.”
Though previous presidents did all of this, it has never been quite so blatant. The consequence is that he has cut the legs from under “principled liberal critiques of executive power, and weakened the American left’s role as a bulwark against Caesarism.” Political pundits in the George W. Bush era, warned against excessive executive over-reach, suggesting that conservatives would not appreciate a liberal doing the same things, which the present political reaction demonstrates. In all cases, the need to accomplish presidential goals within the context of a gridlocked or obstinate Congress has led to authoritarian practices and often over-ridden consideration of the long-term consequences.
Trump is rallying the constituency that swings between parties and has helped win elections, especially working class voters. Over the last eight years the Obama administration has not paid attention to their concerns, slamming the door on them. Trump is the consequence.
Times have changed. Politics are more polarized than ever, and though political coalitions shift all the time, what was once possible in the Bill Clinton era, or the George W. Bush era, is no longer possible. And now the left must deal with voters unmoored from either party, and nursing well-grounded feelings of betrayal. Obama often said during his 2008 campaign how he would work in a bi-partisan way once president. That never materialized. Instead, he began using executive power so much that it alienated some of the very voters that put him in office, those swing voters.
Frustration has exacerbated the voters who respond to the demagoguery of Trump. A huge percentage of them do not trust Cruz or Rubio because they are not perceived as political “outsiders” as they claim.
If you listen to the campaign talk of Mr. Trump and the other Republican candidates, they are campaigning on the idea that they would relieve the voters of their frustrations by overthrowing much of what the Obama administration has done.
Our times reflect the frustrations of the people during the Weimar Republic just before Hitler took power, and the period of time just before the French Revolution. Political extremism has its consequences. Even today in Europe, there are the Marie Le Pen’s amid the growing nationalist parties of Europe. And now there is Donald Trump in America. “He is the Republican Party’s monster,” perhaps. But what he represents is also part of the Obama legacy.
Where will this polarization take America? It will certainly lead to a religious reaction, part of which we are witnessing now, when exacerbated by crises, to demand that the nation be brought back to allegiance to God to offset the extreme liberal trends. Even Cruz and Rubio talk like they’d give churches more power, though Trump has said it openly. This conservative reaction will set the stage for the final scenes of earth’s history given in Bible prophecy. Note the “decree” in the following statement. Note also the extra-judicial killing of commandment-keepers. Enflamed by an unreasonable and demanding voter base, allied to an authoritarian leader, such a scenario could easily become reality (similar to what happened in World War II, the French Revolution, etc.).
“As the Sabbath has become the special point of controversy throughout Christendom, and religious and secular authorities have combined to enforce the observance of the Sunday, the persistent refusal of a small minority to yield to the popular demand will make them objects of universal execration. It will be urged that the few who stand in opposition to an institution of the church and a law of the state ought not to be tolerated; that it is better for them to suffer than for whole nations to be thrown into confusion and lawlessness… This argument will appear conclusive; and a decree will finally be issued against those who hallow the Sabbath of the fourth commandment, denouncing them as deserving of the severest punishment and giving the people liberty, after a certain time, to put them to death. Romanism in the Old World and apostate Protestantism in the New will pursue a similar course toward those who honor all the divine precepts.” The Great Controversy, pages 615 and 616.
Source Reference
Comments
Patrick Rampy
Friday March 11th, 2016 at 11:02 AMThank you for your cogent analysis. Love your monthly insights on CD.
Sean Taylor
Friday March 11th, 2016 at 07:25 PMIf Donald Trump is going to give the churches plenty of power? The only power he could possible be referring to is Civil power. The power to enforce church decrees etc. Could he be the dictator we have been expecting? Because, it is a dictator that joins church and state in America and enforces the mark of the beast.
The United states is going to repudiate every principle of it’s Constitution and become a vicious dictator towards the whole world.
American politics is so polarized that it is moving like a locomotive in one direction and who could stop it??
M J
Friday March 11th, 2016 at 08:04 PMIt should be obvious to devoted, well studied Christians what Satan is doing. Our enemy is using BOTH sides – liberal and conservative equally to bring about worship to himself.
Without worship and knowledge of the True and Living God, both sides are unknowingly bringing about the will of Satan – make it the LAW to worship him on his day – this is the only fix that will make the world a better place.
For the most part, Liberals will not care, and Conservatives will be too happy to have this false sabbath. Consider what Rick Santorum said – paraphrased “not bringing in religion to the Presidency – made him sick”. He repudiates religious freedom – just like the Pope!
Without Christ, it does not matter if you are a Liberal or a Conservative, both will find themselves in the “lake of fire”. One notable difference is that Conservatives (without the knowledge and worship of the true God) think they will be in Heaven. Liberals often don’t care!
salim
Sunday March 13th, 2016 at 05:31 AMthe haegelian dialectic right before our eyes..
Ryan
Saturday March 12th, 2016 at 06:50 PMHi
Marie Le Pen’s (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_Le_Pen) typo in the name ?
Gary
Monday March 14th, 2016 at 01:08 AMWhat is going on in this world is not just About the US elections. Something bigger is going on. Globalism is going to happen. The globalists are pulling things together, and most people are not even paying attention. If you are willing to read, I think you will find this very interesting.
The Pope has taken the side of other world leaders in assimilating immigrants en masse from wars and other disasters they have created. These leaders are banding together on immigration issues and climate change. You can be certain that there are other areas, which we are unaware of, where they are working “hand in hand” to accomplish their goal of setting up a New World Order.
To better understand the Pope’s agenda, let’s refer to Malachi Martin’s book “The Keys of This Blood: The Struggle For World Dominion Between Pope John Paul II, Mikhail Gorbachev & The Capitalist West.” Remember, this book was published in 1990:
“Willing or not, ready or not, we are all involved in an all-out, no-holds-barred, three-way global competition. Most of us are not competitors, however. We are the stakes. For the competitions is about who will establish the first one-world system of government that has ever existed in the society of nations. It is about who will hold and wield the dual power of authority and control over each of us as individuals and over all of us together as a community; over the entire six billion people expected by demographers to inhabit the earth by early in the third millennium” (p. 15)
“The competition is all-out because, now that it has started, there is no way it can be reversed or called off” (p. 15).
“No holds barred because, once the competition has been decided, the world and all that’s in it–our way of life as individuals and as citizens of the nations; our families and our jobs; our trade and commerce and money; our educational systems and our religions and our cultures; even the badges of our national identity, which most of us have always taken for granted–all will have been powerfully and radically altered forever. No one can be exempted from its effects. No sector of our lives will remain untouched” (p. 15).
“The competition began and continues as a three-way affair because that is the number of rivals with sufficient resources to establish and maintain a new world order. Nobody who is acquainted with the plans of these three rivals has any doubt but that only one of them can win. Each expects the other two to be overwhelmed and swallowed up in the coming maelstrom of change. This being the case, it would appear inescapable that their competition will end up as a confrontation” (p. 15).
The “confrontation” Martin mentioned has already taken place. President Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II conspired and planned the dissolution of the Soviet Union which was formally enacted on December 26, 1991. Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, the eighth and last leader of the Soviet Union, resigned, declared his office extinct, and handed over its powers – including control of the Soviet nuclear missile launching codes – to Russian President Boris Yeltsin. That evening at 7:32 p.m., the Soviet flag was lowered from the Kremlin for the last time and replaced with the pre-revolutionary Russian flag (Wikipedia).
With one of the three competing parties out of the way, the struggle continues. The plan is running a little behind the stated timeline, but the ship is still moving forward.
Do you think that if the US and the Papacy conspired to bring about the downfall of the USSR, and Dr. Martin identifies the two remaining parties in this struggle as the US and the Papacy, that maybe the Papacy is working for ascendancy over the US? The recent rise of Pope Francis to “rockstar status” answers this question.
Martin continues: “As to the time factor involved, those of us who are under seventy will see at least the basic structures of the new world government installed. Those of us under forty will surely live under it legislative, executive and judiciary authority and control” (p. 16).
“What these competitors are talking about, then, is the most profound and widespread modification of international, national and local life that the world has seen in a thousand years … Ten years before this competition became manifest to the world at large, the man who was destined to become the first, the most unexpected and, for some at least, the most unwelcome competition of all in this millennium endgame spoke openly about what he saw down the road even then” (p. 16).
“Perhaps the world was still too immersed in the old system of nations-states, and in all the old international balance-of-power arrangements, to hear what Wojtyla [Pope John Paul II] was saying” (p. 16).
Referring to Pope John Paul II, Martin continues: “…he was himself the head of the most extensive and deeply experienced of the three global powers that would, within a short time, set about ending the nation system of the world politics that had defined human society for over a thousand years. It is not too much to say, in fact, that the chosen purpose of John Paul’s pontificate–the engine that drives his papal grand policy and that determines his day-to-day, year-by year strategies–is to be the victor in that competition, now well under way … The final contender in the competition for the new world order is not a single individual leader of a single institution or territory. It is a group of men who are united as one in power, mind and will for the purposes of achieving a single common goal: to be victorious in the competition for the new global hegemony” (p. 17).
“Their aim is to foster increasing cooperation on an international basis–and to do that by maintaining the peace, at the same time they accomplish what war has rarely achieved: the breakdown of all the old natural and artificial barriers between nations” (p. 18).
“There is one great similarity shared by all three of these globalist competitors. Each one has in mind a particular grand design for one world governance … Their geopolitical competition is about which of the three will form, dominate and run the world system that will replace the decaying nation system” (p. 18-19).
“In the new world order of the Wise Men of the West–the most powerful of the Genuine Globalists–the rights and freedoms of the individual would be based on positive law: that is, on laws passed by a majority of those who will be entitled to vote on the various levels of the new rule, however, will be far removed from the ordinary individual … Similarities of public rhetoric, therefore, do more to mask than clarify the profound differences between the contenders, and the profoundly different consequences for us all of the grand design each one proposes for the arrangement of our human affairs” (p. 19).
Does this not describe our world?
If you are not familiar with the prophecies in the Bible, you will see no connection here between earthly events and eternal realities. If you are a Bible student, then you understand that the “New World” those behind the curtain are seeking to establish is a fulfillment of prophecy and destined to bring about the final cataclysm.
“And the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings, which have received no kingdom as yet; but receive power as kings one hour with the beast.” (Revelation 17:12).
Maranatha!
mark
Saturday March 19th, 2016 at 11:21 PMok what does haegelian dialectic mean?
Sean Taylor
Monday March 21st, 2016 at 10:09 PMIt means: Absolute idealism is an ontologically monistic philosophy attributed to G. W. F. Hegel. It is Hegel’s account of how being is ultimately comprehensible as an all-inclusive whole.
Thank you Salim you comment explains the matter very well.