Friday, July 7, 2017

Preach it, Brother!



At first I thought that a radio preacher had taken over the talk radio station I listen to in the morning.  Then I recognized the President’s voice.  I had never heard President Trump like this before and I’ve listened to him a few times in these initial months of his presidency.  But now he was doing something historical – and he was doing it with passion and persuasion with the facts of history in his arsenal of speech-making tools. 

It isn’t the first time I’ve heard a president “go preacher.”  Barack Obama did it in the company of some African American preachers and it was frightening.  It was frightening because he was a man of poise and cultural presence, and tried to put himself in the shoes of preachers who shake, quake, bellow, enunciate, point fingers and sweat profusely.  I watch preachers practically for a living.  And he was as fake as a three dollar bill.  He wasn’t proving he was part of their “culture” because he wasn’t.  They may share a common ethnic heritage, but he didn’t have believability as a preacher.  I couldn’t remember what he said because of the way he was trying to say it.  And as I’ve said to friends on the other side of the political tracks from me, “Don’t tell me he is a great orator, or I will ask you what the content was.”   I found myself asking:  ‘Where’s the beef?’ every time he spoke.

But on this particular morning (6 July 2017), President Trump was giving a presentation in Poland and he was kicking arse.  He had used history and theology to galvanize the opinion of the Poles.  He was reminding them of a history that admittedly they could never forget, and instructing his listeners that were unfamiliar with that significant struggle for freedom.  He was telling the story of how a people hard-working, family-oriented, and faith-filled stood up against an oppressive political system.  I almost drove off the road when he summarized the source of their strength:  their faith.  Since when has a politician ever acknowledged the power of the human spirit as a credible source of motivation? … um, never in the last 54 years that I am aware of. 

He reminded them of that incredible celebration of the Catholic Mass held in Victory Square with Pope John Paul II – “their Polish pope.”  (If you want to melt the hearts of the Poles, just reference their Pope.)  He reminded them of the one cry of the people:  “We want God!”  They did not demand power or prestige from the political system.  They wanted the freedom to be human beings that had a say in their own personal destiny, because it is a God-given right. 

He reminded them of the bloodshed in Warsaw in the 1944 Uprising as Poles sought to hold back the encroaching Nazi-German army.  The people put themselves out there by trying to sandbag against the invaders.  Every time they tried to build up the blockade, snipers would shoot them down.  It was a powerful display of the resilience of the human spirit against the very real physical advancing of hateful ideologies.

He reminded them of the importance of hardworking immigrants coming to a country and the necessity to exclude radicalized terrorism from the gates of any city.  As if he slipped it in, he warned the current country-of-concern (Russia) of parameters.  However, it could be no accident that in a speech to Poland, a nation that had risen from the ashes of persecution and oppression like a glorious Phoenix, he sent a subtle but clear warning to a potentially world-threatening Super Power (Russia). 

He had finally found the balance in presenting a case.  Perhaps President Trump repeated certain words of effect too often for speech critics, and critics will come as sure as the sunset.  Yet he had finally brought forth a connection of the heart by appealing to the human spirit.  He looked at the history of a people and found significant lessons to bring forth.  He tied the issues of the past to the present and he was well received.

Now, to move forward from speech to lived-reality …
###############


No comments:

Post a Comment