Antinuclear

Dec. 19, 2019 There are moments fertile for apocalyptic anxiety — numerologically specific dates, perhaps, or seemingly significant ones like the year 2000 — but nothing sparks the apocalyptic imagination like a time of existential distress. For President Trump, that moment is now. In response to an impending impeachment vote in the House of Representatives, he sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Tuesday that reveals more than now-familiar tantrums and rage. This text is a window into his own eschatology, his theology of the End Times. For Trump, impeachment is not a political problem: It is the climax of a holy war that he must win.

………what Trump’s letter is: a warning framed as a missive, meant not for Pelosi’s eyes alone but as a broader declaration of Trump’s worldview, a chronicle of his reign, a threat of impending peril for the United States and a vision of history centered on Trump himself. It is, in effect, an apocalyptic text, more reminiscent of the eschatological letter-chronicles of the past than any legal document of rebuttal. The only things missing are the horsemen.

The text opens with the president protesting “the partisan impeachment crusade” of the Democrats in the House. The word choice of crusade, of course, no longer reflects the papally issued holy wars of the Middle Ages — indeed, “crusade” is used routinely for any political movement seen as being overly zealous against a particular target. But Trump’s use of “crusade” gives a framework for the central apocalyptic crutch of his entire administration: the notion of an existential, good-vs.-evil, apocalyptic duality surrounding his term of office that includes him as a semi-messianic figure.

And that framework of holy war never really leaves the text. Its tenor suggests that to challenge Trump is, somehow, to violate the righteousness of Trump’s presidency itself. But the text goes further, arguing that the Democrats are attacking America at its core. Impeachment, according to Trump, “display[s] unfettered contempt for America’s founding and your egregious conduct threatens to destroy that which our Founders pledged their very lives to build.” The very next line argues that Pelosi’s claims to pray for the president are “offending Americans of faith,” that the statement “is not true, unless it is meant in a negative sense. It is a terrible thing you are doing, but you will have to live with it, not I!”

……… in the form of quasi-religious dogma, suggests that Democrats opposing Trump are at war with the righteous. The framing of Trump’s letter builds on this foundation, suggesting that the conflict is a holy war: a war for American democracy, as well as a war between “Americans of faith” and those who oppose Donald Trump: the Democrats, the liberals, secular America, etc.

All of this constitutes a claim to ongoing authority and righteousness, but as with other apocalyptic texts, it is also a call to action for those who would preserve that righteous authority. True patriots, it suggests, must enlist in the holy war to preserve the Trump era — one that goes on and on and on, time everlasting. The president himself acknowledges as much. “I write this letter to you for the purpose of history and to put my thoughts on a permanent and indelible record.” The letter is not meant to be read by Pelosi and the House Democrats, though it certainly will be — it is meant to rouse his supporters, to announce the great revelation: They are living in a time of great change, of great hope in the form of Trump’s millenarian kingdom, and of great fear, from the forces of darkness assaulting American democracy in the form of the Democratic Party. This is the eschatology of Trump: The final battle is here, in the impeachment, and must be fought to give them the Kingdom of Trump on the other side. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/12/18/apocalyptic-worldview-hidden-trumps-letter-pelosi/