The Dogs of Peace

Bert fosteringPresident Trump called a woman a dog on Twitter. He did this because she said a lot of nasty things about him. It is not okay for the President of the United States or any other man to call a woman a dog.

This is not Christian, servant leadership, an example from a man of faith and action. This is a nasty, foul thing for a man to do.

Many of my friends believe it is more important that Trump win the “war on Christianity” than any individual thing he does. My friend Mark (whom I love like a brother) says Trump didn’t mock that disabled reporter, it was a movement he made added to a clip from something else. My friend Katherine, the sweetest woman on Earth, who would spend her last dime rescuing a dog and kill herself on the highway to pick one up, says it’s okay that The President of the United States did that because women call men dogs all the time.

No, sweet, lovely, dear friends, it isn’t.

My friend Friedgaard had a little dog that attended Quaker Meetings with us in Scotland. She slept in Friedgaard’s arms until meeting was over, then jumped down and ate the crumbs from the teacakes off our plates. It was a ritual among this peace-loving group.

One day during the after-meeting tea, Friedgaard (who rarely talked about herself) said something about being a Hitler Youth. We all sat there, staring, as this kind, social-justice-dedicated woman said, “People say you had to know better. We didn’t. We were taught in school, we grew up believing that when we emptied a hospital, when we moved people, it was for the good of the community. God was telling our leaders what to do, and we were doing what God wanted, obeying our leaders. I cannot make people understand. They say ‘How could your own heart not tell you it was wrong? Didn’t you have a Bible?’ And I say yes, and the Bible was how we believed what we were doing was right, because we believed the pastors and the politicians who told us how to interpret it.”

“And I swore, when the war was over and we discovered that we were the most evil people on Earth, not the good ones, the bad ones, everyone hated us, then I swore, I would never again believe what the preacher, what the politician, told me God wanted. I would never pick and choose what to read in the Bible, I would never live without asking questions. And I never have. This makes me prickly. It makes me honest. I will never live before God as a lie again, with God’s help.”

There is no excuse for the President of the United States to call a woman a dog. He is not God’s man to win the culture war. He is the war.

9 thoughts on “The Dogs of Peace

  1. I was appalled when he was elected. I am appalled and bewildered by the lengths people will go to support him. I can not find any redeeming quality to this man whatsoever. I’m not sure this country can survive two more years of him.

    • What will happen to us when he’s gone? Will we go back to being nice to each other? Will we recognize true servant leadership? What has he set the stage for, and how can we combat not just him but that? In honor of my friend Friedgaard, I ask these questions.

  2. I love that peaceful dog picture.

    About Trump…I could be wrong; he could really be losing it, but my guess is that he’s strategically offending people for two reasons: (1) his fans *like* that he’s not a gentleman–makes him more different from Bush and Obama; and (2) if serious conservatives, who’ve never liked or trusted him, are sufficiently agitated by the non-news that Trump is obnoxious, they might be distracted from things he’s doing wrong, or failing to do right, that will actually affect *our* lives. I think he’s counting on expressions of genteel outrage from “nice” people to keep his fans cheering, “Yah, the snobs hate our man Trump! If he calls her a dog, we’ll call her a FEMALE dog!” rather than saying, “So, where’s the total repeal of Obamacare and the absolute renunciation of land grabbing?”

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