I meant the title to mean exactly what it says. A criticism of those who view Trump - not as potentially good and competent president but one who will literally save America in some mysterious manner. There was a similar attitude to Obama at the beginning of his presidency when he won the Nobel Peace Prize - even though he hadn't done anything to deserve it. It just was assumed he would get around to it because the expectations about him were so high. My correspondent disagrees and says that my readership understood it to be that I rejected the possibility of Trump being even a competent president. In short this is a question of reading comprehension. I had reiterated that I had meant this literally and was not rejecting Trump's potential to be a good president in a comment to the post. Nevertheless my correspondent asked that I explicitly bring up this issue.
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Guest Post
I sent the following ‘warning’ in an email to Daas Torah regarding the Post, ‘I want to belief in the tooth fairy, killer clowns, Satanic abuse rings, the Kaminetsky-Greenblatt heter and that Donald Trump is the Saviour of America.’:
A Warning
Rabbi, conflating the hope people have for Donald Trump, the President Elect of the United States with belief in ‘killer clowns, the tooth fairy Satanic abuse rings, and the Kaminetsky-Greenblatt heter’, damages your credibly vis-à-vis the Heter. With the Heter issue, you have been careful to distinguish between opinion and fact. As certain as you are that Trump is ‘insane’, unfit for the Presidency; your certitude is just an opinion. On a subtextual level, the above mentioned conflation relegates a Halachic certainly, i.e., the worthlessness of the Heter, to the realm of speculation.
Dass Torah wrote a new Post challenging my ‘warning’. DT posted my warning and responded:
An example of concerns which motivated my publishing of this post is an email I just received in response to this post. My unwillingness to accept that Donald Trump is the Saviour of America - is viewed as undermining my credibility that has been established by what I have published here - most of which is carefully documented. I find it unsettling that belief in Donald Trump as Saviour is the litmus test of a person's integrity and intellectual achievement. We are not talking about Donald Trump as a possibly competent president but as Saviour!
I responded with the following email:
I realize that I should have been more explicit in the ‘warning’ I sent you regarding your Post, ‘I want to belief in the tooth fairy, killer clowns, Satanic abuse rings, the Kaminetsky-Greenblatt heter and that Donald Trump is the Saviour of America.’. Please give this a fair reading. You are blogging, not submitting a treatise on Eschatology; thus, your readership understands your use of ‘Saviour’ in a colloquial sense, in an informal, conversational manner. This would lead to the logical conclusion that you were referring to Trump supporters in general, and would assume that you are conflating, comparing those who have hope and faith in Trump (like me) with those who believe in the ‘tooth fairy' and the legitimacy of the 'Heter’. This explains the push back you experienced.
Obviously, you used the term in its explicit, formal sense, meaning “…those who in fact think he is the Saviour…”, as you posted in a reply. That is your opinion. However, Trumps negatives are so high, that this group of ‘meshiachists’, if it exists at all, are a miut of a miut. Thus, those who respect your ‘integrity and intellectual achievement’, as I certainly do, took it as a dvar pshut that you meant ‘Saviour’ to be understood implicitly, colloquially.
In the last sentence in the ‘warning’, I used the term ‘subtextual’ with great care. Subtext refers to the implicit meaning of a text. Thus, I repeat, “On a subtextual level, the above mentioned conflation relegates a Halachic certainly, i.e., the worthlessness of the Heter, to the realm of speculation.”
My Daf Yomi shiur is a bit behind. We learned the other day, on daf 30 or 31 the source that one is permitted to give tochacha to his Rebbi. I feel that unfortunately I am in that position here. I submit with great respect and fondness, that you damaged your credibility with the Post in question. You are a very tenacious man. However, tenacity can be confused with obsessiveness. In my humble opinion, continuing to issue Posts regarding Trump is not in your best interests.
Dass Torah response:
I understand what you are saying - but I disagree with your ready assumption that Saviour wasn't meant literally. After all the same thing happened with Obama. He wasn't viewed as just a positive person and I think that Trump is viewed by many in the same way. I didn't think that you meant it literally either but it provided a basis to illustrate the issue.
My response:
Rabbi you misunderstood my email. Your readership is sophisticated enough to think that if one truly believes that Trump is the Savior in a literal manner, that such a deranged individual would also belief in the 'tooth fairy', etc. Thus, if they assumed you meant Saviour in a colloquial way, there would have been no disagreement. However, your readership pushed back, taking issue with you, Why?, Because they assumed you meant Saviour in the literal sense. . I think you should reread the email I sent earlier in this new light.
DT’s response which led to my Guest Post is as follows:
The only way this will be resolved is if you post a response on the blog and ask the question as to how my heading was understood. Now let’s hear from Daas Torah’s readership.
You've called Mr. Trump a fool. I admit to being a fool and supporting him. Maybe only fools would think great things can be done with a new president full of ideas how to elevate the United States. So be it. Time will tell.
ReplyDeleteIf Trump just replaced the current corrupt DOJ with a normal DOJ, fired Koskinen from the IRS and replaced him with someone unbiased,removed the illegal aliens that have committed violent crimes and also those that are sick with incurable diseases, provided real protection for the border, removed the social engineering non military idiots from the armed forces and replaced them with true military leaders, pointed out Muslim terrorism as Muslim terrorism when it happened and appointed decent, non liberal ideologues to the supreme court, I would consider this little bit a fantastic accomplishment.
ReplyDeleteThere is much more to consider but this little bit would be fantastic.
“In a recent post heading I mentioned Donald Trump as the Savior of America - and I meant this literally”
ReplyDeleteI agree, in the sense that Savior of America is “one who saves, preserves, or delivers from destruction or danger.” See, in today’s Jpost http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Right-From-Wrong-A-vote-against-cultural-radicalism-472512
Blum writes: “The popular culture I am talking about is the liberalism gone haywire… Yes, things have gone too far in the United States, and the electorate decided to pull the pendulum back in the other direction.”
In this sense I see Judge Freda the savior of American Jews who have gone haywire on radical feminism. E.g. Jachter and Ralbag claims “a man who refuses to grant a get to his wife is a scoundrel, JA1901; it is a mitzvah (a religious commandment) to free an agunah, JA1878.” Judge Freda ruled “heinous…” Greenblatt marries Tamar to her boyfriend with Tamar’s husband alive and well and refuses to divorce her---this is OK to the Kamenitsky’s, Jachter, Ralbag etc. No, adultery is heinous, an aggravated crime. We wait to see if the pendulum really will swing back in the other direction, to normalcy and against radical feminism.