America’s Godman

IF GOD BELONGS to believers, then God became an American this week. There cannot be stronger evidence of divine intervention than a bullet shaving your face leaving nothing worse than a trickle of blood in one ear? This is the Republican doctrine after Donald Trump survived the assassination attempt in Pennsylvania. A pastor who spoke days later at the Republican convention said: “I don’t see this as luck… I see this as God’s protection.” This is what Trump believes.

For most Americans, doubt is the antithesis of faith. There is no space for the agnostic irony that has become the prevalent faith of sceptical Europe. A Reuters-Ipsos poll taken in America just after the near-tragedy, published on July 16, found that 65 per cent of Republicans thought that Trump was “favoured by divine providence or God’s will”. Add the 11 per cent of Democrats who agreed despite their partisan dislike of Trump and you have a potential tip-over vote which could turn a probable victory into an across-the-board sweep in the November elections.

The Reuters report reminded readers that a 2022 survey had found that 77 per cent of Americans believed in God, as against only 39 per cent of the British. Such faith has political consequences.

There was worse statistical news for the Joe Biden campaign: 80 per cent, across both parties, were convinced that America “is spiralling out of control” while 84 per cent feared the threat from extremists. This segues easily into a line of political logic: men and women have failed to protect this great nation. God is the only hope. God has sent a sign.

Once you believe that God is the guardian of human affairs, which most of the non-Christian world beyond America also does, then such near-survival takes on the hues of a miracle. God saved Trump so that Trump could save America. Quod Erat Demonstrandum.

Has God changed Donald Trump? He says he is a new man, and we should trust him. That sudden, minimal moment when death flew past, when egocentric categories of trivial and important become part of the same mirage, could have lit up the future with unique clarity. Trump was sombre when he first appeared at the Republican convention in Milwaukee; if that is not change, what is? There were no histrionics. The candidate who had invested in underprivileged-rural-white-oriented partisan politics spoke of unity. American minorities were prominent on the stage.

One important question has not been asked by the commentariat, at least to my knowledge. Would Trump have selected JD Vance as his nominee for vice president before that assassination attempt? Trump is not famous for turning the other cheek. His memory of past slights was as long as his desire for comeuppance was deep. Vance, who was in the “never Trump” brigade in 2016, once called Trump’s policies the “opioid of the masses”, which was extremely mild compared to his view that the “dangerous” Trump could become “America’s Hitler”. Vance’s wife Usha Chilukuri is of Indian-origin; their children hence are from the culturally liberal melting-pot America rather than any supremacist mindspace. If Vance has moved on from his past comments, so has Trump. The second transition is the true surprise.

The rest of the world, which cannot be unaffected by any shift of power in Washington, is already pondering over a possibility. Will 39-year-old Vance be the real foreign minister in a Trump administration, taking the forward position on world crises as the stalking horse while Trump checks reactions to find negotiating space? We can already see the Trump impact on the Ukraine war and the future of NATO: it is not accidental that Ukraine’s leader Zelensky has begun to see the virtues of negotiations by November, when the results of the US election will be known. Trump has promised to drive a peace bargain within three months. He will force European members of NATO to raise their defence budgets (in Germany’s case to double it). Trump’s treasury is going spend its money on Americans. The message has gone through without any distortion. Beijing must have heard the Vance dictum that the real danger for America is China; although the bad news for Taiwan is that it will have to raise its defence spending. Uncle Sam Donald has done with picking up the tab.

One transatlantic alliance suffering from early hiccups is the “special relationship” with Britain. Prime Minister Keir Starmer might already be regretting his choice of David Lammy as foreign secretary. On the eve of Trump’s visit to Britain in 2018 Lammy described Trump as a “neo- Nazi sympathising sociopath”, “tyrant in a toupee” and a “profound threat to the international order”. Not very ambiguous. When Trump once complained that he had been treated very badly, Lammy tweeted “4 US Presidents have been assassinated snowflake”. Has God changed Trump so radically that he will turn the other cheek to both Americans and the British? Maybe there are limits when he juxtaposes Hitler, sociopath, tyrant and toupee. We shall watch with interest.

The hand of God will not write American foreign policy, but it will influence, even if obliquely, some of the thinking in a Trump administration. Using high exaggeration to squeeze a headline out of a stray thought is common enough in the rhetoric of democracy, but Vance may have touched a conservative nerve when he wondered if Britain would become the first Islamist country with nuclear weapons.

Half of Starmer’s cabinet and 40 per cent of MPs took their oath in the name of the king because they did not believe in God in a country whose motto is ‘God Save the King!’ This was fine when the British used to believe in both God and King. Today, they seem to believe in neither, but are more distressed by heresy towards the monarchy than divinity.

Agnosticism is not a Labour malady or virtue; it extends across all sections of Christianity in Britain. Go to church on a Sunday afternoon and instead of evensong it might be preparing for disco. When was the last time a British prime minister went to church to pray? Rishi Sunak, in contrast, placed his family gods in 10 Downing Street. Keir Starmer is an avowed atheist, but his wife is a practising Jew; the prime minister joins the observation of Shabbat in his family every Friday. Minority religions are alive and well in Britain: Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, Judaism. There is worship in mosques, temples, gurdwaras, synagogues. This will not make Britain Islamist now or ever. But the world has noticed the upward mobility of spirited minorities in politics.

God does not need the services of a political establishment to exist, but a monarchy does. A question keeps buzzing like a fly which will neither be squashed nor go away: Why do British politicians who dismiss God as fiction believe that monarchy is real? British royals have become little more than a costume party of pantomime characters which add some colour to the drab struggles of ordinary life. With their extraordinary theatrics, all scripted in correct grammar and snob diction, they are the perfect upper-class soap played out by drama kings and drama queens, not to mention uppity daughters-in-law. Could a king ever win an election to become prime minister of Britain? Why then do elected prime ministers bow before a chap in a well-cut suit trained to speak in banalities?

But British royalty may have one great service left to perform. A divine service, if one may be permitted a delicate pun.

King, Save the God!

About The Author

MJ Akbar

MJ Akbar is the author of, among several titles, Tinderbox: The Past and Future of Pakistan. His latest book is Gandhi: A Life in Three Campaigns

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