Trump's God Complex

What's spiritual about any of this?

Last night I watched a docuseries called Trust Me: The False Prophet, about a Mormon cult leader who stepped in when Warren Jeffs was sentenced to life in prison in 2013 for his practice of sexually assaulting underage girls in the name of his prophecy. Jeffs continued to rule over his cult from prison, eventually declaring that God had told him that nobody in the FLDS community would be allowed to marry or have children while he was in prison.

One of his followers, Samuel Batemen, after disappearing from the community for a few years, showed up again with a new wife, soon followed by another, and eventually a couple dozen, many of whom were underage. Like most of these cult leaders, Bateman was just smart enough to spew out a few platitudes that sounded wise and insightful, so even though most of the FLDS community, he developed just enough of a following that he was able to accumulate more women, all of whom gave him all of their worldly possessions as well.

The story of how Bateman was finally arrested and put away himself is a fascinating one, but the reason I mention this is because it made me think about the religious angle that has taken hold of many of Donald Trump’s followers. Both Jeffs and Bateman were able to convince their followers that they had been chosen by God, and that defying them meant defying God himself, and we are hearing much the same message from some of Trump’s inner circle, particularly Pete Hegseth, who frequently talks about the current administration’s military actions as if they were divinely inspired.

With life in America being particularly precarious these days, it’s not hard to imagine how people could be looking for answers. But it’s always scary to me that people buy into the notion that anyone has been chosen by God, because that kind of Jesus complex always seems to be paired with a message that anything this person does is somehow serving a greater purpose that the rest of us are simply too human to understand. And of course that also ends up justifying certain actions that most of us would never consider. These people tend to use religion as an excuse for bad behavior because they are able to wrap it all up in the cloak of forgiveness.

I was raised to believe that being a Christian means always striving to improve as a person, not doing whatever you want because you know God will forgive you no matter what you do.

Samuel Batemen claimed to hear voices that told him he was supposed to have sex with young girls, and later that he was supposed to watch while his friends had sex with young girls. He acted as if following these instructions from God were a burden that he was forced to bear because he was chosen, and we see a lot of that same mentality with Trump and his whining about how nobody appreciates all that he does. His perpetual need for approval and praise shows a complete lack of comprehension about what it means to have any kind of spiritual connection, where people are actually able to experience moments where they’re comfortable with who they are.

It’s been said ad nauseum but it bears repeating that Trump will never be satisfied or happy, ever. So his compulsion to keep doing things that will bring the attention back to him, coupled with this narcissistic idea that nothing he does is immoral because he’s been chosen by God, is an absolutely terrifying combination. Especially because it means he will never feel the slightest guilt about killing people to do what he wants.