Dominant male

The Lord will roar from Zion (Joel 3:16) 

'You have to dominate' or you're going to 'look like a bunch of jerks', said the President to his state governors, 'you have to do retribution'. They were not amused. Even apparently supportive republicans spoke out against this call to aggressive tactics. 'It's the antithesis of how we live' said the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, as he immediately demobilised the National Guard, in what appears to be a deliberate snub to the president. Intriguingly, though Minnesota is the epicentre of the protests, it has seen relatively little recently in the way of rioting or looting, which rather proves the governor's point.

Unfortunately Trump's words will mobilise his electoral support. He may even have meant it that way. A large swathe of American voters support a hardline approach to law enforcement. They want to see their police being tough because they really believe, in spite of much evidence to the contrary, that increasing the degree of force increases the degree of compliance. 

Such a view is riven through American society. For example, the mainstream evangelical stance is that you ought to smack your children and if you do not you are failing in your duty as parents. 'Spare the rod and spoil the child' is taken literally. Like all such things it can appear quite successful. Children brought up in this culture often approve and seem to feel no ill affects. This perpetuates the view that it is right to dominate another human being to bring order to society. It is a belief in the authority of power.

Unfortunately the authority of power only works under two very distinct scenarios. The first is a complete compliance on behalf of the one under authority. Usually this is cultural, but also requires total trust in the one meting out justice, and a willingness to respect the results of their judgements. Thus it works for the children brought up in loving, godly Christian homes. It also works for many long term prisoners, who, having survived the trauma of permanent incarceration, become totally accepting of their fate and its justifications. The second is an authoritarian regime prepared to do absolutely anything to stay in power. Someone with virtually unlimited power can experience the false belief that might is right. Someone like a billionaire businessmen, or the president of the United States of America, for example. Elsewhere, and sometimes even here, it fails spectacularly, bring with it aching injustice and eternal social unrest. 

The alternative is the authority of truth. This requires belief in some kind of shared human good, such as the need for justice, love and respect, for work and family, for security and significance. The authority then is required to use only legitimate means to guide or order others so that as many as possible may find this common human flourishing. A parent prevents an infant from burning herself with a boiling kettle, trains a child in dealing with others, crossing a road or staying safe on the internet, advises a teenager on next steps to college and so on, but their authority only extends to them knowing better how to live well. A resort to violence is neither helpful nor necessary. For the police, the right to impose order is given and accepted because they are trained in keeping the peace, not because they happen to have a badge. Judges are accepted as having the right to impose sentences because they are experts in legal and natural justice so their judgments are accepted as fair. 

It intrigues me that American society seems so enamoured with the authority of power, while European society largely values the authority of truth. I am sure it would make a fascinating historical study in social divergence. Maybe our years fighting home-grown fascism have made us more wary of such attitudes. I suspect one reason, though, is a difference in religious practice. Our churches tend to emphasise pastoral ministry, American churches tend to emphasise prophetic authority. Some might suggest this is New Testament versus Old Testament, but it's more complex than that, for both have strengths and weaknesses.  However the second, where God is more feared as a roaring lion than loved as a mother hen, is more prone to valuing powerful individuals, to respecting power for its own sake. Maybe that's why Trump remains popular. He offers a vision of a powerful but flawed human being, an uncomfortable prophet, far from the Christian fold, but still recognisable as one of theirs. It might explain Trump's strange attraction to the Christian right. It's certainly a mystery to the rest of us.

Looking up on a sunny day