What If?

One of the hardest things to do in dealing with conflict is to honestly consider the fact that you might be wrong, and that the person with whom you are in conflict might be right.  It goes against our nature, it causes us to ignore obvious data points, it leads to confirmation bias, and generally creates the right conditions for us to act like jackasses.  Watching bits and pieces of Trump's 60 Minutes interview and reading the various opinion pieces about it this morning, I was struck by the fact that he just might believe himself.  For some reason, this makes me feel just slightly better, but that better feeling is highly relative.  Do I feel as good as I would have if Obama was still President, and I had a dignified and diplomatic President who could speak eloquently and demonstrate some actual emotion besides anger? Well, no, but my overwhelming impression of Trump on most occasions is that he is a con man pulling one over on a whole lot of people, which makes me despair for the greater political situation.
What I'm thinking now is that perhaps he really believes that all of his actions are genuinely for the good of the country.  He really is trying to make America great again, but it's sort of like when a toddler is trying to make Mom breakfast in bed: messy and probably not going to taste very good. I'm not exactly sure which is worse: huckster or true believer, they both may in fact be quite dangerous.  I'm also not entirely sure that Trump isn't just playing a convincing true believer, in which case he conflates the dangers of both.
I guess what makes me feel better about the true believer angle is that the truth has been such a punching bag for the last three years, and at least, if he believes that his strong man act: populism, nationalism, isolationism, protectionism, etc. is really in our best interest, then at least reality will have a shot at proving those instincts misguided... or maybe not.  Maybe I'm wrong in my liberal progressive ideas about creating a better world through cooperation and lifting up the oppressed.  Maybe this universe does operate by the rules of Ayn Rand, and self interest is god.  If that's true then the Trump way is probably not such a bad idea.  We should be strong, we should beat up on anyone who isn't us, because they're looking to do likewise. I'm not above that sort of misanthropy, in fact, I rather enjoyed it for a very long time.
The thing that won't let me really revel in it though is this thing that keeps coming up in the book that I read every day.  The idea that self interest is not god, and in fact God is God.  Not only that, but God is not capricious and vicious like some people seem to think, but rather God is full of justice, steadfast love and mercy.  The reason why God creates is so that everything that is can show the love that moved God to create in the first place.
You would think that people who believe that Jesus is the reliable witness to that love would get the picture: the way to victory is not strength but weakness, the last shall be first and the first shall be last, blessed are the meek... you know that guy.  But from the first disciples onward, some folks still got it exactly wrong and piously set about trying to win and accumulate power and make things in their own image, even while proclaiming to follow a crucified Lord.
I guess what makes me more sanguine about Trump being a true believer as opposed to a cynical con man, is that it means he is just another Herod, or Caesar or whatever, he doesn't ultimately matter that much.  Maybe I should have known that from the beginning, maybe I should have known it about politicians I agree with.  I still think that we should try to make the world a better place by loving our neighbor rather than trying to take advantage of them.  I still think that the goal of humankind ought to be community rather than empire, but then again, maybe I'm just whistling past the graveyard of our hubris.