(RNS) — On Sunday (March 8), veteran Democratic political operative James Carville took to his Politicon YouTube channel to deliver an obscenity-laced sermon on the topic of Trump Derangement Syndrome, a condition that results from hating President Donald Trump so much that sufferers “are unable to see the good qualities he has and some of the good things he’s been doing,” Carville said.
Carville admits he has TDS, but adds that he doesn’t want to recover. To the contrary: “I pray to God in Heaven. God! Rain the righteous rain of Trump Derangement Syndrome on me. Pray for me, Lord. I’m your vessel on this earth. Pray for the people that listen to this. We want more. We wanna hate the son-of-a-bitch so much that we can’t see straight!”
Call this the flip side of Donald Trump’s ad-libbed comment on the gospel of love at last year’s memorial service for Charlie Kirk: “That’s where I disagreed with Charlie,” said the president. “I hate my opponents and I don’t want the best for them.”
Carville said media friends of his, specifically sports commentator Stephen A. Smith, CBS News analyst Dan Abrams and NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo, point to Trump’s getting rid of the penny or firing Kristi Noem. Carville fires back that Trump was the one who hired Noem and that crediting him for ending the penny is like praising Mussolini for making Italy’s trains run on time.
His friends, he says, perpetrate an “insidious kind of evil” when they claim that seeing both sides means they are acting with integrity, and that anyone who doesn’t isn’t as good as they are.
The faith-based alternative to Carville’s line of attack is represented by another James — James Talarico, the Presbyterian seminary student and state assemblyman who is the newly minted Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate from Texas.
As Talarico said after winning his primary last week: “I am tired of being pitted against my neighbor. I’m tired of being told to hate my neighbor.” According to anti-Trump evangelical David French, Talarico’s rhetoric makes him “one of the few openly Christian politicians in the United States who acts like a Christian.”
In policy terms, Talarico is an old-time liberal Protestant who literally harks back to the Social Gospel message of Charles Sheldon’s “In His Steps,” the novel that introduced “What would Jesus do?” as an American culture meme. Here is Talarico on the stump last year:
What would Jesus do about a tax system that benefits the rich over the poor? What would Jesus do about a healthcare system that forces the sick to start go fund me pages to afford life-saving surgeries? What would Jesus do about an education system that ties a child’s school funding to their communities’ property wealth? What would Jesus do about a justice system that incarcerates more people than any other country on the face of the earth? And what would Jesus do about an economic system that prioritizes profits over the health of our planet? Would he stay in his room and pray? Or would he walk into the seat of power and flip over the tables of injustice? We Christians are called to do more than charity. We are called to challenge the systems that make charity necessary.
Carville would appear to be down with that message, though the onetime south Louisiana altar boy‘s liberal values are rooted not in the Social Gospel but in Catholic Social Teaching, which dates back to the same era. Embedded in his Sunday sermon are these requests: “Pray for people who don’t necessarily have advantages. Pray for people who are trying to make it in the world.”
But making an impersonal, social justice appeal was not the main business of Carville’s sermon. It was to free his auditors from TDS guilt. Get thee behind me, Satan!
