Now, Keith, surely that political question asked in jest?
I doubt you would find I have changed much in my views on economics. I supported the judicial appointments and the regulatory reduction and the tax reform. I opposed the trade wars and view tariffs as nothing but taxes on the consumer. I don't think the Lord really cares where a building full of American bureaucrats are housed in Israel. Many, if not most, of Trump/Republican claims about the greatness of the economy during the time were overblown or false or lacked context. Yes, it was strong, but not at the level of greatness so often implied. Claims such as "lowest unemployment ever" were bogus, for instance. There are five other years since 1950 with lower unemployment.However, I was essentially a "Never Trumper" evangelical for the last four years because I was never able to get over the "ends justifies the means" premise that seemed to me to be a requirement for voting for him - especially as one who lived for 30 years prior in a subculture that used to spout all that "character counts" stuff. Granted, taking such a position wasn't risking anything because whether Trump would win TN was never in doubt in 2016 or 2020.
I've become a big fan of David French as he does such a good job of approaching politics with a Christian lens. I regularly shared his columns over the last couple of years as a way of arguing why unwavering, uncritical support for Trump was - or should be - morally problematic for evangelicals. The inability of my evangelical friends to honesty assess the character and leadership failures of Trump because he gave them a lot of goodies was the most frustrating thing about it all. So many went from "holding our noses"/"lesser of two evils"/"we're voting for a president, not a pastor"/"we know what he is" to deeply imbibing Trumpian Kool-aid and treating him as a fount of political truth who could all but do no wrong. I make that assessment based on review of my FB feed and numerous articles regarding evangelicals and Trump, not because of any lengthy conversations with folks at church, so my sampling may lead to skewed perception, but I think my assessment is still correct.
Ironically, my biggest moderation has come in the area of immigration, and it comes largely, but not completely, due to someone you wish your alma mater would disown - Thomas Sowell. In my time away from here I read his trilogy "Migrations and Cultures", "Race and Culture" and "Conquests and Cultures". The anti-immigrant rhetoric and attitudes prevalent in American society today differ little from the attitudes about immigrants in societies the world over and in times past. Like so many of Trump's arguments, there was little evidence to back it up. I support immigration reform and permanent status for DACA folks. I would probably make it a little more difficult than what Dems will want to do, but I've never been part of the "build the wall" crowd.
What Sowell's book did is give insight why the Bible has so much to say about how we should treat the foreigner among us. Much of the book on "Migration and Cultures" shows that immigrants are often targeted for discrimination whether they are immigrants to the U.S., Brazil, Malaysia, Europe, Africa or anywhere else. The rhetoric against them is so often the same regardless of the country. Along with some other occurrences, it impacted me enough that pre-pandemic I had started doing some volunteer work with our local chapter of World Relief who do work with immigrants and refugees in my community.
