OPINION:
A Baptist church in Alabama got out in front of elections by posting a sign on its front-lawn billboard that said, “A black vote for Trump is mental illness.”
What is it with everybody these days thinking they’re experts on long-distance determination of mental fitness?
The psychology and psychiatry fields have been doing that to President Donald Trump since his early White House days — weighing in with analysis on his mental acuities, and diagnosing him with various brain and behavioral and personality disorders, without ever having to take the bothersome step and painstaking time of meeting and counseling him first. (Which as a quick sidebar would make these fields ripe for artificial intelligence picking, yes? That is, if in-person visits aren’t necessary to determine mental fitness, well then, a computer would seem a cost-efficient alternative. Say bye-bye to the whole psychology profession).
Anyway: It’s ridiculous when psychiatric professionals try to diagnose the president long-distance.
It’s just as ridiculous for pastors to do the same to their Trump supporters in the congregation, and any Trump supporters who happen by the sign.
Worse, perhaps, is the sign’s other side.
It reads: “A white vote for Trump is pure racism.”
Good Lord, pastor.
“God motivates me to take a stand for what’s right,” pastor Michael Jordan told a local news station, The Hill reported. “Read the Bible and look in the White House. If they call me a racist, look in the White House. When you vote for Donald Trump, you are supporting institutionalized racism.”
OK.
But all Caucasians who vote for Trump are racist? All blacks who vote for Trump are mentally ill?
That seems a bit over the top. Particularly for a pastor. And here’s one other quick point to mull: If this were Barack Obama’s White House, the IRS would have been sicced his way.
Pastor Jordan, under a different administration, under the previous administration, would have faced the stripping of his church’s nonprofit status just for making those political comments.
Where’s the mental illness accusation about that?
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter @ckchumley.
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