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Trump, Unity, and the Scapegoat

Trump, Unity, and the Scapegoat

Last updated on: February 23, 2025 at 9:04 am by Ted Peters

Trump, Unity, and the Scapegoat 2025-02-23T09:04:21-08:00 Ted Peters

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Trump, Unity, and the Scapegoat

Trump, Unity, and the Scapegoat Mechanism

“Biden, Trump stress unity after rally shooting upends presidential race.” That’s a July 15, 2024 online news headline. What might this express about the relationship between Trump, unity, and the scapegoat?

Trump does not by himself install unity in the national household. Rather, it’s Trump’s destiny that does that. This is the case whether Trump feels like a unifier or not. Brian Kaylor reminds us of Trump’s vindictive divisiveness in “The Blindness of Political Violence.”

“Soon, as people praised his display of strength and started selling shirts with the image, online threats of violence from far-right militias and hate groups escalated. Calls for war, urging violence against Democrats. An eye for an eye.”

Without both eyes, we might be blind to just how violence affects America. To that blindness and our failure to see the scapegoat mechanism we now turn.

Victim Trump, Unity, and the Scapegoat: Visible versus Invisible Scapegoats

So, before we jump into the unity lake, let’s take a closer look at Trump, Unity, and the Scapegoat. Under the microscope of the public theologian, we will see Satan casting out Satan.

“Scapegoat” by Holman Hunt 1854

Recalling earlier Patheos posts on sin, I distinguished two kinds of scapegoats, the visible and the invisible.

The type one scapegoat is the visible enemy whom we vilify in political rhetoric. Recall the way former President Trump would pronounce the word, “China.” He gritted his teeth and nearly spit it out. Or the way he vilified migrants on America’s border, calling them murderers and rapists who are poisoning America’s blood. I label this rhetoric, cursing (Peters, Sin: Radical Evil in Soul and Society, 1993, p. 168). When half of America unifies in order to eliminate both China and immigrants, this internal unity is gained at the expense of quite visible outsiders. Trump turns ordinary people into visible scapegoats in order to unify one faction against another.

The type two scapegoat is invisible. In America, internal unity is gained through the secular worship of the dead soldier. And all living soldiers are sacred too. Soldiers are secularly sacred because they “risk their life” for our freedom. They sacrifice. And we accept that sacrifice. No one dare express “oh hum” let alone criticize the American soldier.

With the failed assassination attempt on Saturday, July 13, 2024, former President Trump enters the ranks of the sacred soldier who risks his life for our freedom. Governor Glenn Youngkin (R-Virginia) told a reporter at the Republican National Convention two things. First, it’s time for “unity.” And second, God’s “providence” protected Trump for this purpose.

In a RNC speech, Senator Tim Scott (R-South Carolina) called Trump’s narrow escape a “miracle” wrought by the “Lord of Lords and the King of Kings. The Alpha and the Omega.” His applause was uproarous.

The failed assasination attempt turned Trump into the invisible scapegoat who unifies everybody.

Here’s what’s being attempted: America’s social unity is to be centered around the wounded warrior blessed by a transcendent power. No one dares express “oh hum” let alone criticize the new invisible scapegoat. It’s going to be more difficult for Biden to describe Trump as an “existential threat to democracy,” observes Ian Bremmer in a TED Talk.

Satan casts out Satan

Satan and our spirit of unity

Satan casts out Satan (Mark 3:23) invisibly right before our eyes (Girard R. , I Saw Satan Fall Like Lightening, 2001). Satan casts out the evils of disunity, acrimony, and violence. In its place, Satan tries to establish American unity with a new sacred center, a new hurricane eye. Hooray, Satan!

I have been relying on the analysis of René Girard to grasp the scapegoat mechanism at work in American violence (Girard R. , The One by Whom Scandal Comes, 2014). I add something to Girard’s theory, namely, the distinction between the visible and invisible scapegoat (Peters, Sin Boldly!, 2015, pp. 235-249).

Whereas the visible scapegoat is an enemy we curse and kill, the invisible scapegoat is a friend whose risk of death we sanctify. Both scapegoats create and sustain communal bond. The dead soldier – and now the candidate who risks becoming dead while fighting for our freedom — blinds while he binds.

Trump, unity, and the scapegoat

Satan casting out Satan in Studying Bible Prophecy

Because Satan is a liar and the father of lies (John 8:44), we should tread truth like Tiny Tim tip toes through the tulips. Try tiptoeing through The Apocalypse which leaves us with a sense of foreboding.

“One of its heads seemed to have received a deathblow, but its mortal wound had been healed. In amazement the whole earth followed the beast” (Revelation 13:3).

The wounded warrior whom we sacralize spreads a spirit which makes us feel righteous in following the beast. But beware when we feel a powerful spiritual presence while singing with gusto America’s National Anthem. Test the spirits to see if they are truly of God.

The invisible scapegoat requires spiritually trained eyes to perceive. What should we look for? Look at how cursing the enemy gets replaced by symbol stealing on behalf of unity. Symbols of God or redemption get stolen from religion and applied to our secular unifier.

How can we discern the spirits at work in the triumvirate of Trump, unity, and the scapegoat?[1]

Jesus Christ as the Final Scapegoat

For Christians, Jesus Christ is the Final Scapegoat because his death on the cross puts an end to the distorted delusion that some mechanism of sacrifice can unify us let alone purify us. Take from a public theologian: there simply is no spiritual or mystical mechanism by which Trump’s close call sanctifies him let alone warrants attributing to him the status of hero, center, or unifier.

Conclusion

The public theologian will report how the New Testament memory of Jesus should dismantle any social unity oriented around a pseudo sacred. The death of Jesus makes visible what had been invisible. The death of Jesus shocks us with truth, with revelatory truth. One of the clear messages of the New Testament that becomes habitually garbled, muddied, and twisted in modern civic and moral rhetoric is this: No more scapegoats! (Peters, Atonement and the Final Scapegoat, 1992)

It would be a dangerous mistake to install unity in the American household based on the sacrifice of a scapegoat, whether visible or invisible.

ST 2163. Sin 13 & PT 3244: Trump, Unity, and the Scapegoat

Thanks to Judy McLaughlin for photo

SIN 1 Sin? Really?

SIN 2 Self-Justification

SIN 3 The Visible Scapegoat

SIN 4 The Invisible Scapegoat

SIN 5 Sin Boldly!

SIN 6 Sin and Grace

SIN 7 The true story of Satanic Panic

SIN 8 How can Satan cast out Satan?

SIN 9 Ted’s Tips on Satan and Demons

SIN 11 Sin-Talk and Grace-Talk

SIN 12 This was a disgrace!

SIN 13 Trump, Unity, and the Scapegoat

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Ted Peters

Ted Peters is a pastor, professor, and author of both fiction and nonfiction. Visit: TedsTimelyTake.com.

Ted is emeritus professor of systematic theology and ethics at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary and the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. He co-edits the journal, Theology and Science at the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences. His fictional thrillers feature an inner-city pastor, Leona Foxx, who courageously challenges the structures of political domination buttressed by the latest in science and technology.

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Notes

[1] At the center of this new found unity is a person of destiny, but not a saint. In Hegelian terms, Ross Douthat writing in the New York Times recognizes how the assasination attempt makes Trump into a person of destiny. But, this does not turn Trump into a saint. “He is a man of negligible intellectual curiosity who dominates all of his epoch’s popular media forms: gossip columns, cable news, reality television, social media. He’s a man who represents the shadow side of the American character — not the Lincolnian statesman but the hustler, the mountebank, the self-promoter, the tabloid celebrity — at a time when American power and American corruption are intermingled.” America’s newly found unity is centered around decay.

References

Girard, R. (2001). I Saw Satan Fall Like Lightening. Maryknoll NY: Orbis.

Girard, R. (2014). The One by Whom Scandal Comes. East Lansing MI: Michigan State University Press.

Peters, T. (1992). Atonement and the Final Scapegoat. Perspectives in Religious Studies 19:2, 151-181.

Peters, T. (1993). Sin: Radical Evil in Soul and Society. Grand Rapids MI: Wm B Eerdmans.

Peters, T. (2015). Sin Boldly! Minneapolis MN: Fortress Press.

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