“What Hitler did not believe and what Stalin did not believe and what Mao did not believe and what the SS did not believe and what the Gestapo did not believe and what the NKVD did not believe and what the commissars, functionaries, swaggering executioners, Nazi doctors, Communist Party theoreticians, intellectuals, Brown Shirts, Black Shirts, gauleiters, and a thousand party hacks did not believe was that G-d was watching what they were doing. And as far as we can tell, very few of those carrying out the horrors of the twentieth century worried overmuch that G-d was watching what they were doing either. That is, after all, the meaning of a secular society.”
David Berlinski - The Devil's Delusion - Atheism And Its Scientific Pretensions
So it turns out that George Bush Sr. is also lewd, crude and vulgar, just like Trump. The difference is that Trump is honest about it while Bush attempted to present himself as a dignified person. I actually prefer a rasha who admits it than a faker.
The Baalei Mussar say that the כוונה of שלא עשני גוי is not the גוי in jail or in the jungle. The כוונה includes the President of the United States. That is not to say that there aren't decent גוים - there are plenty. But as Avraham said in this weeks parsha - רק אין יראת אלקים במקום הזה והרגוני על דבר אשתי - Only there is no fear of G-d and you were liable to kill me for my wife. If there is no fear of G-d then anything can - and does - happen.
Think of Clinton, Nixon, Kennedy etc. etc. The leaders of the free world and so low that they could play handball on the curb. And think of just about everyone in Hollywood. And so many professional athletes [classic example - the '86 Mets. About the lowest level of sleaze in recorded history - and I was a die-hard fan, may G-d forgive me]. And then there are the professors, writers etc. etc. name the profession. The truth is that almost anybody would be as morally bankrupt as famous, rich people are if given the opportunity - they just have many more options to allow their נפש הבהמית to run wild. For every Bill Cosby we hear about there are thousands more that we don't.
I, for one, am glad that the fear of G-d and a guidebook for life called "Torah" somehow shapes me into some form of a human being.
עיר פרא אדם יולד- Man is born a wild donkey [Iyov 11/12]. Reb Simcha Zissel of Kelm teitched עיר פרא - from a wild donkey, אדם יולד - a man must be born. And THAT is our task in this world.
A non-religious person once came to the home of Rav Shlomo Freifeld ztz"l, the founder of Yeshivas Sha'ar Yashuv. He saw a picture of gedolim on the wall and asked who they are. The Rosh Yeshiva explained "An almost extinct species called 'human beings'".
