Regarding the previous post.
Is it right to vote for someone to be President if he is an evil person? If the story told by Ivana is accurate that means that Trump is an [unrepentant] rapist. May one vote for such a person?
My answer is a resounding .... YES! Provided that there is nobody who is running for office who will do a better job.
Ideally we want our leaders to be not only great leaders but paragons of moral virtue. Ideally. But in the world of politics today it isn't a happening. So instead we should focus on who will do the best job while lamenting that our options are so limited and that we have to vote for such a person.
I happen to think that Trump is one of the most emotionally underdeveloped men on the planet. As Charles Krauthammer the famous psychiatrist turned political commentator put it: “I used to think Trump was an eleven-year-old, an undeveloped bully,” he wrote in the Washington Post, in an analysis that was more psychiatric than political. “I was off by about ten years. His needs are more primitive, an infantile hunger for approval, and praise, a craving that can never be satisfied. He lives in a cocoon of solipsism where the world outside himself has value—indeed exists—only insofar as it sustains and inflates him.” Trump, naturally, responded with his customary class and eloquence, tweeting that Krauthammer was “a dummy” and “an overrated clown.”
Trump has a whole host of glaring moral and ethical failings. He brags about [among other things] the beautiful married [if I remember correctly] women he slept with. I once saw him asked what values he transmitted to his children. He answered that he taught them the value of a dollar..... That's it for him. His value system is a dollar. Reminds me of Oscar Wilde's line that a cynic is someone who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.
That being said - the country was in MUCH better shape under his watch than under Biden's. Biden might be a better human being but as far as a President goes - hard to find worse.
So who do we want - a better person who is a lousy President and can ruin the lives of 330 million Americans [and frankly the entire planet] or a rude, obnoxious, uncouth, vulgar, self-centered megalomaniac under whom we will thrive [and the Jewish people in Israel will be safe]?
I would go for the latter any day - with all of the reservations one should have.
The Sfas Emes says that in Parshas Pinchas when Moshe asked for a leader his request was for a leader who will guide the people towards Hashem. "ולא תהיה עדת השם כצאן אשר אין להם רועה". Pashut pshat is that the רועה is the leader. The Sfas Emes says that it is Hashem. Appoint a leader, asked Moshe Rabbeinu, who will lead the people to follow You.
THAT is the ideal but will have to wait until Moshiach.
במהרה בימינו אמן!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
