Don’t Worry, Trump’s Praying For You

That will fix everything, right?

Photo by Matheus Ferrero on Unsplash

This article was originally published on Medium.

At the time of this writing, more than eighty people have died because of the floods in Texas. Many of those are little girls who never got to truly live life and never even got the chance to vote.

Our president doesn’t control the weather. It’s not Trump’s fault that it rained in Texas. I’m pretty sure if he could control the weather, he’d send all tornados and hurricanes to California to gain political advantage through our suffering.

But what is Trump’s fault is that we weren’t able to see this would happen ahead of time, so that we could clear the area and keep people from dying.

Trump has been dismantling every part of our government to redistribute the power of each part back to himself. This includes defunding and dismantling the National Weather Service.

Aaron Parnas explains…

The NWS San Angelo office, which covers some of the hardest-hit regions, was operating without a senior hydrologist, a staff forecaster, and its meteorologist in charge, according to the NWS Employees Organization. The San Antonio office also had major vacancies, including its warning coordination meteorologist and science officer, both vital for flood planning and evacuation coordination.

If Trump actually gave a shit, if it wasn’t his plan for people to die in order for him to gain more power, then he should be in a panic right now, making sure to fill those spots with new employees so something like this never happens again.

It’s already about to rain again in Texas, so he doesn’t have much time to make this right.

But instead of doing any of that, he offered prayers for what is happening in Texas. He said Melania and him are praying about it. Because people in power use prayers as a weapon.

When people who lost family members and loved ones in Texas pray as a result of losing people, they do so out of genuine desperation. They weren’t expecting what happened and had no way to predict it. The entire event was out of their control.

They pray out of devastation. They plead with a god that they believe controls the entire universe because they control very little. And maybe praying can give them a little power back or that’s what they want to believe. Maybe it can influence and fix things that they have no say in.

But when Trump does it, it’s not an act of desperation. He knows he has the power to do so many things to help, but he doesn’t want to. So he “prays” (I guarantee he’s not actually praying) to appear as helpless and desperate as everyone else, so they won’t blame him for what happened.

It’s to make him seem relatable and at the same level as them.

The goal is for all the hurting people say: he’s just as horrified and feels just as helpless as we do, so he’s also turning to God for help. He’s just like us.

But he’s not. He’s using prayer to try to get out of accountability.

This happens in churches and in politics more than people care to admit. Churches are non-profit organizations that receive donations every week. Their job is literally supposed to be to help people. That’s why they are tax exempt.

But how often are people lonely? And instead of being there for them, they offer prayer. How often do people need financial help? And yet all they usually offer is prayer. How often do people need physical acts of service? And yet they just offer prayer.

Sometimes they do more than this, but the majority of the time, all they have is prayer.

Praying hands offer nothing. They’re closed, so you can’t take anything from them and they’re empty of anything useful to give you. Because praying is rarely an act of empathy.

It’s usually either a placebo for the struggling to feel like they’ve actually received something that will help when in reality they got nothing. And a weapon for the powerful to stab the weak in the face with while smiling.

So while I won’t criticize most people for praying in general, it can be very toxic.