The Donald as Savior and Redeemer
Followers of Donald Trump view their candidate for president as a savior and redeemer. They see him as a force, who has come to save a suppressed people from the hands of their oppressors. Trump promises to restore respect and dignity to the masses alienated from the system under which they toil to survive. His fans see themselves excluded from the political process. They sense a loss of their freedoms. They want to know what happened to their democracy. Society’s former Middle Class has become its Forgotten Class.
The usurpers of political power, arrogant in their ill-gotten fortunes were not expecting a savior, a redeemer, or a messiah to challenge their ill-gotten authority. Pharisee Class of Washington DC views itself as the self-appointed guardian of the keys to the kingdom. At the first appearance of a potential Savior the high priests connive and collude to marginalize any grassroots savior, who might incite the starving masses to revolt. America’s oligarchy is threatened by a savior who challenges their authority and is capable of leading the oppressed, the ignored, and the disillusioned out of the desert and across the Red Sea to return them to their promised land.
A savior and a redeemer are not necessarily the same. Nor are they mutually exclusive. A redeemer is typically a savior. However, a savior is not by definition a redeemer. The crucial distinction is that a redeemer returns others to a previously preferred situation that was enjoyed prior to that desired state being corrupted and lost.
Savior
The definition of a “savior” is a person who protects others from harm or delivers others from some dire situation. A savior is a person, but it can also be a force such as a welcome rain that relieves the drought from a parched land. A savior is often seen as a healer, one who restores health to an organism, which has become infected or diseased.
As a savior, Trump is seen by his followers as a protector of traditional values. He can save them from their perceived demise. He can deliver citizens from the deteriorating social environment, which they are witnessing and experiencing.
Christians accept Christ as their savior, who saves them from sin and the consequences of sin. Recognized pre-Christian, religious saviors are Moses (Jews) Buddha (India), Krishna (Hindu), and Horus (Egyptian). Cultural saviors are Ulysses (Greece) and Romulus (Rome). Ideological saviors are Voltaire and Rousseau (enlightenment) and Marx (communism).
Redeemer
The definition of a “redeemer” is a person who brings back goodness to what was lost; who returns originally accepted values back to their former state of acceptance after they have been corrupted; who makes the unpleasant better; who frees others from distress, harms or the consequences of bad choices; who retrieves what was damaged and makes it worthwhile again; who reforms and changes deteriorated life situations for the better; who repairs, restores, makes good and fulfills a promise.
It is Trump, as the redeemer, who observes the collapse of social and political stability and the threats to the nation’s liberties that have inspired him to lead his national movement to regain what was lost by returning to the dreams of the nation’s founders and to the principles of the United States Constitution. His mission is to return the rights of citizens to the protection of their freedoms. His battle cry is to reinstate the rule of law. Trump’s efforts to regain, return and reinstate are attributes of a “redeemer,” bringing back what once existed but which now is threatened or lost.
Trump is not a Messiah, which is a special class of savior or redeemer, whose arrival is expected by an enslaved or damaged people, precisely because the arrival had been announced by prophets in the past. Trump’s leading role in the current drama was not prophesied or expected. His arrival on the stage was a surprise, a welcome surprise for the suffering masses, and an unwelcome surprise to their enslaving masters.
