The Rev. Roger Butts:

President Donald Trump won the election with rhetoric that was scandalous and divisive. His targets ranged from Mexican immigrants (“rapists”) to Megyn Kelly (“blood coming out of her whatever”) and John McCain (“He’s not a war hero. I like people who weren’t captured.”) Trump claimed that on 9/11, he watched thousands of Muslims cheering in Jersey City, which was a lie. He called for a complete ban on all Muslims entering the country.

Every day during the election, Trump would say or do something that would sink any other candidate. Alas, somehow he won.

When he won, one hoped that his tone would change or that he would strive to unite the country. His ego seems too fragile for that. Consider his Jan. 1 tweet: “Happy New Year to all, including to my many enemies and those who have fought me and lost so badly they just don’t know what to do.” I am worried that he identifies those of us who did not vote for him as enemies. It is painfully ungracious and unpresidential.

What does all this say about Trump’s temperament? And what does it say about how he’ll react to real dangers that a commander in chief faces? Every week, from day one, he’ll face difficult decisions when a U.S. ship gets harassed in the Persian Gulf or the South Chinese Sea or some diplomatic building is threatened in the Middle East. What will he do? Tweet mean words at them? Nuke them? Who knows?

There is a larger point here. Who knows how he really feels about any policy? He shifts. So maybe our institutions will be strong enough to withstand this kind of pressure. Maybe he’ll turn out to be moderate.

He attacks NATO and the CIA but seems to be in awe of President Vladimir Putin. It is all quite confusing. And what about his refusal to divest from his businesses, which will put him in conflict with the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause?

I worry about his advisers. Trump’s Cabinet will be made up of leaders in the anti-LGBT equality movement, including his vice president, Mike Pence, who signed Indiana’s Draconian Religious Restoration Freedom Act in 2015. Trump’s pick for education secretary, Betsy DeVos, by all measures, appears to hate public education and has spoken of reforming education in order to advance God’s kingdom on earth. It is frightening rhetoric that makes me worry about the separation between church and state in this administration.

Our diversity and commitment to human rights for all make our country’s democratic experiment great. This is why I love the United States and believe in it enough to fight for it. Everyone belongs: atheists, Muslims, Jews, Christians, people with no religious orientation at all. Gay folks, straight folks, transgender folks. This beloved community makes room for all. In Trump’s tone and temperament and in those who guide him, I see four years of bitter divisiveness.

There is this, however: Those of us who believe in healing the heart of democracy and in ever expanding equality will speak up, act up, make our voices heard. That bodes well for the next four years.

David Pico:

Trump’s transition has been a flurry of politically incorrect tweets and media bashing. We’re told it’s unprecedented, unpresidential, embarrassing. But Trump is crushing the double-headed snake of political correctness and media subversion that has poisoned American minds. If Trump can keep it up, he may get his portrait in the American patriot hall of fame.

Barack Obama told “60 Minutes” last week that part of the president’s job is “shaping public opinion.” This addition to the job description was a telling slip.

In 1937, Max Horkheimer wrote “Traditional and Critical Theory,” a fusion of Freudism and Marxism that was to serve as a tool for “shaping public opinion.” The result was an idea called “political correctness.” It is dressed as respect, decency, compassion. But political correctness is a way to shame opposition into silence and mold new minds. Using language restrictions, it makes the expression of opposing ideas impossible, until they are switched off entirely. Young minds are given a straw to view the world through.

In the 1980s, Yuri Bezmenov warned America of “ideological subversion,” a psychological warfare method as old as Sun Tzu’s book, “The Art of War,” where politicians and media keep the public in the dark and shine a light only on carefully chosen events, changing perspectives of reality according to their agenda. With reality bent and new opinions formed, the public is then useful for votes.

It is an extremely effective method. And sinister. Bezmenov defected from the KGB, when he could no longer look himself in the mirror. His lectures on YouTube detail the subversion process. The parallels to current American politics should feel like pinch to a dream. The tragedy is that perspectives of reality are shaped so aggressively that even if you turn the lights on to reveal the full story, a subverted mind cannot find context and cannot make sense of it. Curiosity is lost. They have no interest beyond defending their comfortable reality, so they demean and label you.

At the end of eight years, America is seeing record numbers of mass shootings, terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, people on food stamps, people in poverty, health insurance costs and national debt. Not to mention the worst rioting since 1967, a 21 percent spike in major city murders, 95 million people out of the workforce, a $4,000 decrease in median household income and a 4 percent drop in homeownership.

Yet Obama said in his farewell address, “The American people are much better off today than before I took office,” and the media backs his claims. Citizens have to search outside the mainstream to find the statistics of failure.

Skepticism of media is essential for its honesty, and Trump is giving us permission to question. Change does not happen by forcing language and thought. It comes from free exploration of many ideas.

Time will tell if Trump succeeds or fails. But Trump breaks the media’s grip on Americans. He hacks through the politically correct jungle. The more Trump speaks off the cuff, the more he wrestles the media, the more he tweets, the better it is for freedom in American thought.

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The Rev. Roger Butts is an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister. David Pico is a published author and entrepreneur. Both live in Colorado Springs.