Trump and the seven deadly sins: A theological analysis

Dante’s tomb

A friend poses the following question about somebody who is by approximately three parsecs the worst person ever to be be president of the United States.

Question for religious folk: Which of the 7 Deadly sins does Trump least exemplify? Honest question.

Pride (Superbia): Considered the “queen of vices,” it is an excessive love of self or desire to be more important than others.
Envy (Invidia): Sadness at the prosperity of others or the desire to destroy it.
Wrath (Ira): Intense, uncontrolled anger or desire for vengeance.
Sloth (Acedia): Apathy, laziness, or a refusal to care and make time for what is truly important.
Avarice/Greed (Avaritia): An excessive desire for material wealth or earthly goods.
Gluttony (Gula): Overindulgence, typically in food or drink, but also includes consuming beyond necessity.
Lust (Luxuria): Intense, disordered desire for sexual pleasure or other bodily pleasures

Pride – Lol 10/10
Envy – Lol 10/10
Wrath – Doulble lol 10/10
Greed – double Lol 10/10
Lust – double double lol 10/10

That leaves Sloth and Gluttony.

Sloth – He plays golf. But has I would wager he had never walked 18 holes in his life. Not great, but not as physically lazy as he could be. Mentally he is exceedingly lazy. I would also bet he hasn’t read a book in 60 years. He certainly doesn’t make time for what is truly important. 9.5/10

Gluttony – he is fat and gross. But he could be fatter. And he doesn’t drink. 9.0/10

So at the end of the day, I have to say Gluttony.

I am open to other opinions.

I have to quibble here that there are a lot of fat people who aren’t gluttonous and lot of thin people who are. But a further more significant quibble is that, as I understand it, gluttony is defined by the Church Fathers as not necessarily consumption of mass quantities per se, but of putting one’s own desires above all considerations of the burdens and inconveniences that servicing these desires create for others. Throwing a fit when one’s carefully prepared custom order isn’t exactly right is gluttonous in this sense, even if the quantities involved are not large. In this sense Trump certainly gets a 10/10.

As for sloth he is fantastically, almost unimaginably lazy. This is a man who puts no actual effort into being president of the United States!

So personally I’m giving him a perfect score. He is the worst person in the world. I mean this seriously and literally. It’s basically beyond all comprehension but it is the case.

. . . DamnYankeesLGM quotes this extraordinarily precise analysis from Virginia Heffernan:

The president is not a moral figure in any idiom, any land, any culture, any subculture. I’m not talking about the liberal enlightenment that would make him want the country to take care of the poor and sick. I mean he has no Republican values either. He has no honor among thieves, no cosa nostra loyalty, no Southern code against cheating or lying, none of the openness of New York, rectitude of Boston, expressiveness and kindness of California, no evangelical family values, no Protestant work ethic. No Catholic moral seriousness, no sense of contrition or gratitude. No Jewish moral and intellectual precision, sense of history. He doesn’t care about the life of the mind OR the life of the senses. He is not mandarin, not committed to inquiry or justice, not hospitable. He is not proper. He is not a bon vivant who loves to eat, drink, laugh. There’s nothing he would die for — not American values, obviously, but not the land of Russia or his wife or young son. He has some hollow success creeds from Norman Vincent Peale, but Peale was obsessed with fair-dealing and a Presbyterian pastor; Trump has no fairness or piety. He’s not sentimental; no affection for dogs or babies. No love for mothers, “the common man,” veterans. He has no sense of military valor, and is openly a coward about war. He would have sorely lacked the pagan beauty and capacity to fight required in ancient Greece. He doesn’t care about his wife or wives; he is a philanderer but he’s not a romantic hero with great love for women and sex. He commands loyalty and labor from his children not because he loves them, even; he seems almost to hate them — and if one of them slipped it would be terrifying. He does no philanthropy. He doesn’t — in a more secular key — even seem to have a sense of his enlightened self-interest enough to shake Angela Merkel’s hand. Doesn’t even affect a love for the arts, like most rich New Yorkers. He doesn’t live and die by aesthetics and health practices like some fascists; he’s very ugly and barely mammalian.

This was in 2017!

This country.