Learning from Lincoln?

As we endure the truly obscene Republican Convention--the only thing it's lacking is Leni Reifenstahl as the official photographer--I cannot help wonder about the proclivity of the Trumpistas to embrace themselves in the mantle of Abraham Lincoln.  In that spirit, perhaps, we might reflect on the key paragraph of his Second Inaugural Address--spoiler alert, it's not the "malice toward none and charity toward all" paragraph--as we careen to what I fear is an almost inevitable civil war that will make us wish for the opportunity of a peaceful secession.  In any event, the paragraph is this one:

One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union, even by war; while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude, or the duration, which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!" If we shall suppose that American Slavery is one of those offences which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South, this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a Living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope -- fervently do we pray -- that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said f[our] three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether"

 So I cannot help wonder what the Christian Evangelical base that Trump is counting on for any prospect of victory thinks of this passage of Lincoln's.  It clearly suggests that the awful carnage of 1861-65--Lincoln didn't know what would come thereafter--was the price perhaps justifiably paid by a sinful country under Divine judgment.  If one is a secularist, as I consider myself to be, then this paragraph is unmitigated nonsense, but, then, so is Evangelical Christianity or, for that matter, any and all other religions, even if we believe, for political reasons, as does Andy Koppelman, that believers must be accommodated in order to preserve civil peace.  But I'm assuming that there are some people who take Lincoln's brand of religion seriously, who believe, as did the ancient Hebrew Prophets, that we indeed live under the yoke of Divine judgment.

So if one takes Lincoln's theology of 1861-65 seriously, then is it thinkable that the coming civil war should also be conceptualized as "God's will" that "all the wealth piled up" by the exploitation of the only formally freed "bondsmen (and women)" "shall be sunk"?  How would one seriously debate such a premise, as is true, of course, of Lincoln's initial assertion.  As with Sinai, Christ's resurrection, or Allah's dictation to Mohammed, one either accepts it as the recognition of ontological truth or dismisses it as pure nonsense (or, as I do, settles for an agnosticism that simply states that our epistemological resources give us no reason to believe that it is true, but who really knows, as with the possibility of visitors from outer space).  I suppose it is possible, as the Trumpistas would no doubt argue, that America has removed all residues of the 250 years of slavery (as of 1865) and that anyone who argues otherwise is a deluded supporter of terrorism, like Joe Biden.  But my real point, is that if one is going to cite Lincoln, one should give him the courtesy of taking his thought seriously, unlike the intellectual and moral cretins in the personality cult devoted to Donald HJ. Trump.

I'm not really interested in hearing from people describing this as a partisan rant or willing to present Herschel Walker as the definitive analyst of Donald Trump's lack of a racist bone. This is a partisan rant against a fascist cult and, far more importantly, a genuine expression of interest about the continued use of Abraham Lincoln as a go-to source for guidance on our polity a 155 years after his assassination.