Most people view President Trump as an impetuous bully immune to criticism, the definition of a fool in the Old Testament’s book of Proverbs. But does he qualify as a Holy Fool: the person who brusquely brays truths that many people believe, but are afraid to express in polite society?

Consider some of his statements during the 2016 presidential campaign:

The world would be safer if Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gadhafi were still in power.

Our invasion of Iraq was a disaster.

The Deep State is corrupt.

We can’t waterboard, but they can chop off heads.

There has to be some form of punishment for women who have abortions.

President Trump’s opponents parried these barbs with pious pronouncements that he was unfit to be President, yet variants of these statements are regular fodder on conservative Christian talk radio shows of Holy Fool Rush Limbaugh and other fake Holy Fools.

“How well would he govern?” most of us asked when Holy Fool Trump became President Trump. For people are rarely given power to rule over territories where they had served as Holy Fools without a long, humbling journey during which the Fool and territory citizens change so that they can learn to respect, even revere, each other. Nelson Mandela spent years in an island prison for railing against apartheid before negotiating an end to this practice and becoming South Africa’s first President. Václav Havel spent years enduring persecution because of his rants against Communism before becoming the first President of the Czech Republic. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams had to experience the travails of a Revolutionary War in order to transform from gadfly against British imperialism to presidents of the newly-formed United States of America.

History suggests that those who assume leadership without such a journey transplant their Holy Foolishness to those they lead. The results aren’t pretty: a corrosive mixture of adoration, mistrust, and fear; rumors of violence and real violence; shredding of traditions; and, if unchecked, ethnic cleansings, war, and mass suicides.

If President Trump had successfully completed that long, humbling journey prior to becoming President, he might have been able to work with leaders of the American Civil Liberties Union, Black Lives Matter, and other groups squawking about Deep State corruption to root out and discourage this corruption. He might have been able to create alliances to improve healthcare, enhance our infrastructure, and reform our immigration system. He might have been able to build alliances with leaders of other countries to address challenges posed by China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. He might have been able to harness his experience with the coronavirus to unify us so we could battle the virus as a nation instead of working at cross purposes in competing communities.

Instead, his Holy Foolery has deepened divisions between those who worship this strain of Holy Foolishness and those who don’t — divisions that will be hard to heal no matter who becomes President in January, 2021.

Sad!