Whoever wins White House will have slain ‘Il Gigante’

As David discovered facing Goliath in the Valley of Elah, one who defeats a giant becomes a giant.

Did a giant emerge from Tuesday’s presidential debate?

This week marks the 520th anniversary of the day (Sept. 8, 1504) on which Michelangelo unveiled “David,” the 17-foot-tall masterpiece of Italian Renaissance sculpture revered by the citizens of Florence as Il Gigante (The Giant).

It had taken Michelangelo three years to release “David” from within an enormous block of Carrara marble that had lain in the work yard of Florence Cathedral for nearly 40 years, abandoned by an earlier artist simply not up to the task.

Exposed to the elements, the castoff piece of marble was overgrown with weeds and covered with grime. Yet, from this unpromising beginning, a giant emerged, Michelangelo offering to the world the young hero just as he prepared to enter battle with Goliath, freezing the moment when, as yet, the battle’s outcome was uncertain.

In this anniversary week of Il Gigante‘s debut, has another giant, despite an unpromising beginning, been revealed?

Like that unworked block of marble, both Trump and Harris are regarded as unsightly and (politically) ugly by roughly half of the American electorate. The other half admires them as giants.

Well, not quite. Trump has clearly attained giant status in the eyes of his MAGA supporters.

Kamala, a giant? Not so much. Komrade Kamala’s supporters have been more of the “She’ll have to do” sort, at least until Tuesday’s debate performance, assisted by ABC’s clearly biased moderators, each offering their own shameful Candy Crowley moments.

Kamala Harris is no one’s giant, not even in the hearts and minds of her Democrat supporters. She leads no movement, stirs no confidence, excites no passion. Simply in the right place at the right time, she was wedged into the ticket without a single vote when Biden was pushed to the side, a coup forced by party elites’ recognition, after debating Trump, that he was unelectable.

Trump, on the other hand, is a giant.

Should Kamala win the presidency, she will have bested a giant figure in modern American politics. Knowing this, Kamala’s supporters, like the Israelites in the Valley of Elah, tremble, as admitted by an official in the United Nations Office of Legal Affairs last week in an undercover video on the “Louder with Crowder” podcast, confessing that the prospect of a Trump victory is terrifying.

Will Kamala on Nov. 5 defeat the giant, thereby proving herself a giant?

Should Trump win, he too will have bested a giant. Not Kamala, of course. Trump will have defeated a much more formidable giant in the Deep State. Big government with its relentless and ridiculous lawfare and its persistent stream of hoaxes, spewed from Kamala’s lips Tuesday without fact checking by Muir and Davis (Dictator from Day One hoax, Very Fine People hoax, Bloodbath hoax, etc.).

Trump’s battle was never to be against the candidate running on the Democratic ticket, whether Biden, Harris, or another, puppets propped up by the Deep State, a status Trump has shown, at great risk from the Establishment, that he could never be.

Which candidate will defeat a giant on Nov. 5, proving him or herself a giant?

Will Kamala defeat Trump, finally laying to rest the giant’s decade-long disruption of the American political scene?

Or, will Trump land a devastating blow against the Deep State and go to work, more experienced and seasoned when he takes office in 2025 at what is necessary to drain the swamp of its putrid corruption than he could possibly have been in 2017?

The debate past, the battle now rages, the outcome uncertain.

The fascinating thing about Michelangelo’s “David” is that he is presented, not in the moment of victory when nothing is at stake, but in the moment of action. With eyes averted to the side, neck muscles tensing at the approaching threat, David’s sling rests in his left hand, not yet in action.

America finds itself now in the precise moment of Michelangelo’s David, the liminal, in-between moment when everything about our future is on the line, when the nation needs a “champion,” as did Israel in the Valley of Elah (Hebrew, gibbor</>, Mighty Man).

This champion, Il Gigante, must be unselfishness. David’s courage and victory was not for himself, but for Israel, and for Israel’s God.

Kamala claims to be standing for the people, while Trump, she claims, stands only for himself.

Is she, though, standing for the people? Will she be the champion for a people who know their lives are poorer today than four years ago, for the majority of the country who feel the country is headed in the wrong direction? If this is, in fact, a “change” election, what will change by electing Harris?

The only people she wants to be “for” just now are undecided voters, as Bernie Sanders admitted this week, that Kamala’s flip-flops are in no way a change in her values, but offered pragmatically, temporarily, in an effort to sway voters not paying attention.

Trump, on the other hand, David-like – rises up as a giant in time of danger, as he did in the moment after an assassination attempt could have taken off his head, calling on the people to continue the fight against Deep State sleaze.

Kamala, of course, claimed on Tuesday that Trump is doing it all for himself. I don’t see that. Instead, I see one ready to go to battle for the American people, risking it all – his fortune and even his life – for the country he loves and wants to restore to greatness.

In Donald Trump I need not see a perfect man. David himself, through the lens of Israel’s history, was deeply flawed.

David was, though, a champion.

In Trump, I see a champion. Il Gigante.

Siegfried Johnson

Siegfried Johnson holds a graduate degree in Hebrew from the University of Michigan. A research editor and contributor to The Anchor Bible Dictionary (1992), he has authored two novels, "Jeroboam Derangement Syndrome" (2019) and "Dancing with David" (2022). Today living in Hot Springs Village, Arkansas, he serves as Arkansas’ Director of Travel Ministry for Educational Opportunities Tours, having led and lectured on over 40 faith-based tours to Israel, Egypt, Jordan, and throughout the Mediterranean world. Read more of Siegfried Johnson's articles here.


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