President Trump referenced a great moment from St. John Paul II’s life Thursday during an address in Warsaw, and some people on the Internet were too damn stupid to get it.
The president built his speech around a serious question: Does the West have “the will to survive”?
Trump spoke about terrorism, and the need for alliances to combat extremism. He also signaled support for NATO. At one point, the U.S. president also referenced one of Poland’s greatest heroes, St. John Paul II.
“The people of Poland, the people of America, still cry out ‘we want God,'” Trump said.
In 1979, during St. John Paul II’s first full year as the Holy Father, “We want God” became the battle cry of the oppressed people of Poland as they welcomed their countryman home for his first visit as pope.
It was during this visit to his home country that the Polish pope struck a fatal blow to the Soviet Union, wedging wide the cracks in the dreaded Iron Curtain.
In 2005, columnist Peggy Noonan recounted the pope’s visit well, writing, “In Victory Square in the Old City the pope gave a mass. Communist officials watched from the windows of nearby hotels… Why, the pope asked, had God lifted a Pole to the papacy? Perhaps it was because of how Poland had suffered for centuries, and through the 20th century had become ‘the land of a particularly responsible witness’ to God.”
“The people of Poland, he suggested, had been chosen for a great role, to understand, humbly but surely, that they were the repository of a special ‘witness of His cross and His resurrection.’ He asked then if the people of Poland accepted the obligations of such a role in history,” she wrote, recounting what was arguably his most important sermon.
The Poles who had gathered in that square in 1979 to hear the pope roared their approval for his address.
“We want God!” they chanted. “We want God!”
It became a battle cry; an oppressed people pushing back in one voice against the soulless tyranny of the Soviet Union.
“What a moment in modern history: We want God. From the mouths of modern men and women living in a modern atheistic dictatorship,” Noonan wrote.
It was a major moment, and one that became instantly iconic.
There’s no way Trump’s Polish audience didn’t understand his meaning, especially considering the president explicitly referenced the late pope’s 1979 sermon.
Some of the president’s critics, however, are apparently dumb as hell.
“What an embarrassment. #25AmendmentNow #25for45,” said one Twitter user.
Another said, “We know the only person you worship is in the mirror. Sad pathetic man.”
“More absolute nonsense, courtesy of Miller. What does that even mean?” added another dangerously ignorant human.
“I am shivering and not from the COLD!” said one more.
Yet another user added, “That’s such a disgusting statement to come out of his mouth that I want to wash his mouth out with soap.”
All of these remarks came in response to a tweet from CNBC’s John Harwood, who, for whatever reason, quoted Trump without also noting the president referred specifically to St. John Paul II’s 1979 visit to his home country.
You’re going to find simpleminded people everywhere you go, and these responses are about par for the course for social media engagement.
However, there’s something interesting here from a media angle.
The ignorant Twitter responses to the president’s St. John Paul II reference come right after a number of social media users also freaked out at NPR this week for tweeting out the Declaration of Independence.
What’s interesting is the newsrooms that wasted no time writing about the NPR incident, claiming those ignorant Twitter users were “Trump supporters” (because they definitely contacted all those people and verified their political allegiances, right?) have yet to write anything about the historical illiteracy of those who were upset Thursday by Trump’s reference to a Catholic saint.
Imagine that.
