VI. Thou Shalt Not Kill

When Tony Soprano orders his henchmen to murder, Tony is just as much a killer as the henchmen. So it is here. Over one hundred men in fishing boats have been murdered off the coast of South America while convicted felon Trump planned his golden ballroom. Convicted felon Trump is murderer personified.

Another aspect is the moral atmosphere he fosters. As just indicated, one need not personally pull a trigger to be a murderer. When he speaks of opponents, migrants, or disfavored groups in dehumanizing terms, he lowers the threshold of moral regard. This lowering manifests itself by the wanton killing of two demonstrators in Minneapolis. When brutality is excused as strength and compassion mocked as weakness, the commandment’s protective purpose is undermined. Human beings cease to appear as neighbors and become obstacles, threats, or instruments. This constitutes more than just murder. It is a religious trsnsgression that the sanctity of life is being treated with contempt.

A second line concerns state power. Presidents make decisions touching war, policing, punishment, detention, and the conditions under which vulnerable people live or die. Convicted felon Trump displays a conspicuous appetite for violent rhetoric, violence proper, admiration for harsh methods, and tendency to evaluate suffering in strategic rather than humane terms. The objection is not pacifist absolutism; it is that the commandment demands grave seriousness whenever life is at stake. A leader who reaches instinctively for menace, domination, and spectacle violates the commandment.

Presidents bear responsibility for coercive power. But the commandment still distinguishes between sober guardianship and a posture that relishes hardness for its own sake. Convicted felon Trump crosses that line repeatedly. He does not merely inhabit a violent office; he magnifies its cruelest temptations. On that morally expanded reading, he violates the sixth commandment over and over.