The man who thinks he's Moses (photo: Lisa Kellman, Talk Media News)

It is said that God works in mysterious ways, and some may believe She has a fine, if not wicked sense of humor.  It’s also said that God cannot be mocked.  Or perhaps it’s all bunk and the joke is on us.  Whatever, Herman Cain just told his supporters that God told him to run for President.  From Lindsey Boema at the National Journal:

“I prayed and prayed and prayed. I’m a man of faith, I had to do a lot of praying for this one, more praying than I’d ever done before in my life. And when I finally realized that it was God saying that this is what I needed to do, I was like Moses. ‘You’ve got the wrong man, Lord. Are you sure?’” Cain told a crowd of over 100 people at the Young Republican National Federation, an event hosted by the Georgia Young Republicans at the Westin Peachtree Plaza.

Once he made the decision to run, the former chief executive of Godfather’s Pizza said, “I did not look back. And one of the misperceptions that some people have, (is) that I’m not in this to win it. I’m in this to win it, or I wouldn’t be in it! I’m not going anywhere!”

So I guess we mortals, we the unchosen, will just have to deal with it. But what on earth was the Goddess thinking?

Are we being punished for something? What have the American people done to warrant a man who evokes Christianity as he denigrates those who are poor, who blames the jobless for being unemployed even though there are four unemployed for every unfilled job, and who, in promoting a mindless 9-9-9 plan, implies the rich are not rich enough so everyone else should pay more to make them richer?  What kind of a man allows his campaign attorney to publicly threaten women who may have been victimized by a still all too prevalent and accepted climate of sexual harassment?

What he’s telling America is that God is mocking us, that an obvious charlatan is God’s political chosen one, a new Moses to lead his people away from the evils of regulation.  What he really means is that his corporate sponsors should be allowed to poison our air and water, sicken our children, endanger our workers and alter our climate in reckless, irresponsible ways.  If Mr. Cain is right, what sort of a God is that?  If not, what sort of a man is he?

Here’s a man who would be in charge of foreign and financial/monetary policy, but who knows nothing about either — and so he defers to Newt Gingrich? — but dismisses this as though such appalling ignorance is what the country needs. Here’s a man who would never be noticed had he not had his speaking career and campaign financed by cynical billionaires who control lawless, predatory corporations, and yet he tells us his candidacy is God’s will.

I’ve never been one of those who believe there is a divine interest in human affairs, nor a plan premised on beneficent intervention.  But if there were, Mr. Cain’s candidacy would surely not be part of the plan, let alone be put forward as a salvation, a deliverance from slavery.

It would, in a rational, righteous universe, be a sign that our presidential politics had become so preposterous that we have to be confronted with a faux religious charlatan before some realize that one of our major parties has gone completely nuts, most of its supporters can’t see that, and a complete clown can claim to be Moses while he leads the Party’s polls.  If this can happen, then naked emperors are back in fashion.