Every so often, you run across a piece of writing that is simply beautiful and, at the same time, laden with religion ghosts. Such was this New York Times Magazine piece on Donald Trump, written by a reporter fortunate enough to get significant face time with him. 

Ghosts? You may ask, what does this have to do with religion? More than you think.

First, the reporter doesn’t spare himself or his fellow media elitists for not deigning to cover Trump because he was plebian and, well, they were not. 

This is blunt: “I was, of course, way too incredibly serious and high-­minded to ever sully myself by getting so close to Donald Trump,” he writes.

And yet his lead in the polls kept growing. He was impolite company personified, and many Republican voters were absolutely loving him for that. They seemed to be saying en masse that even if Trump could be crass and offensive at times (or, in his case, on message), could he possibly be any worse than what politics in general had become?

Trump, the writer learns is infinitely easier to approach than Hillary Clinton. This was a relief:

... for political reporters accustomed to being ignored, patronized and offered sound bites to a point of lobotomy by typical politicians and the human straitjackets that surround them. 

Now, what comes next is long but essential. Pay close attention to this: