“Never again” happens over and over, again.
That is the sad state of humanity. We learn, then we forget. We are painfully reminded, then we forget once again. Meanwhile, we admonish each other for bringing history to today’s table when we draw historical comparisons. How dare we compare what is happening today to Nazi Germany?! Those were different times! Indeed, they were. But were they different enough?
We are intoxicated by our specialness, of our arrogance that we are immune from the mistakes of history. Of course, we are smarter than our ancestors, except we are not smarter—not even close. Bigger, stronger, wealthier? Yes. But smarter, no. Our arrogance, addled further by our indifference, assures our stupidity. Our fathers and mothers, grandfathers and grandmothers, are screaming at us from their graves. Screaming at us to save what they built for us. To save America.
Our nation is in great peril. Weirdly, our president is the central threat to our country and our freedoms. He is the existential threat to our republic. He is destroying American power. He is the existential threat to the global economy and world order. He is working against America and for our historical adversaries. Most of all, he is working for himself and explicitly not for us. For those of you who believe I am catastrophizing, just take a moment and weigh the balance of Trump’s benevolence against his malevolence; that is, if you can even identify a scintilla of his actions that can be considered benevolent. He is a profoundly cruel, reckless, and narcissistic person. He is the epitome of the dark triad.
Further, if you are among those who believe he has some magical strategy that will somehow flip the many destructive consequences he has created in his first one hundred days to our sudden advantage, you are courting disaster. You should schedule your fitting for a jester’s costume soon. I will endeavor to remain kind to you—even compassionate—and honor your right to your own opinion, even while I find your naïveté profoundly disturbing. I will leave your conscience in your own hands. Mine is clear.
America is filled with wonderful people. But sadly today, most of us are bystanders. Many hope the nightmare of the current administration will somehow be resolved without our having to speak up, let alone stand up. That our institutions of norms and laws will somehow prevail without our active support. This comfortable convenient complacency is certainly not unprecedented. Many adopted the same behaviors before us. 1936 Germany: Maybe Hitler doesn’t mean what he says. 1994 Rwanda: Surely the Hutu extremists will not kill a million of their Tutsi rivals in just one hundred days. 1995 Bosnia: Genocide in Europe can’t happen again. Syria, Myanmar, Ukraine, Israel, Gaza, the list goes on and on. For those who believe yes, but it can’t/won’t happen in America, please reflect on the Trail of Tears, the Civil War, the Tulsa Race Massacre, the Kent State shootings, and the many mass murders we endure in the United States on a weekly basis. All of the victims thought they were smarter than their ancestors, too. They believed what in fact did happen would not happen to them, either. “Blindsided” is the characterization many survivors used, after the fact. Too often in history, “it can’t happen here” has been followed by “thoughts and prayers” and, eventually, “never again, never again.”
The things we can see happening in America today are, unfortunately, probably just the tip of the iceberg. Trump ignoring our courts and rule of law, destroying essential public goods and institutions, pouring tariff fuel on the inflation fire, wrecking critical relationships with allies while green-lighting the exploits of adversaries, will all imperil America and Americans for decades to come. Project 2025 has exceeded my worst fears. While this is all deeply troubling, however, my eye is on the president’s attempt to make our military his own.
Watch what is happening that is being largely ignored by the media. Former Fox News weekender and now Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, is a useful idiot. He is useful as a sideshow—a shiny object—to distract our attention away from what is going on beneath him at the Pentagon. While the media is focused on Hegseth, Trump is replacing our military brass with sycophants designed to achieve complete fealty to himself, and it is nearly complete. His replacements will follow and enforce his orders without consideration of our Constitution and rule of law, let alone the many treaties the United States has throughout the world. For Trump’s bootlickers, he is the law; his orders are their commandments. His pursuit of a military parade to celebrate his birthday in June should not be easily dismissed as a point of egoic amusement. It, too, is a part of the authoritarian process.
Machiavelli would cheer Trump’s understanding of his principal thesis of power: command and control the tools of cruelty and violence. Routinely dispense cruelty with impunity to keep your boot gently but firmly on the neck of the American psyche. As Machiavelli instructed the prince, if you accomplish this, you may do as you wish, including, in Trump’s fantasy, becoming president for life.
I would like you to consider, however, that Trump may well be a gift from God. Certainly not as promoted by fraudulent-Christian White Christian Nationalists; rather, as the agent of destruction we need as a wayward empire to find our way back to the goodness of our basic humanity. Trump may be God’s way of telling us that we suck. Evil can be a gift if we address it with calm resolve in a relentless pursuit of rebirth. As the spiritual teacher Ekhart Tolle suggests, “suffering is a wonderful teacher.” We Americans have squandered the great gifts of our success by engaging the sins of greed, sloth, and pride; especially in the last twenty-five years. Of these charges, the evidence is overwhelming. Perhaps Trump is our way out—our evil savior.
Renewal and redemption—saving ourselves—is a process. I call it the path to hallelujah. It begins in fear and anger, then sadness, then compassion, then hope and, if we do the work, renewal and redemption. The path to hallelujah is the most human of our endeavors; we Americans love a redemption story. In America’s recent collapse from order to disorder, we are in the early stages of fear and anger. The faster we get past this, and then let our sadness dissipate, we can get back on track to a new world. I have no doubt our current administration has zero interest in allowing us to get past our fears, let alone anger. That is their trap in which they would like us to remain ensnared. They incite us daily to keep us disoriented, fearful, and angry. That doesn’t mean we can smile our way out of this mess, but neither does it mean that destructive anger or violence will emancipate us. I am not advocating for weak and woke, I am advocating for clever and whole-hearted.
In the centuries preceding Jesus Christ, Jewish prophets like Moses, Amos, and Ezekiel endeavored to keep society aware of the power of truth and the pitfalls of delusion. Truth is hard, while delusion is easy, which makes delusion much more popular. That reality is why so many prophets throughout human history met their end through exile and/or assassination. From Socrates, to Christ, to Martin Luther King, Jr. their otherwise peaceful and prophetic lives ended prematurely and tragically. As the Franciscan friar and ecumenical teacher, Richard Rohr, illustrates in his new book, The Tears of Things: Prophetic Wisdom for an Age of Outrage, “The prophet’s job was always spotting where the problem really lies: in the accusing ones themselves and in the delusions of the collective.” Like anger, righteousness is a trap as well. It provides an elaborate costume under which we may conceal our own many deceits and conceits while we rot from the inside, out.
My own prophetic charge is thus: it is time to wake up and, with attendant humility, restore the virtues that form a strong character based in both compassion and courage. We must respond wisely to God’s gift of Trump. We must view him as an unfortunate but necessary source of suffering around which to organize and affect our redemption and renewal. Standing idly by will only prolong our misery.
Thank you, God, and President Trump. Now, please Donald, go play lots of golf (if you can find any balls made in America).
