What binds Trump to his followers isn’t suffering but self-pity
By Herbert Rothschild
Relocations is taking a vacation early this year. So I give you my traditional summer jeu d’esprit today.
“Son, I think your workload is going to get lighter.”
“Good. I’ve been at it for a long time, and it just doesn’t get any easier. So many people I’ve helped think I made them better than everyone else, so all my work goes to waste.”
“Well, you’re in luck. Those are exactly the folks who think you’ve deputized someone else to save them.”
“Who’s that?”
“Donald Trump.”
“That name doesn’t ring a bell. I can’t remember having any communication with a Donald Trump about helping me out.”
“It’s pretty recent. The idea didn’t occur to him until 2015. Seems he heard a call. My guess it was from Ralph Reed of the Faith and Freedom Foundation. Suddenly he realized there could be a big payoff from religion. I don’t know why it took him so long. There was a great cloud of witnesses, Falwell and Robertson and Swaggert among them.”
“So tell me what my stand-in is like?”
“To begin with, he wasn’t born in a manger. Still, he’s kept company with fallen women. In one case he demonstrated extreme generosity and tried to make sure no one knew of it.”
“Just what I used to tell people: Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.”
“That time I don’t think he got a reward either in earth or in heaven.”
“What else should I know about Trump? Does he champion the poor, the hungry, the stranger, the outcast?”
“You must be kidding.”
“Why?”
“They don’t vote.”
“I didn’t know that was a requirement for salvation.”
“Depends on what you’re trying to save. His followers aren’t seeking to save themselves. They’re certain they’re already saved.”
“Oh, so that’s why they call themselves evangelicals. They’re trying to save others.”
“You’d think, but no. They’re trying to save America from everyone else except themselves, and Trump has promised to help them. He knows how to separate the wheat from the chaff. They loved it when he did that when he was president.”
“What did he do?”
“He separated children from their parents and locked them in cages so they’d be safe from rapists and drug-dealers.”
“That’s how you qualify as a savior now?”
“It varies with the times. You got started when the majority of people were oppressed, so you shared their lot and bore their burdens. You were like the one Isaiah described: ‘He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.’ That’s not going to cut it with affluent Americans in the 21st century.”
“Trump isn’t a man of sorrows?”
“Well, he’s convinced himself he is. In Holy Week he announced that he’d received a message saying, ‘It’s ironic that Christ walked though His greatest persecution in the very week they are trying to steal your property from you.’ He was referring to his court-levied fine for financial fraud. What binds him to his followers isn’t suffering but self-pity. When they’re not beating up on people with genuine troubles, they spend their time whining to each other about being victims.”
“Why do they think they’re victims?”
“They can’t use the public schools any more to promote their beliefs, and they can’t run racially segregated religious schools without forfeiting their tax-exempt status. But what seems to rile them most is that my white children have to share authority with my children of color. When a majority of their fellow Americans elected a Black man president, not just once but twice, they were sure their country was doomed unless a savior appeared. And then he did, riding down a golden escalator. Alleluia.”
“You said my workload is going to get lighter. I hesitate to contradict you, Father, but I’ve got a feeling that it’s going to get a lot heavier.”
Herbert Rothschild’s columns appear on Friday in Ashland.news. Opinions expressed in them represent the author’s views. Email Rothschild at herbertrothschild6839@gmail.com.
