trump

Shall we Overcomb?

It was mid-September 2016. Elaine and I were traveling in the Canadian Rockies; part of our 50^th years of marriage celebration. Walking in the lovely city of Banff, Alberta I spied a t-shirt in the tourist shop window. We laughed. I pointed it out to others who were on the trip. I shared my concerns about Donald Trump.

Two in our group were retired attorneys now living on Long Island. One was volunteering as a Catholic lay deacon who shared my concerns about “the Donald’s” mean-spiritedness, misogynistic behaviors, and racial bigotry. The other attorney laughed saying, “I worked in the prosecutor’s office in NYC for years. Everyone knew he liked to pretend to be something he was not. We all knew Trump was ‘mobbed up’ with the Russian mob.” “Don’t worry,” he said, “a guy like that will never be elected.” “Okay,” I thought, “if you say so. You have seen him up close.”

That was then. He was wrong about Mr. Trump’s possible election. Ever since, I have recalled the “mobbed up” comment. As president, Mr. Trump spoke fondly of Mr. Putin and his dictatorship in Russia. There were other troublesome moments like a phone call that appeared to be asking for a bribe from the Ukrainian president. In the intervening years as Mr. Trumps actions have become more bizarre. Now, he says the quiet part out loud about admiring dictators and hoping to be a totalitarian leader of the U.S. I keep thinking about that conversation in front of the shoppe window in Banff.

This past week (2/2024) at a rally in South Carolina, Trump, railed against NATO countries suggesting they didn’t pay enough in dues. He claimed, “one of the presidents of a big country asked whether the US would still defend that European country if they were invaded by Russia.” Astonishingly, Trump replied “No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them (Russia) to do whatever the hell they want. You got to pay. You got to pay your bills.”

The words “mobbed up” keep recurring, ever gaining more salience for me. I didn’t buy the t-shirt on that September day in 2016. I buy that he was unelectable. I was wrong. Our nation keeps living though what seems to be an unending nightmare. A nightmare that could endanger the future of our democracy and the freedoms of my grandchildren and the hope for freedom for children around the world.

There is much beauty in our world — in nature and in our flawed but essential institutions of democracy. Will truth and liberty and civility be easily combed over? Don’t fall into the trap I did — believing that IT CAN’T HAPPEN.

Republican Presidential Candidate Nikki Haley, campaigning in New Hampshire at the end of 2023, was asked a simple question “What caused the U.S. Civil War?” Haley’s response was word-salad. It was mumbo-jumbo talk about differing theories of governance. We hear you loudly and clearly Nikki Haley. One hundred and fifty-eight years after the end of the U.S. Civil War, she was unable to give the clear one-word answer to the question. It was SLAVERY.

If anyone believes racism isn’t deeply embedded in our national psyche, our politics and civic discourse these more than fifteen decades later, they are either ignorant of history and/or unwilling to confess a sin that continues to erode our best future. There is considerable irony, of course, that the question was asked in New Hampshire. New Hampshire is a state from which thousands of brave young men gave their lives to end slavery.

The answer Nikki Haley gives – or fails to give – underlines our need for national confession of sin, repentance, and reconciliation. It exemplifies our continuing Un-Civil Wars. If the Confederacy had prevailed in 1865, would someone like Haley be able to hold political office today? One wonders. Yes, there are several auxiliary causal factors to U.S. Civil War; however, why avoid the basic truth? It was, and is, wrong for human beings to be treated as property to be held and sold? This was the crux of the war — the evils of racism as evidenced in slavery.

On April 9^th, 1865, General Robert E. Lee and the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia. Five days later President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in Washington, D.C. A surface telling of the history misses that thousands of troops continued fighting after April 9^th and April 14^th.

It also misses the continuing Un-Civil Wars across these past fifteen decades (Reconstruction, Lynchings, Jim Crow Laws, Segregation, Red-lining in housing, Unequal school funding and dozens of other discriminatory acts). The UnCivil Wars continue today as is evidenced clearly in voter suppression efforts and racial gerrymandering. Racist impulses and ideologies continue to shape our political conversation and actions, national values, and self-understandings. If one believes otherwise, please explain why Haley’s answer could not have included one simple word?