Four More Years? January 26, 2025 Dr. Roger Ray.
Last week we saw the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 47th president of the United State. This event has left many of us almost gasping for air as the impossible has become, not just possible, but inevitable. I would say that it was a bit like Alice falling down a rabbit hole but more accurately, this is rather more like Lewis Carrol’s second novel in which Alice returns to Wonderland by going through a mirror. In Through the Looking Glass, she finds a world of opposites in which everything is reversed, particularly, logic. Nothing about Trump’s election makes any sense. In a contest between a pretty good candidate and Trump, who had demonstrated that he was the most inept, idiotic president in American history, whose candidacy had been reviled by some of his own family members and most of the people who had worked in his previous administration, there is no way that anyone could have logically voted for him, and yet, by the smallest of margins, he has slithered back into office.
News outlets have tried to stoke up our sense of horror and shock with each cabinet appointment he makes, with each crazy sounding policy recommendation from tariffs to deportations, but, honestly, who can even feign shock at this point? If you put a clown on the throne, the clown does not suddenly become a king, the palace just becomes a circus.
I never managed to sit through the whole of the 2006 comedy, Idiocracy, in which an average soldier is put into hibernation and then forgotten until he is awakened in a distant and bleak future in which the world is run by total morons, making the main character, the smartest man in the world.
The premise is funny, in a way, but who wants to be aware in a world full of idiots . . . because that is the nightmare in which we are all consigned to share for the next few years.
I am profoundly disappointed that Trump was even allowed to run for office again. Why wasn’t he put in prison four or five years ago? I’m brokenhearted by the realization that our judicial system is so inept, so feckless, that when things as egregious the January 6th Insurrection, when Trump tried to incite a violent revolution to overthrow the American government so that he could stay in office, there are no consequences. And the recording we all heard of his conversation with Brad Raffensperger, trying to steal the election in Georgia, and the classified documents he hid in a bathroom, stealing nuclear secrets and military battle strategies, not to mention the hundreds of millions of dollars he took in illegal emoluments while in office. None of this should have been difficult to charge and take to trial but they literally let the clock run out on these stunning crimes so that a traitor, a thief, could run for office again and win. He was tried and found guilty of rape but somehow, he is just too important to be punished for rape?
So, sure, Trump is not just a horrible person and a dumpster fire as a president, but somehow none of this mattered to the majority of American voters. Lewis Carol couldn’t have smoked enough opium to imagine this world of opposite logic, but this is the Idiocracy that we now live in. It is not hyperbole to say that America is no longer a constitutional republic or democracy. We may be an oligarchy but we are verging on a monarchy that has a divine right of kings.
In 2016, I consoled myself with the belief that he would be impeached early in his term in office. Such hopes were venial then and entirely improbable now.
Somehow, with his appointments in the Department of Justice or with Democratic appointments, there is no justice for Donald Trump.
The media has been captured by Trump’s antics for 9 years now . . . realizing that they are boring their audience and losing their relevance, but they have not been able to tear their constant gaze away. Even during the final months of 2024, as his cabinet nominations rolled out, each more shocking and insane than the last, we couldn’t seem to break out of his orbit.
And it was a disgusting string of appointments, almost all based on people he had seen on TV praising him. He is a predictable narcissist. People like Matt Gaetz, and his replacement, Pam Bondi, both election deniers, criminals and worse, but they have constantly found themselves in front of a camera, fawning over Trump. And his nomination for Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, the Fox News weekend host, has no relevant training or management experience and yet he is being proposed to manage the largest organization in the world because he has, week after week, praised Trump on TV, with some people saying that his show always just had an audience of one…. Trump, endlessly addicted to looking into a mirror.
Nominating dog shooting Kristi Noam, and TV snake oil salesman, Dr. Oz to positions of responsibility? Honestly, I don’t care if Oprah did make him famous, if you ever actually listened to Dr. Oz on TV and you didn’t hear a voice inside your head saying, “Quack, quack, quack,” them I am afraid that your critical thinking skills should be reported as “missing.”
As democrats have tried to do their post-election autopsy to figure out what they did wrong and how they have to reposition themselves, one of the consistent pieces of advice has been to stop talking down to Trump voters as if we thought they were ignorant. Well, maybe as a tactic, but the fact is that we do think that they are ignorant. There is no secret why pollsters always make note of who voters with no college degree vote for and who voters with advanced education vote for.
People without much formal education are not only more likely to vote for an idiot like Trump but they also, make less money. College grads earn, on average, twice as much as high school drop-outs and one and half times as much as those with only a high school diploma. They also live, on average, 7 years less than college grads because they tend to be employed in higher risk jobs. They are also 4 to 5 times more likely to die of a drug overdose. I get that we need to not be condescending to Trump voters if we want them to start being better at voting, but denying reality is nothing more than a technique. If you voted for Trump, that was a remarkably stupid vote with virtually no credible way of defending it. You have the right to make a bad choice, obviously, but it doesn’t change the fact that it was a stunningly stupid choice.
OK, you were upset about inflation at the grocery stores . . . tell me about grocery prices after Trump deports 80% of our agriculture labor and then slaps a big tariff on imported foods. I hope you like ramen noodles because you have some tough shopping in your future.
In sum, Trump is just a child. He doesn’t have the attention span to actually look at resumes and plan an administration. He sees the world as a reality TV show and he wants people who look like the central casting part and who suck up to him.
He is just a spoiled child, and we just need to get over obsessing about him. He is dangerous, we can’t entirely ignore him, but we can certainly stop acting shocked when he does something stupid. Stupid is his only feature, not a flaw.
Even the famous MSNBC couple, Joe and Mika, have made a trip to Mar-a-lago trying to negotiate a fresh start with Trump, because just waking up to those two screaming at the cameras every day will run off their remaining audience. We’re tired of Trump, we’re tired of being angry, and we are through trying to muster the hope that someone in the department of Justice or the Senate will rid us of this trash. It isn’t going to happen, and we just have to try to survive this absurd administration with good humor.
I love reading the British journalist, Ed Luce, but I like listening to him even more. He always sounds like a Shakespearian actor scolding the United States for whatever mess we have most recently created . . . I can’t explain why a classy reprimand feels better than a straight up slap in the face but somehow it does. A couple of weeks after the election, Ed Luce wrote this:
“It is time to study Caligula. That most notorious of Roman emperors killed what was left of the republic and centralised authority in himself. Donald Trump does not need to make his horse a senator; it will be enough to keep appointing charlatans to America’s great offices of state. Rome was not destroyed by outsiders. Its demolition was the work of barbarians from within. The question of whether Trump consciously wants to destroy the US federal government is irrelevant. You measure a leader by his actions not by his heart.
To judge from what Trump has done within a fortnight of winning the presidency, his path is destruction.”
What I am trying to convey to you today is this: Much of what was said in the final months of 2024 is still true. Trump is a danger to democracy. He is a threat to the integrity of NATO and hence the sovereignty of Ukraine, and the safety of Poland. He could tip the Chinese hesitance about invading Taiwan towards a bold military conquest. His administration will certainly be a threat to environmental health, renewable energy, civil rights, and the rule of law. All of this is true and yet, surrender is not a viable option.
Trump will be an even worse president in 2025 than he was in 2017 and the modern world is in danger, but we can acknowledge this without giving our tacit approval or acting like we are willing to simply be resigned to it. We do need to tone down our rhetoric, and to do what we can to bridge the ideological gap between those who love American democracy and those who are willing to sell their birthright for a cheaper bowl of beans.
I am sorry that he will take office again at the sunset of my own career. I intend to keep posting new messages for as long as our online church remains fiscally solvent but I suspect that 2025 will see us closing up shop. So, I am going to focus on speaking about spiritual virtues more than dwelling on the failings and disappointments of right wing political madness.
It is not the only response needed in these times but at least a part of preserving what is good about America in the 21st century is to be found in our resolve to be better people . . . more compassionate, more patient, more loving, and even more generous.
To that end, my next sermon will be posted on February 9th, the week of Valentine’s Day, and so I will take that opportunity to talk about being in love.
