Looking at Donald Trump after Easter
Keith C. Burris
Easter 2024: His name is Peter. He is perhaps 10 months; maybe 12. There, in the pew in front of us. Squirming. Wriggling. Giving his mother an upper body workout. A big boy. Big head. Huge eyes. Huge smile. He wants to touch everything; see everything; charm everyone. And he does. Someone remarks that this kid will never be plagued by a lack of social skills.
He does not yet walk, but he crawls at breakneck speed. And when he is tired, he is done. He crashes. He sleeps.
This is Easter. This is life. Natality, said Hannah Arendt, the fact of it and the experience of it, gives us hope. Life is renewed. Life begins again.
Death in Lent
Lent was long this year. Every Lent seems longer. My wife and I saw a lot of death this past Lent. It came to friends; it came to family. It came into our lives like a lost uncle and settled in. We were glad to see Peter.
It is too easy to get stuck in the suffering. Perhaps especially for faithful people of all stripes. Christians who want to walk the walk, for whom the walk with the wounded is the whole point, can get lost in the hurt. Cruelty, oppression, and rage are doing very well right now.
We need to remember, says Fr. James Bacik, that the Paschal Mystery is about suffering and resurrection. Good Friday is all too real. (And why does no one weep in church?) But something good’s coming, as Tom Petty sang.
Christians are supposed to believe that the old alpha and omega (natality to mortality) is displaced by a new one — life to life; empty tombs. But, to invoke a phrase I heard recently, it is quite possible, quite human, to “flunk Lent” and flunk Easter too. Lose a loved one; try to deal with the suicide of a good and kind person; read about Gaza. Yeah, all that could be a big fat F.
We are flunking kindergarten, too.
They say that everything you need to know you learned in kindergarten, and it’s a truism that’s true. How about “plays well with others”?
Unlike any time I can remember, Americans don’t seem to like each other very much. They don’t seem to like the idea of the country, which is plurality. If you are on “the other side” of the church, or politics, or gender debates, I mustn’t engage you.
You can’t have a foot in both camps, F. Scott Fitzgerald style. You can’t visit or even acknowledge the other camp.
To be a citizen
Thanks to my brother’s endless and careful curation of my mother’s estate, I was recently gifted with my kindergarten report card. It’s fascinating that the skills assessed are not cognitive but social and moral. And the heart of the teacher — Mrs. Leech — leapt out of her comments on the back of the card. The goodness and skill of that woman are with me still.
I passed. I liked and was liked by the other kids. She said I was very shy but took to the “sharing” sessions, which she found interesting. Sounds like a writer to me. Listening is the job. Same as music. Or acting.
Or citizenship. To be a citizen is to put on a mantle, like a juror or a judge. “Ask what you can do for your country.” Ask how we connect. And if not, why not?
I still like sharing. I like hearing from readers. Praise is affirming but embarrassing. Personal attacks and labeling hurt, but mostly are a waste of writer’s and reader’s time. (“They can write but they can’t read,” Sen. Eugene McCarthy once said of pundits.)
Recently I got back-to-back letters accusing me of diametrically opposite things. One called me a Trumper, masked but still evil. The other called me a hater of Trump supporters.
Crazy. But I do think we need to see that Donald Trump is a master political psychologist (for purely exploitive ends) and that he has formed a bond with a certain kind of American who has lost hope. I also think that many of those Americans don’t understand the American idea much better than Mr. Trump does. Or the cost of losing liberty under law.
Trump understands sales
Mr. Trump understands sales, and so many kinds of people. The one sort of person he can’t read is the sacrificial person — the soldier or the monk. But he can connect with the underpaid restaurant worker in a way that most union organizers cannot.
What I can’t fathom about the Trump Christian is the depth of disdain, almost hate, for Joe Biden and Pope Francis. Empathy seems to enrage them: Hands over ears and loud humming.
It’s not allowed in kindergarten.
I try to answer all letters. The fun is an exchange of thoughts. Are we examining, renewing, changing? That’s a good Lent. Something better is coming.