New Colossus

By now you know what he said, you know who he said it about and you know the context of what it was.  Reactions are the usual gamut from the chicken-little shouts of racism from people who already believed that about Trump to the complete denial from his true blue supporters.  In the middle somewhere are the people who want or need to support him, but who have always done so with their noses held.  For those people this seems like a critical moment.  I admit, it may not be, because the Access Hollywood tape seemed like one that came before they actually made this decision and it was not, in fact, vulgar enough to stop the train wreck of utilitarian ethics that brought us President Trump.
For me, I have to say my part on Saturday morning so it does not derail my entire sermon tomorrow morning.  Because as one lectionary preacher I follow on the internet said, "The Bible seems to be trolling Trump."  The Gospel of John text for tomorrow is the one where Nathaniel says about Jesus, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?"  Which it doesn't take a bible scholar to see, is a pretty analogous, if less vulgar, statement of prejudice to the one that Trump used to talk about Haiti and African countries.  Jesus says of Nathaniel, "here is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit," which in and of itself is a compliment, but a back-handed one, he is essentially saying he has no tact, that he is honest perhaps to a fault.
I cannot say the same about Trump, because it has been shown that he lies an exceptional amount, even for a politician, but what I can say about Trump is that he is becoming a rather biblical sort of character.  He is becoming Ahab, Nebuchadnezzer and Pharaoh, he is becoming a leader who is nothing but a man desperate to retain their power.  He is also becoming an idol to many, and a revelatory sign to all of us.  There are things and symbols which we use to represent our ideals, and that is pretty natural human behavior, but the problem is that when those things become divorced from the ideals and cut loose from their moorings, they are en route to becoming idols.  The reason why the terrorists on 9-11 attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, was because those things were symbols of our economic and military power.  Unfortunately for them they created the wrong kind of martyr on that day, they gave some very dangerous idols way more power than they already had.  Another symbol that we have as a country is of course, the Statue of Liberty, given to us by France and placed in New York Harbor to welcome people to this great nation of ours.  The poem at her base is called New Colossus by Emma Lazarus.  On Thursday night, at a committee meeting of all places, the chair of the committee, as all of this vulgarity was oozing out of the oval office up the road chose to read us this poem out loud and I can't say I made it through without a tear, partly because I knew what he was reading before he even got to the famous lines about the poor and the huddled masses. So I'm just going to put this here:

What breaks my heart about this whole scenario is that we have such high-minded ideals in us.  We know, somewhere, that this is who we are, and yet out of self interest or anger or something have elected a man who seems to know nothing of these values, even though he grew up and lived in the shadow of Lady Liberty.
Now, I will admit that sometimes I use vulgar language, in fact, I know I have used the exact word that Trump allegedly used to refer to someplace less than wonderful. I am not wringing my hands about that part, because I knew that is who he was and who he is.  What troubles me is that he is so very un-examined in his vulgarity that he doesn't seem to know when it's entirely inappropriate to express such sentiments.  To openly say such a thing during a discussion of immigration, among people who have the power to set policy and change the lives of so many is a tragic thing.  It is tragic because it represents and openly displays a very dark part of our national psyche.  I cannot truly say that Trump does not represent America, because he does.  He represents us as our duly elected chief executive, and I'm afraid he also represents us spiritually, because we have made him our idol not just our president.
What he is showing us about ourselves should shake us to our very core.  Very few of us are actually that crass or mean.  Very few of us as individuals would express such disdain for people from impoverished nations trying to grab ahold of the American Dream.  But our collective will, and our selfish id, expresses that disdain all too clearly.  What bothers me is that Trump may actually be a reflection of who we are.  When I look in that mirror it makes me a little sick. The thing is, for all the people who like him because "he tells it like it is," I would offer a counter idea.  Perhaps what we need from our leaders is not to tell it like it is, but rather to tell us how it should be, and actually try to lead us in that direction.
He is very well becoming the "brazen giant of Greek fame." Conquering enemies, dismissing rivals, putting America first, but that, according to our highest standard, is not who America is supposed to be.  If we don't wake up and realize that we may not wake up at all.
So I don't want impeachment, or the 25th amendment process anymore.  I want us to survive Trump, and learn our lesson.  I want us to think very long and hard about who we are and who we want to be.  Three more years isn't too long, I just hope it isn't to short a time to recover our senses of who we are. Maybe we need to remember that our President should never have been an idol to begin with.  So here are a couple of lines from Alan Ginsberg's America, which I won't share in full, because we've had enough vulgarity, I'm just lifting some thoughts:

America after all it is you and I who are perfect and not the next world

Your machinery is too much for me, you made me want to be a saint.

There must be some other way to settle this argument.

America this is quite serious.

America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set 

America is this correct?

I'd better get right down to the job.