I think key to understanding the Trump victory is hidden in this German term. Voters gave into this vision of longing for a lost Eden that never was. They looked back to a day when America was great and wanted to make it great again. The question for me was did that day ever exist?
While I have personally found it impossible to over-react to the thought of Donald J. Trump as the 45th President of the United States. I have been remembering a conversation that I had with my uncle Herb when I was a kid.
We were sitting on the couch and I asked him: “What do you remember most about the good old days?” His response was, “I remember that they weren’t very good.”
An honest response like that can help you forever take the long view of history in your life.
The “good old days” may have been great if you weren’t a black person riding in the back of a bus or living in a segregated society. They may have been swell if you weren’t a single mom looking to support her family. It was also a time when your heart may have swelled with pride when a flag passed in parade but not if you were moved to hold the hand of your same-sex partner in public.
So it might be well for those of us who believe we are standing on the brink of history’s darkest hour to remember that, even if it is, there have been many dark times before and we have survived them.
Just looking back over my six-score-years-and-two I can remember many countless times when things looked bleak and that I am here to write about them tells me that if the republic can survive those difficult times it can also muddle through the times of Trump.
When I was nine there was the Cuban missal crises. Yes, I am that old!
Imagine being nine years old and thinking that at any moment you could be reduced to a briquet. For fourteen day we sweated out that fear. Even at my young age I knew that those crazy, black and white, “duck and cover” videos were not going to be enough. School desks were very sturdy back then but not quite sturdy enough to deflect an incoming ICBM.
When I was ten President Kennedy was assassinated.
Everybody who was alive then knows where they were on November 23, 1963 when Walter Cronkite announced that President Kennedy had been shot and killed. My fifth grade teacher Miss O’Byrne had the job of explaining to us what had happened and what would happen next.
It was pouring down rain when our parents came to pick us up. The darkness at mid-afternoon made it look like the world was ending. It wasn’t.
During the 1960's, 1970's, and 1980's national tensions seemed to increase on two fronts. The Civil Rights movement was beginning to threaten the old ways of many. And in a southeast Asian land far away, the Vietnam War was slowly escalating.
The nation was divided between people who believed that all God’s children were created equal and those who didn’t. The 60's were tumultuous years for those of us who lived through them. It seemed like the whole nation was divided - blacks and white, hawks and doves. It looked liked the battles would go on forever.
Especially when political and civil rights leaders began to be assassinated. On April 4, 1968 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed. Riots erupted in major cities and Chicago’s West Side was particularly devastated.
On June 5, 1968 Senator Robert Kennedy who had just won the California primary and was certainly on his way to being the Democratic Party Nominee was killed.
Imagine two assassinations within three months.
That summer, those of us who lived in Chicago were certain the world was coming to an end as we watched from our front stoop one National Guard plane after another land at the Glenview Navel Air station in preparation for the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
The riots in Grant Park during the Democratic Convention were the mother of all riots. They set the standard for riots.
If you think the Black Lives Matter versus Police Lives Matter demonstrations of this past summer were troubling they pale in comparison to what happened in the summer of ‘68.
I was 15. I was hooked on politics and I was terrified.
As the Viet Nam War escalated and Nixon expanded the war into Cambodia, the rioting across America reached a fever pitch. When I was in college, protesting students were shot at Kent State.
Tensions mounted to the point that buses were parked bumper-to-bumper around the White House to protect the President from the angry mobs. Would America ever again be a civilized place to live?
In my lifetime I have seen the resignation of one president who was on the verge of being impeached and articles of impeachment voted against another. The Watergate break-in was a product of Nixon’s paranoia. His impeachment was a result of the cover-up for the crimes of his cronies that never needed to happen in the first place. He was on the verge of a landslide victory over Senator George McGovern.
The Clinton business was just plain tawdry.
Remember the “Whip Inflation Now” buttons and the gas crises brought on by instability in the middle east?
I was in seminary when someone called Ayatollah Khomeini came to power. At the time we made fun of him. Our Vice-president for Student Affairs called himself on occasion the High-a-tollah. And those of us who did grunt work in his office called ourselves the Low-a-tollahs.
The laughter stopped when an Iranian mob stormed the U.S. Embassy and took hostages. “Nightline” which was later to become a staple of late night reporting was originally called “America Held Hostage.”
A failed rescue attempt left us feeling helpless. We were Gulliver tied down by the Lilliputians.
When Ronald Reagan became the President, it was another one of those moments where many of us wondered “Where did we find this guy?”
Benefitted by a sunny disposition and an ability to work with members of the opposition party. (See Tip and the Gip by Chris Matthews.) Reagan benefitted from “the law of diminished expectations” and got re-elected in a landslide.
Remember the election of 2000? Hanging chads! An election that could have gone a million different ways depending on not just Florida but Tennessee and New Hampshire. An election decided by the Supreme Court in two decisions - one everybody remembers and another nobody does.
The first was a 7-2 vote based upon something that David Boies, council for the Vice-President, said in response to the question as to whether all Florida’s ballots were being handled in the same manner from precinct to precinct. He responded that he wasn’t sure ballots weren’t being handled the same way from table to table in the same precinct.
This violated the one person one vote mandate of the Constitution. Simply stated your vote has to be handled the same way as mine. Your’s can’t be processed once and mine scrutinized three times.
The second was the 5-4 decision as to whether Florida could conclude its election in the allotted time. The state statute required “that any controversy or contest that is designed to lead to a conclusive selection of electors be completed by December 12. That date is upon us, and there is no recount procedure in place under the State Supreme Court's order that comports with minimal constitutional standards.”2
Because of this and many other things, President Bush was sworn in to under-whelming support. Gore supporters were enraged and some of them were saying that Bush would never be their President. The same is being said of President-elect Trump.
Then came the morning the September 11, 2001 when I really believed not only our nation but our world was coming to an end. It didn’t.
I offer all of this up as an antidote to Sehnsucht. If anybody’s eyes roll back in their heads and they long for the good old days remind them of just a few of the things I told you. You can probably think of countless other examples.
Uncle Herb was right. There was very little good in the good old days.
And now we face another challenge. In every other election that I have voted, I have never thought that one party’s candidate was not only totally incompetent but was deplorable. Secretary Clinton was no saint and self-inflicted wounds cost her the election but if your son or daughter said the kind of things Mr. Trump said he or she would not be bound for the White House but grounded for life.
Sehnsucht is a longing for a lost splendor. This is not a time for dreaming of days gone by this is a time for action.
Here is what my pastor The Rev’d Shannon Kershner said two days before this last election that left so many of us devastated:
In this age, compassion is often seen as naivete, and showing vulnerability is viewed as being weak. But in that age, in what God is doing in Jesus called God’s Reign, compassion and vulnerability and kindness and mercy are what matter. In this age, especially these days, people hate very loudly. But in that age, in what God is doing in Jesus called God’s Reign, people love even more loudly.3
Here is what a dear friend, with whom I have rarely agreed politically posted on his Facebook page with a few words changed for a more general audience. It is the course I plan to follow for the next four years and I urge you, with every fiber of my being, to follow it too.
We will love you if you are a Muslim. We will love you if you are black. We will love you if you are Hispanic. We will love you if you are gay. We will love you if you are disabled. We will especially love you if you are a victim of sexual assault. We will love you if you are poor. We will love you no matter what and fight for you no matter what.
And if he builds a wall. My friends and I, our grandparents, our neighbors, our children, and even our grandchildren if need be, will rise up and tear it down.4
Mr. Trump, to paraphase President Reagan, “we will tear down your wall and all the other walls you are trying to build between us.”
An honest response like that can help you forever take the long view of history in your life.
For not with swords loud clashing,
nor roll of stirring drums,
but deeds of love and mercy
the heav'nly kingdom comes.5
__________
1. Sehnsucht. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sehnsucht .
2. Text of the Supreme Court's decision in Bush v. Gore. USA Today. January 21, 2001.
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/vote2000/pres244.htm
3. The Rev'd Shannon Johnson Kershner, "This Age and That Age." The Fourth Church Pulpit. November 6, 2016.
4. From a Facebook post by Jon Hultgren.
5. From the hymn "Lead On, O King Eternal."
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