IT TAKES A WORRIED MAN TO SING A WORRIED SONG

I took four years of Latin in high school, and one of the things we did in those classes was memorize a bunch of “famous” (or at least famous 2000 years ago) Latin quotations. I still remember some of them, including “O tempora, o mores,” or “Oh the customs, oh the times.” The Roman orator Cicero said that in the first century B.C., complaining about the decline in morality in the late Roman Republic.

I was a church-goer back in those days – University Baptist Church in Wichita, Kansas – and though I don’t remember being forced to memorize any Bible verses, I heard some of them often enough to remember quite a few of them. I have a meditation teacher who sometimes challenges the class to name all of the ten commandments, or to quote the first words that angels say to humans. I do pretty well at those exercises.

(In the gospels, angels revealing themselves to humans often introduce themselves by saying “Fear not.” Angels must have been pretty scary looking.)

Whether you subscribe to the notion that we live in degenerate times, or prefer to believe that, every day in every way, we’re getting better and better, it’s clear that the world has changed a bit since the days of Cicero and Jesus. I thought it might be instructive to do a point/counter-point comparison between some recent statements by Donald Trump and his followers and comments on the same topic by earlier religious and political figures.

For instance, this week, the Rev. Jerry Falwell Jr. pledged undying fealty to Donald Trump. The Washington Post asked him if there was any conceivable thing Trump could do to lose his support. “No.” Trump has that effect on his supporters, and he knows it. During the 2016 campaign, he bragged that he “could shoot somebody in the middle of 5th Avenue and I wouldn’t lose voters.” Not among evangelicals, anyway.

Falwell went on to assert that Biblical morality applied to private individuals, but not to nations or their leaders, and then offered this doozy. “A poor person never gave anyone a job. A poor person never gave anybody charity, not of any real volume. It’s just common sense to me.”

There was a guy in Galilee 2000 years ago who had a different perspective on how charity works. The Gospel of Mark (12:41-44) tells this story: “And Jesus … beheld how the people cast money into the treasury: and many that were rich cast in much. And there came a certain poor widow, and she threw in two mites, which make a farthing. And he called unto him his disciples, and saith unto them, ‘Verily I say unto you, that this poor widow hath cast more in, than all they which have cast into the treasury: For all they did cast in of their abundance; but she of her want did cast in all that she had, even all her living.’”

Fast forwarding nineteen centuries, let us consider something Franklin D. Roosevelt said in his first inaugural address in 1933: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Roosevelt was speaking to a nation mired in the Great Depression, warning them to resist the temptations of fearmongers on both extremes of the political spectrum, fascist and communist alike.

In 2019, fear is about the only tool remaining in Donald Trump’s kit. His rallies are like George Orwell’s two minutes of hate, although they last longer than Big Brother’s did. Trump raises the specter of various bogeymen, and his Deplorables quake on cue. But Trump himself cares little and knows less about ISIS, Iran, and illegal immigrants. For him, they’re just props in his re-election campaign. As long as they keep generating applause, he’ll keep harping on them.

It’s in his tweets and comments to the press that Trump’s fears surface. When he gets worried, he begins to babble. By all accounts, the last thing he wanted to do at Christmas was go to a combat zone. But having shamed into visiting American troops in Iraq, he couldn’t help blurting out a coded version of his concern for his physical safety: "We felt very safe coming in. It was a pretty difficult journey in certain ways. But we felt very, very good. Very safe.” That used to be known as whistling past the graveyard.

In that same speech on December 26, Trump said “We are spread out all over the world. We are in countries most people haven’t even heard about. Frankly, it’s ridiculous.” He returned to the theme in rambling remarks to his Cabinet on January 2, speaking about Afghanistan: "Why isn't Russia there? Why isn't India there? Why isn't Pakistan there? Why are we there? We're 6,000 miles away? But I don't mind... I think I would have been a good general."

Those pesky bone spurs deprived the world of a second Napoleon.

FDR, who had rather more serious health challenges, offered a different perspective in his fourth inaugural address in 1945: “We have learned that we cannot live alone, at peace; that our own well-being is dependent on the well-being of other nations far away. We have learned to be citizens of the world, members of the human community. We have learned the simple truth, as Emerson said, that ‘The only way to have a friend is to be one.’"

Donald Trump has cronies and sycophants, but he appears to have few, if any, actual friends. It’s no wonder he has trouble with the concept Roosevelt articulated.

Finally, let us harken back to the Access Hollywood tape of 2005, which featured an edifying dialogue between Donald Trump and Billy Bush. The Access Hollywood tape became public on October 7, 2016. (Later that same day, Wikileaks began releasing embarrassing emails from Clinton campaign manager John Podesta. A remarkable coincidence, eh? But I digress.) It was on this tape that Trump boasted, “You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.”

On Thursday, #NeverTrump Republican Bill Kristol offered a paraphrase of the Access Hollywood tape that ought to worry Trump a lot more than a visit to a heavily fortified American military base. Reminding Trump of the new Democratic House majority, Kristol tweeted, “When you control the House, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab the president by the ____. You can do anything.”

As of today, Adam Schiff chairs the House Intelligence Committee, with jurisdiction over matters relating to Trump-Russia. Elijah Cummings chairs the House Oversight Committee, with jurisdiction over corruption in government. Jerry Nadler chairs the House Judiciary Committee, where any impeachment proceedings must begin. Richard Neal chairs the House Ways and Means Committee, which is primarily concerned with budget matters. But there’s also a fairly obscure 1924 law that empowers Ways and Means to subpoena any individual’s tax returns. Maxine Waters chairs the House Financial Services Committee, with jurisdiction over the banking industry (including the Trump-Kushner money trail). Elliott Engel chairs the Foreign Affairs Committee, which can investigate whether Trump’s business interests overseas – current and potential – have influenced Trump’s foreign policy. Eddie Bernice Johnson chairs the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, which will focus on climate change.

In short, January 3, 2019, is the first day of the rest of our lives.