The Bible as Mirror: Donald J. Trump

I have decided as of today that I would use characters from the Bible as a mirror for the actions and behaviors of our new president of the USA, Donald Trump, in a series of articles I am calling “The Bible as Mirror.” Last week I used the weird story of Elisha and the bears as a way of thinking about just how thin-skinned our new leader is. In the same way that Elisha allowed a few young children to goad him into a terrible curse and murderous actions as a result of the curse, so I suggested that Trump continually allows negative comments about him to unhinge him in such ways as to bring forth, if not curses and bears, then verbal attacks of unseemly quality. This week has provided even more egregious examples. After his travel ban was imposed on potential immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries for 90 days, along with an unending ban on any immigrant from Syria, a federal judge struck the order down and lifted the ban. Earlier this week a three-judge panel reiterated its rejection of the ban.

Trump’s response to the first judge’s action was to dub him a “so-called judge” (appointed by George W. Bush, it should be noted). In response to that questioning of the ruling of a long-seated senior federal judge, Trump’s own nominee for the Supreme Court vacancy, Neil Gorsuch, called Trump’s tactless comment “disheartening” and nothing less than a threat to an independent judiciary, implying a possible constitutional crisis in the making. Trump’s response? To blame someone else, of course. The senator who reported Gorsuch’s comment in this case. And though the quote has been corroborated by several others who heard it, Trump has refused to believe that his own nominee would dare question anything he has done or might do. And at the end of the day, it is usually some member or members of the media who feel the wrath of the president, purveyors as they are, he never fails to say, of “fake news.” To top off the week, when the ubiquitous Kelly Ann Conway, close associate and spokesperson of the Trump administration, was again asked what the media should do with those statements from the president which are obvious lies, she replied, “Well, why don’t you support him whenever he tells the truth?” And so it has come to this. Full disclosure: I did not vote for the man. Indeed, I would have been hard pressed to vote for him if his opponent had been Attila the Hun. Still, I think it fair to say that we have an infantile, narcissistic blowhard on our hands for the next four years, and we have to think as rationally and as clearly as we can if we are to survive all this foolishness.

Why exactly did I think of Noah, that famous boat builder and sailor, as I witnessed these shenanigans from our nation’s capital? It certainly was not that quip from the story where we are told that “Noah found favor in the eyes of YHWH” (Gen. 6:8). The implication there appears to be that YHWH found something in Noah worthy of call. Well, I leave that one for you to puzzle out with respect to the new president. I thought, on the contrary, of that nasty little story at the end of the Noah saga, Gen. 9:20-27. This tiny tale has caused no end of evil in the world, since Noah’s “curse of Ham” was turned by some enterprising racist nincompoops into a universal curse on all “dark-skinned peoples,” employing a ridiculous and thoroughly false characterization of the nations said to have descended from Ham in Gen.10:6 to plead that all “darkies,” i.e. African slaves, were thus cursed to be slaves forever. Even that appalling nonsense, still alive in some racist enclaves even in 2017, is not what led me to Noah. Rather it was Noah’s problem with drink that reminded me of the president we now unfortunately are saddled with.

Remember the story. Noah is “ a man of the soil,” in short a farmer, and more specifically the owner of a vineyard. After an especially fine crop of grapes, Noah samples his produce overmuch and falls down drunk and stark naked to boot. Nakedness means vulnerability, of course, and Noah, alone in his tent after his revelry, has passed out. The patriarch, hero of the flood escapade, has been reduced to a nude sot. Completely unaware, his son, Ham, wanders into his father’s tent, sees his disgusting father’s painful and unguarded foolishness, and rushes from the tent in horror, warning his two brothers outside what they are about to see if they go into the tent. The two brothers take great care, averting their eyes by shielding them from sight of the naked man by use of a blanket tossed over their shoulders and walking backward into the tent. Pointedly, we are told, “They did not see their father’s nakedness” (Gen. 9:23).

But now comes the Trumpian bit: “When Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his younger son had done to him, he said, ‘Cursed be Canaan; lowest of slaves he shall be to his brothers” (Gen. 9:24-25). Just as many alcoholics do, as we have now learned, Noah blames someone else for his own actions. “He knew what his youngest son had done to him.” And what had he done? He only accidentally saw his father’s naked vulnerability, but that was enough for the pathetic father to blame him for what the father alone had done. Hence, he curses his son with a terrible curse, demeaning him as slave forever.

I do not imply by this that Trump has a drinking problem. In fact, I think he is abstemious when it comes to beverage alcohol. But he is just as surely a “dry drunk,” hung over on blaming others for his own actions. Hence, his string of blameworthy people and agencies, from media to Democrats to fake fact purveyors of all stripes. Such a man never takes credit for his own mistakes; in short he never makes mistakes, never admits mistakes, but is ever on the lookout for the real “perpetrators” when things do not go as they were supposed to go. Trump is Noah writ large.

It will not do to sweep all this under the threadbare rug of “God uses all sorts of folk to perform the divine will.” That, of course, is a true and deeply biblical notion. God does regularly use all manner of people, some we would hardly give a second look. But that old biblical idea should never be employed to hide the very real monstrosities that certain humans can do, and Mr. Trump has already, within the first three weeks of his term, done monstrously again and again.

So far, the new president has been seen to be Elisha, thin-skinned and easily provoked, and Noah, anxious to blame others for his own obvious failures. What other Bible characters may mirror the wild antics of Donald Trump? Stay tuned; I know there will be more to ponder. The mirror has not ended its work just yet.