The Peripatetic Preacher We Need Jesus and Voltaire

Yesterday, I wrote an essay that I titled “Protocols of the Elders of Trump,” riffing on the scurrilous 1903 anti-Semitic pamphlet, “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” I suggested that the shelf life of that nasty work, embodied most appallingly in Nazi Germany, was all too long and disastrous, feeding anti-Semitic frenzy in many countries and among many people down to this day. In like manner, Donald Trump and his numerous enablers, have poisoned our cultural atmosphere, as they continue even six weeks after the decisive election of Joe Biden to deny that victory and to question the very soundness of the electoral process that brought it about. Trump has regularly during his four years in the White House demeaned common courtesies, uttered countless falsehoods, and sought again and again to claim successes not his own and discount failures which are manifestly vast. In the process, he has slandered any number of persons with whom he has any disagreement, mocking women, and disabled persons alike. In short, his now one-term presidency has been a disaster for our country, for its civilities, and for its standing in the world. It will take many more than four more years to recover from his boorishness and cringe-inducing actions and words.

In the light of all that horror I am thrilled to announce that the Supreme Court yesterday, Dec.11, thankfully refused to entertain an absurd law suit, filed by the Attorney General of Texas, that sought to overturn the results of four battle ground states, all won by Trump in 2016 and all lost by him in 2020. The results of this “safest and well-run election in American history,” as one Republican election official said soon after Nov.3, are now assured, and on Dec.14 the Electoral College will meet to certify those results—Biden 306, Trump 232, ironically the exact figures secured by Trump and Hillary Clinton in 2016, though obviously reversed in Trump’s surprise win. I doubt very much whether Trump will ever concede—it seems hardly in his narcissistic world to do so—yet come Jan.20 he will depart the White House and head, I assume, to Florida. But as many commentators have warned, we have hardly heard the last of the Donald. Whether or not he decides to run again in 2024 for president—he will be precisely Biden’s current age, 78, if he does—his impact on the politics and culture of our divided nation will surely endure. I deeply regret that fact, but I know it to be all too true.

And that is where both Jesus and Voltaire come in. I know well that the combination of the Palestinian peasant of two millennia ago and the prominent anti- Catholic French wit of the 18th century may seem odd bedfellows indeed. But both of these men display rich and complex personalities that can serve us well as we combat the pain and poison spewed by Donald Trump and his minions over the previous years and in the near future. Let me begin with Jesus.

I do not here wish to turn to that Jesus often on display for us at Christmas, whose season we now are in. That Jesus is the “meek and mild” one, the quiet and beautiful baby, revered by shepherds and magi, whose crying, magically, is never heard, at least as the famous hymn would have us believe. The Jesus we need when we confront Donald Trump is the righteously furious Jesus of Matt.23:27-28. What that Jesus said to the religious authorities of his day must be said also to the departing Trump and his White House inner circle, both appointees and family. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside are full of the bones of the dead and all kinds of flesh. At the same time, you on the outside look righteous to others but inside are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.” Trump has consistently presented himself as the “savior,” “the chosen one,” the only one who can solve our problems. Such faux righteousness is nauseating, made especially odious when he lifted that Bible in front of the Washington DC church, directly after clearing peaceful protesters out of his way as he marched toward that infamous photo opportunity. I suggest that Jesus’s especially withering wit at the expense of self-righteous religious- spouting individuals in the 1st century are exactly what is needed now to combat the comfortably self-satisfied Trump and those he has led down his destructive path. What narcissists least enjoy is to be made the fool, but that is precisely what Trump has become with his increasingly ridiculous antics, post-election. This would-be emperor has no clothes, and that fact should be announced with witty regularity.

And in addition to Jesus we need Voltaire, who once said, “I have prayed only once to God to make my enemies fools, and I am happy to report that God has answered that prayer.” Voltaire used his slashing satire to skewer any number of opponents, but perhaps his most famous line occurs at the end of his most lasting work, Candide. After his assault on any number of targets, both philosophical and cultural, in the course of the fabulous and hilarious life of his hero, he concludes as follows: “It is necessary to cultivate one’s garden.” This has too often been mistakenly read as a call to quiet and a removal from life’s struggles, a suggestion to attend to one’s own gardens as one slides inexorably toward death. Not so! What the philosopher means, I think, is quite directly to attend, to take special care of, the culture in which one lives. After all, the word “cultivate” has as one of its connected words the word “culture,” and that word has in its surrounding meanings the word “civilization.” Voltaire calls all of us to tend our culture, to uplift our civilization. I think that means in the face of Donald Trump to seek to embody in our culture and civilization the important virtues of civility, of the search for truth, of the rejection of the absurd and the ridiculous. Trump’s view of the world is cankered and skewed; Voltaire and Jesus urge us to return to a world of knowledge, truth, and hope for a more balanced and safe world. And the way both Jesus and Voltaire urge that we get there is through wit and wisdom, two elements that are in astonishingly short supply in Donald Trump and in many of his sycophantic followers. Let us all hope deeply that with the coming of Joe Biden and the removal of Donald Trump and his inner circle, we might once again hear in our land the sounds of genuine wit and the search for genuine wisdom. May it be so!