Our Better Angels?

Why would you do anything but put a bullet in his head?

-California correctional officer asking why I would provide counseling assistance to a convicted child molester.

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It’s human nature, I guess, to want revenge, to see our tormentors suffer. The whole Christian concept of hell is founded on that — we good people in the afterlife will get to see all the bad ones suffering perpetual pain in the fires of hell. We can sit back on our easy clouds and self-righteously gloat while sipping ice-cold lemonade. Unfortunately, such a vengeful concept makes us no better than those “bad people.”

I recently wrote about the dangers posed by Donald Trump. He is a despicable human, yes, and I understand the angry emotions he can create. But I was saddened by responses to what I wrote suggesting “appropriate” retribution (revenge?). To the people over the years who tell me how much they hate Trump, I admonish them not to wallow in that sewer. I can understand a cathartic venting, sure, but we have to be careful with it.  I have long said that I do not hate Trump.  I feel sorrow for the human Trump is. I passionately hate what he does, and I want it stopped. Yet I cannot bring myself to hate him. He is mentally ill, and he does not have the capability to feel the positive human emotions most of us take for granted. His disease makes him empty inside. I wonder at how awful it must be to wake up every day hating yourself and hoping you can get through one more day pretending you are not as horrible as you know you are. Imagine living every day of your life with such a burden!!!

The image of a mother and child brings joy to healthy human beings.

Even as much a curmudgeon as I am, I do experience wonder and love and awe. Imagine not being able to smile seeing a mother holding the hand of her child as they cross a street. Imagine seeing the cherry blossoms in Washington and not stopping to be moved by the beauty. Imagine feeling nothing when hugging a person in your family. Imagine never sharing yourself with a pet. Imagine being unable to feel a humor that celebrates our very humanity. In The Universe Is a Green Dragon, author Brian Swimme said:

Children are magnificent, gorgeous beyond telling. They themselves have no idea of what beauty they embody. Can you see the tragedy of a child with no one to feel and cherish its beauty? No one to fall in love with this magnificent creature? No one to celebrate its splendor?

That is the tragic world of Donald Trump, devoid of essential humanity. His mental illness makes him unable to see such beauty, let alone celebrate the splendor.

An unusual book, but one I strongly recommend.

Movie actor Robert DeNiro has grown into a maturity regarding his emotional reactions to Trump. In a message just before the 2016 election, he talked about despising candidate Trump — and that he’d “…like to punch him in the face.” In a recent interview, he said about Trump: “He’s sick. He is really, genuinely a sick person.”

As much as anyone, the great author, James Baldwin, in an interview 70 years ago, defined Trump’s disease:

If you can’t love anyone, you’re dangerous, because you have no way of learning humility, no way of learning that other people suffer, and no way of using your suffering, and theirs, to get from one place to another. In short, you fail in responsibility, which is to love one another.

Author James Baldwin

Yes, Trump brings a monstrous evil into this world, and he is responsible for untold suffering, grief and despair. Sadly, that is not on him. That’s on us. We have allowed it. The most honest and telling thing he ever said was part of the damning  “Access Hollywood” recording. He was talking about abusing women when he said “…they let you do it.” Trump was a 59-year-old, newly remarried man when he said that in 2005. It’s the way he has lived his entire life, and he has come to expect that society will let him do anything, say anything, get away with anything — because we let him! How else do you explain a man who proudly proclaims that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it? That’s not simply a hyperbolic boast; he believes it. Our society created and nurtured Donald Trump, the greatest conman this country has ever seen, and we are suffering dire consequences. We are to blame. As cartoonist, Walt Kelly, first said in 1970: “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

There’s a fascinating television show called Mr. Inbetween. Set in Australia, it’s about a contract hitman named Ray who is raising a young daughter on his own — so he’s in between a world of violence and a world of nurturing love. In one scene, he’s in an anger management group. The moderator says, “The world is full of assholes, Ray, you do realize that?” He responds, “Yeah, and you know why? Cause people let them get away with it.”

Walt Kelly’s message was focused on ecology, but it takes on a greater meaning when we may be destroying our own country.

I understand the intense feelings of wanting to see Donald Trump forced to accept the consequences of his criminality. But we must not let those emotions meld with the very evil that flows from him. Whatever is left of a criminal justice system in this country is slowly grinding him down and I hope will eventually, as the Brits say, bring him to book. Meanwhile, what we must do is to stop letting him do it. If he is elected to the U.S. presidency, it will be the ultimate statement that we will let him do whatever he wants —- and this monster will do awful things to the entire world. His diseased mind can not help itself. I fear he may cause civil unrest on a scale never seen in this land, something that may look close to civil war.

In his first inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln knew the country was on the verge of unprecedented civil unrest. This was his message, and hope:

I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.