It Ain't Me Babe!......Abraham's Indecent Proposal

Go away from my window, Leave at your own chosen speed I'm not the one you want, babe I'm not the one you need You say you're lookin' for someone Who's never weak but always strong To protect you an' defend you Whether you are right or wrong Someone to open each and every door But it ain't me, babe No, no, no, it ain't me, babe It ain't me you're lookin' for, babe. Bob Dylan One of the very worst of the many distressing stories in Scripture is the sojourn of Abraham and Sarah in Egypt (Gen. 12). Sarah is so beautiful that Abraham is sure the Pharoh will kill him to have her. So he proposes: Let's pretend you are my sister so they don't kill me, although they will surely take you. Sarah goes along with it and she finds herself as a concubine in Pharoh's harem. This is pretty disgusting: a husband who pimps his wife out to save his own skin! But even worse: this is Abraham we are talking about! Abraham, the prime and greatest of the patriarchs! Abraham the father in faith of many nations! Abraham whose faith was tested by the sacrifice of his son Issac in which he passed stupendously! Abraham...no combination of prophets or priests or kings or judges equal him in greatness. Moses alone, the great lawgiver, is in his league. How could the great Abraham do this? Pragmatically his calculation is reasonable: if they know she is his wife, they kill him and get her. If they think she is his sister, they get her but spare him. By a practical calculus his decision is sensible. But it is still vile! It isn't clear in Scripture that she slept with the Pharoh but that seems likely given what happens next. God punishes Pharoh, not Abraham, for taking this married woman. He punishes Pharoh! Pharoh is subjectively innocent since he thought she was single. If anyone deserves punishment it should be Abraham for the deceit and for intentionally sending his wife into adultery. It gets more crazy: not only is Abraham not punished, but Pharoh sends him off with his wife and with many possessions as well. Wow! This is crazy stuff! And inspired Scripture at that! The story bothered me. But then it hit me! Abraham is paradigmatic for all us husbands: at the end of the day, in one way or another, we disappoint and betray our beautiful wives. We fail to protect and provide, to tender and reverence them as they deserve. But the good news: God comes to the rescue. He delivers Sarah from concubinage; He saves the marriage; he protects the family, the legacy, and the patriarchy of Abraham even though he doesn't deserve it! The takeaway: as a bridegroom and husband, I (and all of us) am fundamentally flawed, inadequate and unfaithful in the care and protection of my bride and wife. In one way or another, I fail her. I betray her. If she looks to me to fulfill her deepest longings, to unfailingly provide and protect her, to fondly attend to her...she will will be heartbroken, in one way or another. There is One, however, who fondly, faithfully, powerfully attends to her...that is God and specifially Jesus Christ the Great Bridegroom Himself. As Sarah was rescued by God, so is my own wife...and by analogy all women I befriend. I lack within myself the resources...emotional, spiritual...to fulfill the desires of any woman. What I can do is humble myself before the Great Bridegroom, ask for His mercy for the woman I love, and surrender myself to Him in a mimetic reenactment of his extravagant, virile, sensitive, attentive generosity.

Notes from Christendom: Urban, Blue-State, Underclass Christendom

Disclaimer: Those who know me well allege that I am not merely an optimist, but a cockeyed optimist. This essay will strengthen that allegation. I have been living in Christendom now for over 73 years. I will die in Christendom. This statement is sociologically and theologically incorrect: everyone knows that we are now in a post-Christian society. Christendom is extinct: a thing of the past, it peaked in the 13th century, was dealt a blow by the Reformation and Enlightenment and left us in a disenchanted, secular, neo-pagan society. I myself have been soaking myself in this literature since Harvey Cox's The Secular City of 1965. Except that is simply NOT my reality. I live in a Christian society. I have always lived in Christendom: a weakened, shallow, confused, wounded, marginalized, disparaged, often discouraged and even despairing Christendom, but Christendom nevertheless. Christendom is alive!It is in critical condition, but is NOT dead! What is Christendom? Simply: a Christian soicety and culture in which Christian ideals reign, aspirationally if not often actually. It is not that everyone practices these ideals: they are too difficult for us. It is that almost no one practices them consistently and fervently; but almost everyone implicitly aspires to them and admires them. To be clear: my argument is that Christendom is alive, weakened but alive, in the underclasses. In affluent, elite circles (academy, entertainment, law, media, etc.) it is a thing of the past and has been replaced by neo-pagan cultural liberalism. But it survives, underground and wounded and vulnerable, in urban evangelical black communities, in the rural Trumpian heartland, and in what remains of ethnic Catholicism that is still ethnic and still Catholic. Here are three foundational Christian principles which, I argue, are broadly honored, if not very well practiced: prayer, marital fidelity, care for the poor. Well over 95% of people I know and associate with very clearly value these. Prayer is simply personal access to a God who is powerful, close to us and kind to us. We all don't pray consistently and fervently, but pretty much all of us appreciate prayer. In my world, this is quite common: someone is telling me about his father's cancer; I respond that I will remember him in prayer; he thanks me. That is Christendom. Marital fidelity is trickier. The Cultural Revolution of the 60s frontally assaulted the entire edifice of traditional family life: pre-marital abstinence, the unitive/procreative meaning of sexuality, the ideal of chastity, "heteronormativity", the essentiality and intentionality of femininity and masculinity. So, Cultural Liberalism has prevailed in elite culture but not so clearly in the lower classes. Ironically, it has had its most devestating effects on low-income and low-status groups. Nevertheless, my experience is that the ideals of fidelity, monogamy, and chastity are still reverenced, even if not very well practiced, by the working and poor classes. Lastly, care for the poor: in my work in providing homes for low-income women, I continually receive generous support from our donors, some of whom have serious money, but also from volunteers as well as firefighters, police, health care workers, inspectors and others. I don't know of a nefarious "deep state"...the bureaucrats who engage us are almost always reasonable and supportive. Ironically: I live in Jersey City, hyper-blue part of a hyper-blue State. It went 75% for Biden. I am myself the redest red-blooded, red-meat, red-fire-engined, reactionary registered Republican on the cultural-moral issues. The DNC: I despise, renounce, execrate, defy, disparage, detest it! It is the structural, systemic-systematic, institutional enactment of religious toltalitarianism, genocide of the helpless, moral chaos and spiritual despair. But democrats are something else. I know them well. They vote for Biden for reasons such as: compassion for immigrants, care for the environment, health care for the needy, greater economic equality, decrease in gun violence and similiar concerns. These are all of them solid, Christian motivations. Ironic: the viciously anti-Catholic DNC is largely fueled by wholesome, well-intended Catholic motivations. Tragically, these good intentions are paving the path to hell: a grave moral misjudgement is operative here. The vote for Biden objectively advances grave systematic evil. Nevertheless, the subjective motivations are largely worthy. Christendom, in a confused, convoluted form, is still alive. I encounter this in its two basic expressions: traditional Catholic pro-union, strong-government liberalism and Black, evangelical liberalism. Both are rooted deeply in Christian values. Both vote compulsively, ignorantly for the Agenda of Death. A mirror image of my Christendom is, of course, the right wing, white, evangelical Trumpism of the heartland, the South and the Midwest. Here again, fierce Christian energies have been enflamed by Trump against the neo-pagan elite hegemony on behalf of religious liberty, religious authority, traditions involving gender/sexuality/marriage and the preciousness of innocent, incompetent life. But again, a grave moral misjudgment is operative in the support of a man whose personal example is so scandalous. Again: Christendom is alive, but weak, fractured into two opposing political camps, mislead by serious moral error, shallow, and under vicious assault from the Cultural Liberalism of the elite.I do worry, mostly, about our young. The neo-pagan dynamics of the upper class are strengthened by social and other media, technology,the atomization of the individual, breakdown of a essential family-church-community networks, and the cancerous growth of big state and corporation. A good example would be the Black Lives Matter movement. I don't encounter it in Jersey City, but when I drive through affluent suburban Essex county where homes are worth over half a million at least there is a sign on every third lawn. The motivation, from what I can tell, is largely compassion for the inordinate poverty, sickness, imprisionment, of black communities. But it predominates among the affluent and educated. While the motives seem pure, as a moral judgment it is worse than erroneous, it is catastrophic. It is: simplistic, polarizing, police-scapegoating, black-male-emasculating, virtue-signaling, anti-white racist, black-racisim-and-resentment enflaming, violence-encouraging, authority-suspecting, community destroying and victimizing of the black identity. But the widespread support is largely a Christian empathy gone sentimental and confused. My adulthood has been spent in diverse, working class Jersey City, teaching in small scale Catholic schools, running boarding homes for low income women and working for 25 years in blue color UPS. In my cosmos, I don't know any Nietzcheans, or Marxists, or Freudians. I have known a Jungian and a Darwinian or two but those would be psychologists or professors, members of the elite who are under the influence of the Empire. IT is like the Rebel Alliance in the Star Wars saga: in hiding, oppressed, marginalized, in constant danger of being destroyed. But we all know that the energies, the solidarity, and the "Force" are waiting patiently for the decisive, surprising strike against the Death Star. And so it is with our Culture War: the elite institutions are oppressive of our faith but we wait, in the underclasses, quiet, anonymous, calm. The Benedict Option takes on a different form in this perspective: given the weakness of Christendom in its distinct expressions and the violence and power of "The Empire of Cultural Liberalism" we definitely need to bond together in smaller, intense communities of faith, especially to fruitfully pass it on to our young. The survival and revival of Christendom depends upon the vigor and vitality of just such communities. Without them, the Empire will prevail over the Alliance. However, there are grounds for great hope: the residual energies of Christendom are substanital if not ostentatious. Allied with revival communities, Christendom will arise!

Sal Left Us: to Bring Joy to Jesus

Yesterday I was blessed to attend the funeral mass for Sal Cassaro at the magnificent Basilica-like Church of St. Aeden's in Jersey City. Fr. Rocco S.J. presided with his dramatic, Italian touch: I enjoyed it and was touched by it. The Church was full, several hundred, for a weekay, Covid-time service. Sal and I taught together 45 years ago for a year or two at St. Mary's H.S. downtown Jersey City. We liked each other in a light, effortless way. Our paths crossed occasionally over the years, ususally because his Michele and my Clare were best friends from high school on. Through the girls our families had a fierce mutual affection for each other. He liked me; I liked him. I didn't realize how much I liked, no...how much I loved him... until his death. Sal was rock-solid, salt-of-the-earth Jersey City: gentle, sweet, good-natured, fun, funny, light-hearted. Affectionate. Did not take himself seriously. Always with a smile on his face. Rotund in a way that heightened his jollity. He taught math in Catholic high schools for many years: this (I know) to be a low-income, low-status, challenging often frustrating work. He coached track: the long hours, the almost-no-pay, the (for me at least) monotony of the thing; you cannot do this except as a labor of love, love of the kids and the sport. For many years, to pay tuition and expenses he worked managing a hotel nights after teaching and coaching all day. As I prepared for the funeral, I was recalling the affection, lightness and delight I would always feel in his presence. Then a strange thought struck me: Sal is in heaven, being greeted by Jesus, who is welcoming him with great joy! Sal is bringing Jesus joy. zYes: that's right, Jesus is the happy one. It makes sense: Sal always made me happy in a quiet, almost unremarkable way: how much more must Jesus enjoy him. This thought gave me great joy. At funerals we entertain a number of thoughts and feelings: the loss of the family; the suffering (if there was sickness) is over; purgatory has begun so we add our prayers and masses to help; and eternal happiness has begun, for the good. But I myself never thought about the Joy enjoyed by Jesus himself, not to mention the entire Trinity and the Communion of Saints. This makes God capable of receiving Joy...from us. That means that today... as I trust, surrender, receive mercy and all good gifts, forgive, apologizie, care for another...as I do any of these, I give joy to the Creator of the Universe. Even more, when I die I will go to give him joy since we will be closer than ever on this earth. Today I received, in the memory of Sal, an actual grace of hope and joy. His memory delights me and inspires me to emulate his quiet, happy, humble way and fills me with hope!

The Reckless, Crazy, God-Intended Extravagance of Eros

If I understood his dense essay ("Nature of Original Sin" in Communio Spring 2020) correctly, Gustav Siewerth suggested that God, in creating the human person, even before the Fall, intended Eros, Passion and Desire to vastly excell human reason and will in power. This is quite a thought! Traditional Catholic anthropology finds the "image of God" specifically in our intellect and will: our spiritual capacities to know the True and to choose the Good. The passions, including sex and the rest, are meant to be subordinate to reason and will. By virtue of sin and concupiscence, the passions are out of control and must, with the help of grace, be brought back into submission to reason and will. The thought I developed from Siewerth (I may be misinterpreting him!) suggest something quite different. Without denying the reality of sin and concupiscence, the idea is: already in the state of grace and harmony, God intended our desire, delight and appreciation, even for created good, to surge in depth and intensity beyond our powers of thought, deliberation and volition. By this logic, our longing for communion, to surrender ourselve to the Good-True-Beautiful, to possess and be possessed, to hold and be held, to see and be seen, to give and to receive...all of this an echo of the eternal giving-and-receiving within the Trinity... is extravagant, excessive, profound and intense beyond the more limited abilities of thought and will. St. John Paul has already suggested that we image God in our conjugal mystery of reception, surrender, and self-gift. In this he includes intellect and will within the gift-of-self which itself is knowing and willed. But this new thought seems to go a step further: the very excess of desire and longing is itself an image of God and an impetus towards God. By any account, it is clear that in paradise, before sin, there was perfect harmony within the person in regard to intellect, will, desire and passions. This was due to the communion with God which flooded our first parents with interior peace, strength and harmony such that all dimensions rested and moved in harmony. But my image of this harmony was that will and intellect are in charge and the passions and desires fall in line: spirit in at the top of the hierarchy, flesh at the bottom. But the suggestion here is that already in the garden Adam and Eve would have customarily be grasped by ecstacy, intoxication, and mystical delight that overwhelmed the deliberative, cognitive functions. This would have been ordinary, normal, entirely non-pathological. Consider Adam's first response to Eve: "This at last is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh." That is an intelligent statement, but far more than that. It appears to flow from a deeper, poetic and even mystical engagement: a profound sense of communion, of delight, of longing, of satisfaction. His first response was thus an ecstacy of extravagant delight which would have silenced his cognition and deliberation. His first response was the innocent, reverent and tender gaze of contemplation, of surrender to indescribable loveliness, goodness, and dignity. Eros is prior to thought and will. Thought experiment: place is the garden of Eden; time is shortly before dinner, well before the Fall. Eve is preparing dinner (delicious vegetarian!). Adam is gathering fruit and vegetables, singing with the birds, and enjoying the bunnies and chipmunks. Into the garden walks Sophia Loren at age 20. Recall: this is before the Fall so they are both naked without shame. They are immune to embarassment, lust, covetousness, envy. Now: how does Adam react? Obviously, he is blown away! He is dizzy with intoxication, wonder, awe! His breathing is heavy as he needs more oxygen for the intensity of his reaction! His hormones...testosterone, oxytoxin, seratonin, endorphins, and the rest...are inflamed into a white heat! His cortical nerve system is heated up to full strength! His virility, in its propensity for intimacy-and-fecundity is fiercely aroused, erect and exclamatory! He is in a mystical-emotional-physical ecstacy, for which he was created! All this without privation, toxicity or indecency. Sophia (means "wisdom") cheerfully says: "Hi! You must be Adam. I am Sophia." When Adam hears these words the spell of the charm is diminished, but not entirely as he remains euphoric, so that his verbal and deliberative faculties are restored and responds: "Yes, I am Adam. Welcome, Sophia, to our garden. God be praised for all His goodness: You are a singular masterpiece of womanly loveliness! My Eve will love you! Please come and dine with us." Adam, happily in the state of grace, in communion with the Trinity, enjoys an unbounded flow of peace, strength, joy and gratitude. So, his ecstacy, while momentarily unhinged from reason and will, is entirely innocent and wholesome. It is an excess of appreciation, tenderness and reverence. It is not unintelligible as much as super-intelligible. This is good news. This should bring some release from shame and restoration of wholesome, appreciative, liberated Eros desire and energy. This, again, is not to deny the malignant, even demonic fury of lust...of sexual desire disordered by isolation, anger, self-hatred. But it is to recognize that even under the distressing disguise of sin, the fundamental Eros longing of the human heart is for the Good, for God as the ultimate Good, and the Good in all its symphonic splendor. And so, as we deal with the extravagance, exuberance and chaos of Eros, we do well to remember three truths: 1. Such desire is ususally a cross, a suffering, an ache and frustration that God allows. He actually does "lead us into temptation" (although Pope Francis does not think so) in order that we be purified and sanctified by purgation. We need to endure this. 2. In so far as the desire is oriented to evil, as in adultery and fornication, it must be decisively renounced, in the power of the Holy Spirit and in the name of the chaste Bridegroom. 3. At its heart, however, this burning desire, however misdirected, is a longing for the Good, the True and the Beautiful, and ultimately a craving for God. The path to purity: penance and conversion; patience and endurance; but most importantly possession by the passon for God. The cure for disordered Eros is a purged, inflamed, extravagant Eros!

Internal Family Systems: Good Psychology, Good Therapy; Not a Theology, not a Spirituality

In a delightful podcast, Jenna Riemersma is interviewed by a woman like herself: both are believers, enthusiastic about IFS as a path of healing, and they fairly sparkle with joy, conviction, faith, zeal and feminine charm. THey place the IFS (Ingternal Family Systems) model of therapy within a Christian perspective. In this view, the person is composed, like a family, of different "parts" which have valid functions but can become dysfunctional but must be accepted, respected and listened to. There is the Deep Self, the true and good self, peaceful and open. But the Self becomes wounded, hurt and traumatized in all kinds of ways. So, the pain arouses two key parts of the Self. The managers strive to contain the suffering and maintain control, order, and a minimum of conflict and pain. By contrast the fire fighters are hyperactive in putting out the fire whatever it takes. This can be compulsions and addictions such as anger, alcholism, pornorgapry and so forth. The system can become dysfunctional if the fire fighters are out of control and encurr the anger of the managers so that you have a split, fragmented psyche. The solution is for the deep, peaceful, real Self to welcome and dialogue the with the various parts who are all trying to do their job to protect and comfort. This is a helpful model: it does not moralize or pathologize but seeks to understand the underyling dynamics of tension and conflict. The managers clearly resemble the Freudian superego and the firefighters the id; but the deep self resembles the Jungian concept of self. It seems especially helpful for helping seriously religious people, such as conservative Catholics, who are strong in their belief but are often suffering from overactive managers who are suppressing anxiety, although unconsciously, through moralism, legalism, dogmatism and an elusive coldness and resentment. It also seems helpful for identifying the addiction cycle whereby the firefighters overwhelm the fire but then retreat, leaving the Self trapped in shame and guilt as the managers reassert their control. Another strength of the presentation was what Jenna, asked for her response to believing Christians who have reservations about the model, responded that she herself welcomes such reservations, since they have value and need to be received with respect. Great answer! Not defensive, open. In that spirit I offer this. It is promising as therapy but best not to inflate this into a spirituality. For example, she goes into the theological concept of sin and offers her model, the Self as fragmented and polarized, as an improvement over a view, which she considers typical of Christianity, of sin as impurity as if we pour coloring into liquid and thus polute or contaminate it. Surely her view is better than the contrast, but that contrast is a gross mistatement of sin in our tradition. She has moved out of therapy and is doing bad theology. She understands the Self to be "imago Dei" or the image of God, again moving into theology. This sounds like classical Jungian thought which develops a dazzlying, convoluted understanding of the Self as a world onto itself, but unrelated to a God that is Other. Rather, divinity becomes a dimension, a depth of the Self. THis is not Christianity but Gnosticism. When she ventures into use of Christian terminogly for these psychological realities she is risking the gnosticism that flooded the churches in the 60s and 70. The temptation of psychology is to inflate itself into spirituality. Jung is the best example, but consider the humanistic psychology of Rogers as sanctified by Eugene Kennedy; the helpful insights of Richard Rohr which become bad dogma when exaggerated into religion. Authentic Christian spirituality always draws us to the person of Jesus Christ, not to our own deep self, but to Another Self, who loves us and brings us to become our true, deep self. Such spirituality looks to Jesus on the cross dying for our sins, as well as all his works and teachings, and his rising and ascending and sending of the Holy Spirit. Listening to these two women one senses deep Christian faith, both seem to know Jesus very well. But taken as theology, their language could be confusing. It is best they this model present itself as therapy and psychology with particular importance for religiousity in its toxic aspects and for addicts. I was most happy to hear the podcast and am applying it already to my "issues!"

The Donald Reality

In a brilliant piece, (https://theweek.com/articles/951933/how-camp-explains-trump), Matt Walther nails the entire Trump performance of the last four years as "camp." He draws upon Susan Sontag's subtle treatment of the illusive phenomenon. The piece confirmed my intuitions about The Donald: he is not a governor, not even a politician; he is an entertainer, a celebrity pure and simple; and a brilliant and entertaining one at that. His presidency was entirely a show, a performance: he tortured the woke elite, winking all the time; he aroused his base into a marathon pep rally; he championed (ironically, given his blatant personal immorality) the religious right and became almost a messiah. It is all pure showbiz, performance and high camp.

Walther does not address my question: to what degree is he deliberate, intentional and self-conscious in his camp performance? If he is entirely self-conscious and therefore self-transcending, he is a sheer genius. But I doubt that he is. He is trapped in his own subconscious narcissistic needs and basically unreflective. But, intuitively he is brilliant in his ability to identify the weaknesses of his enemies, the passions of his base, the incongruity of it all.

But this leads to another question: if Donald is unaware of the irony, is he himself practicing camp? Clearly not! The strange reality of camp: a high-brow, sophisticated, even arrogant condescension  as if to say: "This is so cheesy! So corny! How fun to covertly make fun of it!" Sontag described it:  "banality, mediocrity, artifice, (and) ostentation...so extreme as to amuse or have a perversely sophisticated appeal." Is Donald himself tongue-in-cheek? Quietly laughing at himself and all those he is torturing or arousing? No way! He does this unconsciously, spontaneously, instinctively...as in everything he does. He is the performer but not the writer, director or producer of the script.

He takes himself as seriously as do his fans and his despisers. They are all wholly involved in the farce and unable to enjoy it. Who gets the campiness of it all? Very few of us. Matt Walther is one. I am honored to be another. In order to see and enjoy the immense irony and incongruity it is necessary to have some emotional disinterest or liberty: to view him from a distance. The entire left, unhinged by Trump-derangement-syndrome, is entirely incapable of this perception. Likewise the serious never-Trumps, the Romneys and Bushes, who take offense in another way. Nor is his adoring fan club able to see him ironically. It helps to be, like me, a no-vote or a write-in or a third-party-vote! Without a dog in the fight, the fight becomes comical and entertaining. 

Perhaps the more accurate, down-to-earth and low brow explanation is the one I have ascribed to since he took office: he is like the wise guy we all knew in high school. He is hilarious! He is a jerk and no one really likes him or wants to be his friend. (Deep down he is sad and lonely and angry.) But he is shameless, unfiltered, utterly impertinent and inappropriate! He is fiercely disruptive of the monotony, control, staleness of classroom decorum. So relieving! So much fun!

The performative nature of his behavior explains his absolute indifference to facts and truth: he is not dealing with reality, he is always in a performance so all his speech is oriented to enhance the story line. This perspective lends a lightness to the entire drama: it is comedy. But there are deeper, serious dimensions. 

First of all, there was the very real danger that his self-focused myopia would result in disaster, for example war with North Korea. The marvelous fact that we avoided this, and enjoyed relative world peace at that, testifies to two realities. First, notwithstanding the pathology of his condition, he is not psychotic but remains in touch with reality and at the end of the day defers to it. For example, it is taking time but he is accepting the election. Indeed, his denial pales in comparison to the 4-year hissy fit we endured from Hilary and the entire liberal establishment in their delusion of Russian-stolen election. Secondly, it is a credit to his aides: though they could not control him, they mitigated the dangers by keeping him restrained. His despicable "tweet habit" was, perhaps in retrospect, a blessing in that he was able to vent his passions in relatively harmless fashion as the business of government carried on. Kuddos to Pence, Mattis, McMasters, Pompeo, Barr and company as well as the judiciary and the entire "deep state."

Secondly, more seriously, underlying this camp performance is a deeply wounded, sad and troubled soul. He clearly does not know his worth as a person. He has not experienced the love he needed. He is lonely, isolated, and quietly despairing. Is this not the case with so many comedians who brighten our lives with laughter?

I suggest that this complex personality can best be captured by four narratives, all true.

First, the liberal view...he is a diabolical figure: tearing children from their immigrant families, pitting one class against another, selfishly striking out against anyone who opposes him like a child in a tantrum, objectifying women in shameless and conspicuous fashion, disparaging immigrants, and denigrating all arenas of expertise in furious pursuit of his ego needs. This narrative is accurate; and why I could never vote for him.

Second, the Trumpian view...he is a Messiah: notwithstanding his flaws, he defends the underdog including the unborn, champions religious liberty, stands up to imperialistic China and Iran, stimulates the economy, defies and ridicules the arrogant, totalitarian pretensions of the woke, liberal elites. This narrative is entirely accurate. It is in tension with, but not contradictory of the previous story line.

Thirdly, Walther is on point: he is irony, camp, performance, comedy, and high humor. Fabulously entertaining!

Lastly, I offer my view: he is childlike, but mostly childish. There is a childlike innocence and positivity about him when his ego needs are met: he is grateful, appreciative, and generous. But mostly he is childish. His basic level of development is infantile so that when his ego needs are frustrated he bursts into tantrums of rage. In this he is a sad figure. He is funny, but he is not enjoying his own humor. He takes it as seriously as his opponents and supporters. He NEVER smiles or laughs. Life for him is deadly serious because deep down he feels he is worthless. He needs to achieve worth by winning and performing. Fortunately, he is good at performing: he has drawn the oxygen out of the global atmosphere for four years in a spectacular fashion. But he has no joy.

So, I find myself praying for him, and his long-suffering, beautiful wife, and his family. He is a sad child who has been neglected and maybe abused and is hurting. 

I am grateful: for the good he has done including championing of the lowly against the mighty,  defense of life and liberty, court justices, and strength in the face of Iran and China. I am grateful that the system has held despite his narcissistic assaults: our judiciary, elections system, legislature, and the "deep state" (which I see as "deep" in a mostly good way) have all held. I am grateful that he has punctured the arrogance of our upper class. I am grateful for the entertainment and laughs he has given us. I will miss him and wish him well.