Sunday Pages: Saviors

An upstate travelogue

Dear Reader,

Last weekend, I found myself driving along a two-lane state road that meandered south from I-90 to I-88. Smack-dab in the middle of New York State, against a gorgeous backdrop of mountains and evergreens as luxurious as anything on Harlan Crow’s estate, was a visibly depressed town: homes in critical states of disrepair; rusted-out car skeletons on lawns; no industry of any kind; no stores at all, just a few stray auto repair outfits; sad, run-down churches. Driving on, we passed a gleaming blue lake. Each of the small cottages on the strand was on the verge of collapse, as if the local lake-god had gotten angry and begun to pull the houses into the water, plank by rotted-out plank. They could shoot an episode of “The Last of Us” in that place and not change a thing—except they’d have to get rid of all the Trump signs.

A purple flag stapled to a pre-fab garage read TRUMP WON: AND EVERYONE KNOWS IT; I could still see the folds from when it was in its plastic bag. A sign on a pile of firewood packaged for sale had this witty advertisement: “$20 each, $15 if you voted Trump.” On the long driveway to the town hall was a huge white sign with crooked, hand-painted red letters: LET’S GO BRANDON. Presumably, that was the road to whatever police station existed there! When I got home, I checked the voting records, and sure enough, this particular hamlet “voted Trump” by a healthy 2 to 1 margin.

At first, the signs made me angry. They roused something unpleasant in me, spoiling my mood—which is, of course, the point: to own libs like me. And yes, mea culpa, I will confess to feelings of intellectual and moral superiority. After all we’ve been through, how can these people not realize that displaying a Trump flag in a town like that is like breast tissue putting up signs in support of ductal carcinoma? But mostly, it just made me sad. For all that heartfelt, sincere enthusiasm for FPOTUS, Donald Trump cares not a whit for rural New York poverty. If these sign-bearers were on fire, he wouldn’t stop his limo to piss on them. But here they are, proudly displaying the name of their Lord and Savior.

There was a map of Life Expectancy in America that made the rounds this week, designed by Jeremy Ney, and based on data gathered by the Global Health Data Exchange:

The color choices are clearly intentional. This looks for all the world like a voting map from the 2020 election. It isn’t. On this map, red means death. Lower life expectancy indicates that more people are dying young. Maybe those deaths are from covid-19. Maybe they are the result of gun violence, suicide, opioid abuse, or heart disease compounded by obesity. Maybe residents in those areas cannot access, or afford, quality health care. All of those things—all of them, without exception—are exacerbated by the policies of Donald Trump and his malevolent GOP. But if you voted for Joe Biden—the guy who’s actually trying to help you, who actually gives a shit about your plight—you don’t get a discount on your firewood.

Why do so many people worship this horrible man? Trump is not Jesus. Biden is not Jesus. Heck, if you want to get picky, Jesus wasn’t even Jesus. After describing to His disciples how the Son of Man would one day return in glory, He said: “Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.” But that generation did pass away, and none of those things took place. And His last recorded words, according to Scripture, were “My God, why have You forsaken Me?”

Even so, whatever might have happened historically, Jesus of Nazareth left behind a lovely instruction manual for how to live. Personally, I have never found much comfort in the Resurrection, the promise of eternal life in exchange for my faith, the looming Day of Judgment, or the other metaphysical trappings of Catholicism. But one does not have to be Christian to appreciate the humanity, the decency, in such commands as “love your neighbor as yourself,” “turn the other cheek,” or “be charitable with the poor and the suffering.” Somehow, today’s Christofascist GOP has perverted Christ’s teachings into “deny women access to basic healthcare,” “automatic weapons are more important than the lives of schoolchildren,” “let teenagers marry creepy old guys,” and “adults must inspect kids’ genitals before they play sports.” Is that really what Jesus would do?

As for Trump, orange Messiah of the Upstate New York firewood salesman, what does he offer besides grievance-fostering, selfishness, and “fuck your feelings?” My mother, a churchgoing Catholic, asked me a few years ago if I thought Trump was the anti-Christ. I’m not sure he’s the prophesied figure from Revelation with the Number of the Beast tattooed on his forehead, but in myriad ways, FPOTUS is the polar opposite of Jesus. Trump is a racist; Jesus welcomed everyone. Trump is a rapist; Jesus was a celibate and a friend to sex workers. Trump is a thief; Jesus forgave the thieves crucified alongside Him, but was blameless himself. Trump is completely ignorant of Scripture; Jesus engaged in scholarly debates with holy men when he was a kid. Trump has no moral compass whatsoever; Jesus is the moral compass for millions of humans around the world. Jesus hated money changers in the temple; what would He have made of money launderers like Trump? The difference is perhaps best summed up thus: is it not fundamentally un-Christian for a wealthy man to use loopholes to avoid paying taxes—taxes that fund programs for whoever painted that LET’S GO BRANDON sign? Jesus loved the poor. Trump’s attitude is, “Fuck the poor.” And yet for millions of Americans, Trump is Him.

Wherefore our collective savior obsession? Why do we believe that someone will come and rescue us? Why do our religious books, our secular literature, and our entertainment vehicles all reinforce this self-defeating idea? Why do we seek out saviors? Why do so many of us invest our hopes in the worst possible candidates for the role? Do we have a disappointment fetish?

I remember a story a priest told during the homily, back when I was a kid. I’m not sure what the origin of the story is—I’m sure he didn’t make it up—but it goes like this: A man finds himself trapped on a desert island. He prays to God to be saved. A day passes, and a ship comes by. “Do you need help?” the captain asks. “No,” the man replies; “I’m good, God will save me.” The ship sails off, and the man continues to pray to God. Another day goes by, and a submarine emerges from the sea. “Do you need help?” the submariner asks. “No,” the man replies; “I’m good, God will save me.” The submarine speeds away, and the man continues to pray to God. On the third day, a helicopter lands on the beach. “Do you need help?” the pilot asks. “No,” the man replies; “I’m good, God will save me.” And the helicopter flies away.

Now the man is about to die of thirst. He is angry with the Lord. “I have put my faith in you,” he curses, “and you have forsaken me!” And God replies: “That is not true. I have answered your prayers not once, not twice, but three times. I have sent you a ship, a submarine, and a helicopter, and you chose to ignore them.” The man wanted God Himself to appear from Heaven and carry him to safety, and he was unwilling to accept anything less. His own unrealistic expectations doomed him. He could not see that the merciful power of God was all around him.

I’m guilty of this, too, by the way. I seek out and put my hope in saviors, just like everyone else. I want to believe so badly in—as Springsteen puts it—“the faith that can save us.” But what I’ve come to realize is that it’s not going to be a single, specific individual who is our savior. Not Biden. Not Jack Smith. Not Jesus. And certainly not Donald Trump. Rather, if we are to be saved, we will have to be our own saviors. It’s not going to be one of us; it’s going to be all of us. And I believe—no; I know—that we can.

Happy Easter!

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Photo credit: Brett Davis.