Trump’s Fist

That Ubiquitous Gesture

You would think that a bullet whistling by your head so closely that it nicked your ear might be a wake-up call, the kind of thing that could turn you around permanently, as if to say, Whoa, I dodged a bullet that time (so to speak).   Maybe I might want to reassess.  Ramp things down a little.

It didn’t have that effect on Trump.  As shaken as he looked when he rose from the ground, with a truly stricken look on his face, he nevertheless opted to make his famous fist gesture (not once but a number of times), and yell Fight! Fight! Fight!  It wasn’t like, maybe I better reconsider.  It was more like, Shoot back!  Kill the crazy bastards who are persecuting me!  Attack!

Whenever I see a photo of Trump at one of his rallies, he’s either pointing at someone in the crowd (it’s amazing how often he’s doing that.  Who the hell is a pointing at?  It isn’t Melania, we know that) or making that fist gesture, though it’s been a little weak lately, like a cheerleader who’s gotten jaded and is tired of the whole thing.  Not Rah! Rah! Rah! But rah.  And I would think that, at this point, though he loves the adulation and the massive crowds, he must be getting weary of the whole rally thing, saying the same words over and over, running on and on until he doesn’t make any sense at all (as if he ever did), throwing in a few remarks about sharks and getting electrocuted.  As long as he gets out there and makes an appearance, he’s done his job.  He can say any damn thing.

It’s almost like a religious ritual, as if all he needs to do is go through the motions (like a priest celebrating Mass for the ten-thousandth time).  Point at somebody, make a fist, start yakking.  The weird thing is that he’s become a religious figure, of the Christian religion, as if that religion hadn’t already gone bonkers enough.  As we all know, when the Roman soldiers came to pick up Jesus in the Garden and Peter sliced off the ear of one of them (a weird symmetry in that moment), Jesus jumped up and yelled Fight!  Fight!  Fight!  Slice off his other damn ear, Pete!  Go for it.

Actually, he didn’t say that.  He said that if you live by the sword you die by the sword, and he wasn’t referring to physical death.  You kill your spirit by taking up the sword.  Revert to violence and you’ve already lost.  What Jesus actually said when asked to sum up his teaching (as Rabbi Rami pointed out in a recent Ask!) is that there are only two commandments, Love your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength, and as a corollary of that one, Love your neighbor as yourself.

I must admit that, in the old days, when religion was an intellectual enterprise for me, and I was trying sincerely to follow Jesus’ teaching, the commandment to love God was a bit of a stumper.  How do you love God?  How do you love something so abstract that it’s almost an idea?  Where is he?  What is he?  How do you do that?

But through the years, as I practiced meditation, I realized, gradually, that though I began sitting as a Self with an Other (everything around me), really there was no self, because everything permeated everything, the self was part of the other and the other was part of the self (Jesus points that out in the Gospel of John), so that it’s all Other or it’s all Self (neither of those possibilities entirely makes sense); in any case it’s all One, and loving God is loving the whole thing.  Loving your neighbor as yourself is indeed a corollary of that statement (again I’m copying the brilliant Rabbi Rami), but it includes an important teaching (which we’ve already noticed): Your neighbor is yourself.  It’s not (as I used to think) that you love your neighbor in the same way that you love yourself (that might not be such a good idea), but that you love your neighbor as you, the way you should love yourself, and everything else.

It’s not about fighting.  It’s about loving.  Having good will toward everyone.  I hate to make all those Trump Christians out there uncomfortable, but that’s what Jesus said.

It’s not about making a fist.  It’s about opening your hand.  Opening your hand and opening your heart.  Being open.

We seem to be in a closed-fist posture at the moment.  Both sides.  Biden often suggested the other thing, but he was weak at communicating it, and people didn’t want to hear it anyway.  They wanted to fight.

But I believe that the vast majority of people understand what I’m saying, and oppose this fighting posture.  You might disagree with somebody, and you can say that (Jesus often did), but you don’t have to fight them.  Actually, he healed the Roman soldier’s ear.

We’d like to get to that more open place, many of us.  But someone with huge influence keeps holding up that fist.