After the assassination attempt last week, Mr Trump said he was going to rip up, and rewrite, his speech of acceptance, due in Milwaukee on Thursday, of the nomination to be the Republican candidate for the presidency. He said he wanted to be president for all Americans, not just half of them. He wanted to heal divisions. Perhaps he’s had a Damascene moment. If you come within a quarter of an inch of losing your life, you are bound to look upon it differently.
The events that are unfolding across the Pond have a biblical quality. Mr Trump has attributed his miraculous escape to divine intervention. He turned his head at just the right moment. I was reminded of a story in The Little World of Don Camillo, by Giovanni Guareschi, concerning the activities of a parish priest in an obscure village in the Po River valley, with a Communist mayor, in post-war Italy. Even in such a parochial environment, political tensions were liable to run high, and Don Camillo’s life was endangered because he had knowledge, obtained within the sanctity of the confessional, of the identity of a murderer. Consequently somebody took a pot-shot at him when he was communing in the church, as was his wont, with Our Lord, on the cross. He was given a nudge, a quarter of an inch, and Our Lord took the bullet. Don Camillo said, “You moved my head!” but our Lord shrugged and said, “Don’t get so excited.”
Cynically, we assume that Mr Trump, in ascribing his survival to the intervention of the Almighty, is merely wooing and cultivating the evangelical vote. But let us for a moment suppose he thinks he has been miraculously preserved for some higher purpose. I should think his must be a common reaction to an uncommon set of circumstances. In all the miraculous escapes afforded Winston throughout his military career, he often had the strong sense that he was being preserved for some higher calling. Those of us who have been critical of the first Trump term might consider such a notion to be absurd. But the bible is full of similar absurdities. God has called upon the most unlikely individuals to be his emissary. Noah was a figure of ridicule, building his ark on dry land. Moses got nervous as a public speaker. David was an adulterer and a murderer. Saul, aka Paul, was a fanatical zealot; he held the coats when they stoned Stephen. And so on. It’s a bit like the 1963 film of The Great Escape. The Forger was blind, and the Tunnel King had claustrophobia. It’s ridiculous.
On Thursday, Mr Trump wore a dressing on his right ear. That’s not just therapeutics, it’s iconography. What is it about the ear? When they came to arrest Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, one of the disciples rather lost his temper and cut off the ear of a servant of the high priest. Jesus gently rebuked him. He might have borrowed a line from Othello. Keep up you bright swords, for the dew will rust ’em. The traumatic amputation of an ear once started a war between Great Britain and Spain, Guerra del Asiento (1739 – 1748), or the War of Jenkins’ Ear. It concerned the slave trade in the Caribbean. The conflict was subsumed within the War of Austrian Succession. As Jesus said, those who live by the sword shall die by the sword.
One thing I’ll say about Trump: I don’t think he’s a warmonger. He says he will end the war in Ukraine with a single phone call. Good luck with that. Mr Chamberlain thought he could avert war through similar diplomatic channels, not exactly a phone call, but a trip to Berchtesgaden. That went well.
But now, all of a sudden, everything has changed. Mr Biden has bowed to pressure. He is like an elderly person who has finally been persuaded by his family to hand over the car keys. He has endorsed his vice president Kamala Harris to be the democratic candidate for the presidency. Mr Trump has said that she will be an even easier opponent to beat, than “Sleepy Joe”. Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he? But I don’t think so. I’ve read her book. The Truths We Hold. (Why do American political memoirs always have such portentous titles?) Incidentally, I don’t think people pronounce Ms Harris’s name correctly. It should be “Comma-la”. There is a gag, that if Ms Harris was your lawyer seeking compensation on your behalf, she might add a few commas on to the total sum achieved. In other words, she’s a fighter. Early days, but we have the possibility that the presidential contest will be between a prosecutor, and a felon. All of a sudden, the forthcoming American election has become interesting.
jamescalumcampbell 