Back then, my own existential narrative was, to me, clear, even self-evident. Already as a college sophomore, as I often have observed, I was fascinated, not to say driven, by the story of the German resistance to Adolf Hitler, then the embodiment of Darkness. I wrote my undergraduate honors thesis on that theme, with particular reference to resisters like theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. All this against the background of the traditional German Lutheran theology that had deeply nurtured me throughout my life.
But that encounter with German life in Weimar times was mostly academic. Never in those days did I even entertain the thought that fascism would one day become an existential threat in my own experience. Fascism back then, for me, was a dangerous, even evil, political movement that flourished in some other world. The story of Germany’s Weimar Republic during the nineteen-twenties, I kept feeling, was indeed back then.
But Trumpism is now.
And for me, counter-intuitively perhaps, this is a hopeful thought. Why? Because Trumpism is rooted, however promiscuously, in the world of our own national experience. Which is a world that’s massively pluralistic, politically, culturally, and existentially. Surely not of one mind. Which means, in turn, that the challenge before our aspiring dictator, unlike the one Hitler faced during the Weimar era, is like herding cats, as they say. Can you imagine Trump herding anything? Good luck on that one.
Then there’s this. The cats themselves seem to be getting organized. Consider the recent No Kings Day, when seven million stood up to debunk the monstrous Trumpian nation-wide power grab. People in every nook and cranny of the good old US of A. protested, thereby – if I may say so in the language of the most famous protester of all the historic Protestants, Martin Luther – all together, in every state of the Union, farting at the Devil.
This thought cheers me, at least on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. I invite you to be cheered with me on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.
Then, together, we can clap our hands in hope, every Sunday, which of course by its very nature is, I believe, this good Earth’s historic Sun-Day.
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