Every evening since the advent of the Trumpian madness, my bride of 57 years and I go through the same ritual. We watch Nicole, Rachel when she's on, and The CBS Evening News; we read The New York Times and The Washington Post. Lamenting what continues to threaten our democracy, we always say to each other that the current situation could not possibly get worse. And then every morning when we turn on the news, it has.
I have read and read the most accomplished historians to try to understand how such wide swaths of the American public could willfully embrace utter madness on such a scale: the ICE detention centers, the vileness and crude personal attacks, the GOP abandonment of all oaths to uphold our Constitution, the degradation on his hateful TruthSocial of everything that we tell our children to be, the lies after lies after lies; and now the Iran War, whereby he gave in to Netanyahu and to his “feeling” that we should invade Iran with no forewarning to our allies, no identifiable objectives, and no plans in sight.
Trump’s equally squalid Hegseth has now held up promotions across the board to worthy individuals because they happen to be female or persons of color. The nonsensical, mad ravings that spew forth from the mouths of both Trump and Hegseth do nothing but make the hourly situation worsen.
Since the guardrails in place to deal with treasonous behavior on the part of the president after the downfall of Nixon continue to fail today at every turn, I have thought about what I had blithely assumed to be the lowest political point in our history since the Civil War: the days leading up to Nixon’s resignation. We were living in Manhattan. My young wife was the chair of the Mathematics Department at the Dwight School; I was studying for my doctorate at Columbia University. We lived on the corner of Broadway and 112th Street, with the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine taking up the entire vista up the street from our building.
A few days before Nixon’s resignation, an announcement went out that on a Sunday evening at dusk a liturgy for the state of the nation was to take place inside that massive cathedral. My wife and I joined thousands of individuals waiting for the doors to open. There were so many people inside the cathedral and on the steps that the police had to come to close off Amsterdam Avenue. There was no organ prelude. Then the great Bourdon began tolling slowly as the procession appeared down the south aisle. There were no processional crosses, just vergers and torches. All the clergy and attendants wore black cassocks, as did the six-foot-eight Bishop of New York Paul Moore, the chief Rabbi of Temple Emanu-El, and the chief Imam of the Islamic Cultural Center of New York. The service was organized by the Sub Dean of the cathedral, Canon Edward Nason West, one of the world’s greatest authorities on divine liturgy.
The readings were all from the Old Testament. The prayers were in Arabic, Hebrew, and English dealing with the entreaties of the faithful for God’s intervention in times of national peril. The address was delivered by the towering, gaunt Telford Taylor, who had been the chief prosecutor at the Nurnberg Trials after World War Two. I still remember his forceful delivery as he warned the nation and indeed the world of the perils of dictatorship and the tragic cost of what always follows the collapse of personal responsibility and the loss of moral compasses on the part of those in legislative roles who abandon their sacred oaths to bow to the charlatans of hysterical madness. At the end of his address, he lowered his voice and reminded us all that when no one stood up to Hitler in Germany, the next thing one witnessed was well-educated Germans eagerly and ever so efficiently drawing up plans to murder systematically all the Jews in Europe.
The final blessings were given in haunting turns of phrase by the Bishop, the Rabbi, and the Imam. Canon West asked the congregation to rise. The lights in the vast Cathedral were dimmed, as one spotlight shone upon the northern pillar before the crossing. A gigantic American flag was slowly lowered upside down: the symbol of distress. And in a stroke of liturgical brilliance, our old friend Alec Wyton played “The Star-Spangled Banner” at a devastatingly slow pace, as if it were the most perfect musical accompaniment to the American flag upside-down lit only by a blazing spotlight: the nation grieving for our time of national peril. When Alec finished his funeral dirge, Canon West signaled for the retiring procession to begin up the center aisle. I can still feel the emotions at that moment in the dark cathedral as the retiring procession moved at a snail’s pace down the aisle. The great Bourdon tolled slowly and kept on tolling long after the procession had retired. No one inside the cathedral could speak. We too left Saint John the Divine with the Bourdon tolling its shame and grief at what had befallen our once proud democracy.
We walked down 112th Street hand in hand; my wife said, “It cannot last much longer.” Four days later, Republican Senators Barry Goldwater and Hugh Scott and Republican Congressman John Edmonds went to the White House and told Nixon that he would be roundly impeached if he did not resign. The next evening, Nixon went on national news to announce his resignation of the presidency.
In the past few days, Trump and his ilk have continued to stoop even lower in their cesspool, a cesspool that indeed has no bottom. I hope to live long enough to read how future historians can possibly explain the surrender to madness on the part of so many Americans and the surrender of all morality and decency on the part of the current GOP. Where are the Goldwaters, Scotts, and Edmonds today? Our present situation is far worse than anything the country has ever faced since the Civil War. In the scope of but a few days, Trump unleashed hideous ravings on his disgusting Truth Social on Easter of all grotesque moments, and then as if his insanity literally knows no bounds, unleashes this terrifying caricature of him as the Risen Savior healing an individual (please tell me that he did not intend this to be Epstein) in a Lazarus pose with symbols of all manner of evil hovering above.
How are we as rational human beings to understand what has happened to the American psyche? Trump befouls an office once held by Honest Abe, FDR, Truman, JFK, Reagan, and Teddy Roosevelt. I have had to conclude that what we as a nation most desperately need at this fragile moment would be services in every place of worship in the entire country: asking for some help from God at our own moment of acute national peril. If millions can attend the No Kings demonstrations, then perhaps what would now be most needed would be services for the state of the nation in every place of worship in our USA before it is literally too late.
James F. Jones, Jr., an American academic and educator, is president emeritus of Trinity College and Kalamazoo College and the former president of Sweet Briar College.
