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. My wife and I attended a solemn Sunday evening service at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine. There, religious figures gave readings from the Old Testament and offered prayers were recited in Arabic, Hebrew, and English, dealing with the entreaties of the faithful for God’s intervention in times of national peril. Afterward, we walked down 112th Street hand in hand; my wife said, “It cannot last much longer.”
Can we now, as a nation, go on much longer? In the past few weeks, Trump and his ilk have continued to stoop ever lower in their cesspool, one 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 Day 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.
