Was all this inevitable?

We’re in the aftermath of Passover.

The Hebrew Bible tells us that long before the Hebrews became enslaved in Egypt, for whatever reason God told their forefather, Abraham, that they would become enslaved in Egypt for 400 years.

But why? The Bible doesn’t say that they had done anything bad or troubling warranting their enslavement. Rather, we later learn, a new pharaoh would come along who simply “didn’t know Joseph” – the deceased Hebrew who had risen to prominence and singularly saved the Egyptians from famine. To this new pharaoh, what Joseph had miraculously done for Egypt was simply yesterday’s news (as if to say, “What have you Hebrews done for me lately?”) 

God didn’t talk to George Washington, America’s forefather, in quite the same way as with Abraham, at least as far as we can tell. Presumably, even with the checks and balances that the Founders ingeniously institutionalized into the Constitution to defend against the potential of a monarchical regime that would deflate the masses, it would be possible that a successor of President Washington, long down the road, would have an extravagantly different view of how to control the nation in a manner that would satisfy him and those loyal to him.

Still, was what is occurring now in America somewhat predictable? And are we somewhat responsible? Not meaning here the people who have blindly supported the President since he began railing years ago against modern American society and those of us who have rejected his negativity.

Rather, it may be about those Americans who, rightly or wrongly, aggressively moved the nation too far left – “too woke”, as it were. Perhaps they did so by electing public officials urgently wanting to please swaths of America seeking greater diversity, even if enforcing diversity often results in a perceived unfairness to those who consider themselves more deserving than their replacers. The great problem for those opposing “affirmative action” and DEI, even in their most benign forms, is that it often is seen to “victimize” others. Put otherwise, “America is being taken away from us by them, and so we want it back.”

And an iconic Black President, even though his positions on these issues were hardly extreme, persuaded the supposed “victims” – largely white victims — as well as it could be made. And so, for them, Trumpism, as Trump has articulated it, would become the remedy, maybe the panacea, for what ailed them – that is, the opposition in America. And the left simply didn’t see it coming or attempt to turn the wheel in the direction of the skid.

And when prosecutors, seemingly always placed in office by the left, began attacking him, the President’s devotees simply decided to agree with him. For as he persuaded his followers: “They’re not coming after me, they’re coming after you.” And so, as it has become unsurprising, his followers came to believe along with him that the cult of DEI is the bane of our existence, and that the government, the judiciary and Ivy League universities (in particular) need to be stripped of what their actions have meant to “real Americans”.

At the end of the day, the Hebrews in Egypt in the days of Moses were in fact foreigners — at least in the eyes of the native-born Egyptians. And when a pharaoh came along who wasn’t beholden to Joseph (who had ended the famine), it was time to return the Hebrews to being mere supplicants. It appears that the Hebrews weren’t at fault for having caused Pharaoh to turn on them. (And as an autocrat, Pharaoh hardly needed their vote).

Not so, though, this time around. Whether or not we who don’t subscribe to Trumpism are partly responsible for having somehow enabled the election of a president who seeks to increasingly act as an autocrat, we need to stand for our principles. And if that means, in part, affirmatively acknowledging our own role in enabling the election of a president who has now chosen to sit on a throne, as did Pharaoh, we must do that unambiguously. God, reportedly, helps those who help themselves!

Mark Twain famously said that “History Doesn’t Repeat Itself, but it Often Rhymes.” I wonder what the pharaoh(s) who tormented us yesteryear would think of a modern-day president seemingly impervious to the consequences of his actions towards those whom he perceives as fundamentally undeserving of the “equality” that America has stood for.

Was what is occurring today indeed inevitable? I don’t know. Either way, though, with some level of optimism (or is it hope?) I believe that it can be turned around — even without miracles from God.