Trump Has Coronavirus

President Donald Trump has COVID-19.

Trump Has Coronavirus. This virus doesn’t care about your status as POTUS or peasant. The best medical attention this world can provide is useless. It doesn’t matter if you are Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, or Xi Jinping, fellow dying inmates. If you are high risk and your health isn’t up to the novel Coronavirus, and you get infected, you’re dead. It’s as simple as nailing an old-style coffin.

What to do, U.S. Catholics? Trump Has Coronavirus. Should we weep? Celebrate? 

Some are shouting with joy tonight. Maybe the problems of our country will be solved quickly? Let’s not kid ourselves. Watch the video…

https://youtu.be/ONJqF8bECc4

Trump Has Coronavirus

Many of us may loathe Trump, but I must never forget that he is our fellow human being, indeed, our fellow dying inmate. I am just going to talk about me right now. I am no one to tell anyone else how to feel and think. This is just how I am feeling and thinking around 2 AM. Other than accepting the reality that we are, all of us, terminally ill, there are no judgments offered.

Trump Has Coronavirus. I can’t stand Trump. I won’t pretend otherwise. He is an existential threat to the world—that’s just how I see it. Trump represents the worst aspects of what it means to be an American, and he drags our country down into hell. I get sick thinking about him. He’s stroke-inducing.  

My First Reaction to “Trump Has Coronavirus!”

Just now, when my best friend texted me the news that Trump has coronavirus, so many feelings rushed through me. The sarcastic monster peeked out and wanted to spit the half-truth, “Thoughts and prayers!” There’d be plenty of thoughts, bitter glee, and delight in seeing hubris get punished poetically. But no prayers. Think me ugly? Hey—let your fellow dying inmate, a soon-to-be corpse feeding worms, be honest.

On social media, I wanted to offer callous spite—“All lives matter!”

Then my superego, costumed as my conscience, wagged its finger and began to sanction me by guilty feelings. But psychological guilt isn’t the work of the Holy Spirit or my authentic inner voice. It doesn’t produce true prayer—the fire that transforms. It doesn’t help me see my illusions and drop them.

Trump Has Coronavirus & Waking Up

But then I remembered what a Happy Wanderer, the great Catholic saint Father Anthony de Mello, taught me about awareness. (By the way, I’ll call that Jesuit who saved my life a million times “saint” and “great” before you ever hear me do the same for some recently canonized popes). De Mello taught us four critical steps—

One, OBSERVE.

Watch my emotions. I must watch myself like I am watching someone else (I really am, as my “self” is actually a construct). I shouldn’t be the spotlight. Instead, I must be somewhat like a floodlight. Recalling de Mello, I must watch my emotional reactions. “Bill is angry. Bill is sad. There is anxiety in Bill.”

Two, UNDERSTAND.

I need to understand that NO ONE, not Donald Trump, and not anyone else, places negative feelings into me. Or pleasant emotions, either. People do just or unjust actions. They act in kind or unkind ways. But they don’t make me feel happy or sad or angry or bored, etc., despite our language telling us otherwise. We react mostly from programming and from a mix of nature and nurture. No one really has the power to upset me or make me delighted. My emotions are inside me, and they don’t exist out there. Therefore no one can put them into me. As De Mello says, when it rains on your picnic, is the bad feeling you get in the soggy food, or in you?

Three, REALIZE.

I must realize that while my emotions are real, and I must not suppress or repress them, they are always changing. These emotional states are transient, and thus, come and go. The “I” remains. So while I do feel angry, or vengeful, or guilty, or pleased, the “I” is never angry, or vengeful, or guilty, or pleased. I should watch that like someone observing a storm sweeping in. It will, eventually, depart. I am, therefore, not the storm. What I am, in this analogy, is the sky.

Four, CHANGE.

The only one that needs to change is me. When change comes to me, the world will change effortlessly. Then I may spring to action and go change the government. Or not. But until this person changes, this mystery called “fellow dying inmate,” I am just replacing a pack of wolves with more wolves. First, I must wake up. And the truth is, fellow dying inmates, I don’t want to wake up. It sucks. It is painful. Terrifying. But needed.

So our fellow dying inmate, Donald Trump, is sick. Trump Has Coronavirus. So also his wife and members of his staff.

Kyrie Eleison. Bring healing to him and his family and staff, O Lord. And also biomedical health.

Help us wake up and be healed. Mercy in everything. Through Jesus. 

 Amen.