Trump's Gift

We were warned.

Op-ed after op-ed, commentator after commentator, expert after expert—whole issues of major magazines: We were warned that Donald Trump should be taken seriously, even when he was ranting—in fact, especially when he was ranting.

We were warned that his second term would be much different from his first. In the first, there were sober, sensible, and capable people in the room to moderate, regulate, and even impede the whims which govern his mind and by which he governs his life—and now ours. In this second term, he has mowed down all the laws, all the regulations, and all the regulators he can. And look at the results.

Government agencies are decimated, charities devastated, able leaders defenestrated, stock markets discombobulated, and alliances detonated.

Trump is shaking things we thought would not—even could not—be shaken. Who in the world, literally in the entire world, thought that the United States would threaten to annex Canada? Funny songs (“Blame Canada”), comedic sketches galore, even a whole movie (“Canadian Bacon”) have been based on this preposterous notion. Who could possibly benefit from such an utterly groundless, wasteful initiative?

Meanwhile, Trump alienates Mexico, Europe, Japan, Taiwan—prompting autocrats everywhere to rub their hands with delight.

Let us attend, therefore, to the grave lessons to be learned, among which are the following.

The world is far more fragile than we like to think it is. How many movies have to be made before we will see how easily our modern systems can be disrupted, if not destroyed? Electrical grids, water systems, highways, canals, airports, supply chains—a single ship gets stuck in a single waterway (the Ever Given in the Suez Canal in 2021) and the entire world is affected. But also judicial and legislative systems: how rapidly they can be weakened and even subverted. And the economy? I don’t need to tell you.

Politicians can’t do much to radically improve our lives, but they can do a lot to make them worse. Politicians routinely take credit for a better economy and a better society, but politicians don’t invent things, market things, set up businesses, educate people, produce art, or otherwise make positive change. At their best, they resist chaos and promote order. At their best, they facilitate other people making improvements.

At their worst, however, they can easily and quickly—how quickly!—wreck institutions that took decades, even generations, to establish. (In my own historical work and personal experience in higher education, I’ve seen very few academic presidents and deans revolutionize a school for the better, but I have seen plenty make messes that have wounded and weakened a place for decades.)

Things change. When I taught history, I smiled at the frequency with which students would begin essays with such astounding claims as “In the middle ages, things changed.” Undoubtedly, I would muse, they surely did.

Most of us, however, know precious little of the political, economic, and social histories of our countries and the countries with whom we have the most to do. If we knew more, we would count less on things staying more or less the same tomorrow as they are today.

Just take the prime rate in Canada. Back when I was a graduate student, the prime rate in Canada hit 18% (1981). As recently as 1990, it was 13%. Since the mid-1990s, prime rates have remained relatively low, but they were high as recently as 35 years ago. Who nowadays is prepared for a jump from the current 5% to double or even triple that number?

And how fast can things change? In 1977, prime was less than 8%. The rate more than doubled in four years.

A little historical perspective goes a long way.

Large-scale change comes slowly, and usually simplistically. Directing large organizations is like steering a massive ship. If you’re surrounded by icebergs, to be sure, disaster can come pretty quickly upon a single bad decision. (There were a lot of icebergs around in the late 1970s and early 1980s.) Normally, however, social change comes slowly—like a massive freighter swinging slowly toward a new course, difficult to pause nicely in the middle.

The most stable institutions, including whole countries, have relatively slight swings from one moderate position to another. As soon as the arc widens, an equal and opposite swing is most likely.

Pushing social change too quickly and too hard thus provokes what political historians sometimes call a “Thermidorian reaction,” named for the response of the French to the extremes of the 1789 Revolution. This reaction set France on a political oscillation over the next two centuries from strong-man rule to republic and back again a half-dozen times.

Tomorrow, therefore, will probably be like today—unless it’s something else. Donald Trump is showing us Canadians what Ukrainians know and what Taiwanese and South Koreans fear. The wrong person in the wrong position can destabilize things quickly. And even if large-scale change usually takes time, it can still come, and soon enough to affect us all.

Use this crisis to examine ourselves, not just criticize others. We Canadians are smug these days in what we take to be our political, cultural, and even moral superiority to our American cousins who elected someone evidently perfect for the invocation of Amendment XXV of their Constitution. (I appreciate that many Americans think the previous president was, for other reasons, also a candidate for that amendment.)

Yet how far from January 6, 2021, in the U.S. Capitol was the chaos of the truck convoys of 2022 in our capital city, the Ambassador Bridge, and elsewhere? These demonstrations certainly weren’t the same, in terms of numbers, violence, and the threat to the federal government. But how many degrees of intensity, truly, separated one from the other?

Lots of Canadians to this day support the truckers’ convoy. I myself sympathize with some of their concerns, disagree with some of the reactions by politicians, and defend their right to protest. But the multiple incidents of disorder and violence coupled with the threat of truly impeding the work of the capital give me pause. How much more tinder would have been needed to turn that situation into a riot—or worse?

Closer to home—literally, to our mortgages, our bank accounts, and our credit cards—we Canadians have become among the most debt-ridden people on earth. “Half of Canadians are $200 or less away from insolvency,” reports MNP.

As the economists charmingly put it, we have exposed ourselves to great vulnerability. Small changes in interest rates can cost many of us our cars and homes. This despite the warnings of every financial advisor in the world to beware of debt—and in the teeth of wisdom as ancient as the Proverbs themselves (22:26–27).

We need to become “antifragile,” as “Black Swan”-spotter Nassim Nicholas Taleb advises us: secure in the basics so we can endure and even enjoy unexpected developments, taking smart risks only with what we can afford to lose. Wisdom starts with the fear of Yhwh, yes, and then listens carefully to those who can help us live most resiliently and advantageously in the world, not trusting our welfare to exploitative institutions.

Put your faith where it belongs. Let’s do what we can, then, not to waste the present crisis. No, we can’t do much about Donald Trump and his maniacal policies. But what we can do is take this opportunity to take stock, put first things first, wake up from the advertising-aided slumber of easy consumerism, and make better choices in the service of the One who ultimately governs all things.

Let us receive with prudence the gift Trump is giving us: a shocking demonstration of how the world really is, how it can change, and how we ought to make our way in it. In short, the recent turmoil gifts us with a stark challenge to live as Christians always should.

Psalm 121—with a little contemporary elaboration (and apologies to the NIV):

I lift up my eyes to the banks, the insurance companies, the tech giants, the other major corporations, and the national governors, who together seem to be the largest and most solid features of my landscape—but, really, where does my help come from?

My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.

He will not let your foot slip—he who watches over you will not slumber;

indeed, he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.

The Lord watches over you—the Lord is your shade at your right hand;

the sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon by night—namely the greatest powers known to human intuition (bereft of God’s revelation, which tells us that all worldly powers are merely his creatures and under his dominion).

The good news remains:

The Lord will keep you from all harm—he will watch over your life;

the Lord will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore.

Let’s not make it harder for the Lord to help us. Trust, yes, and make good choices.