Imagine if you will sitting with the president on his hospital bed, as he suffers from Covid. Never mind that it’s impossible to get within a block of him in real life. He has reached a terminal state, breathing from a ventilator and unable even to speak.
Obviously, this is an impossible scenario, but imagine that you are given the controls for his life or death. It’s up to you, the hospital staff says, to pull the plug or save his life. What do you feel, how do you decide? What is the best, or most, good you can do?
This is the exercise I engaged as I walked through the mountains last night, prompted by a discussion with a savvy friend. Admittedly, I would feel compassion for the president, despite all the suffering he has caused others, which is incalculable and unimaginable. It would pain me to cause suffering to anyone, even him.
But Trump is not just anyone. He is not your neighborhood bully, not even the rapist caught with his hand in the cookie jar. He is a megalomaniac at the helm of the world, a man who has elevated himself above the law and made himself essentially untouchable, as we witnessed through the Mueller Reports and Trump’s ensuing impeachment. We also see it in his thousands of lies and passionless cruelty he dishes out with no accountability. Even from his hospital bed he shows no signs of change, not even willing to reverse his stance on masks. No evidence is good enough for him to change his mind or to take heart.
In every other case, we quarantine such people, in jail or in a mental institute, or worse. Most of us accept such punishments; they are merited.
Nonetheless, I would still feel compassion and pity for the man. Why? Because I am a healthy human being and I can’t help but feel badly, to empathize, with anything that suffers. But this is where my mind needs to come to the rescue, for whether I ultimately pull the plug or not. What I have to realize in that moment is that I am sitting with the hundreds of thousands, the millions, and quite possibly billions, who have either suffered horribly or died as a result of the president’s actions.
So, to be fair, I can’t simply sit with the president as I decide his fate. I must, as much as I can, also imagine sitting with the world—all nations, all ecosystems, all animals, all women (How is Melania faring, by the way?) and people of color, all Americans who have suffered and died from Covid, all the children locked in cages and torn from their parents, all those who have been forced onto the streets due to no financial relief once the government subsidies expired from tens of millions of Americans.
I must sit with the mountains of suffering as I contemplate Donald’s fate, because it can’t be both ways. We can’t have justice for the many and keep him alive. If he were to sign a legally-binding declaration for reform, then maybe. Oh wait, never mind, we know how that goes.
So yeah, we can’t have both when one man shows zero signs of change, even from the hospital, with the evidence in his own lungs, and thereby promises to continue his rampage. If it weren’t so, we’d have other choices. But we don’t, for intents.
I remember on my farm in Hawaii when the pigs would come into the orchard and rip everything apart. It pained me, always, to stick them with arrows from my bow, and later— because I was losing too many arrows and causing them suffering—from my gun. I felt badly even though the pig population is out of control and decimating native species and would destroy weeks worth of hard labor. I imagine it would have felt bad even if the pigs massacred a village—because we are wired, at least those of who aren’t the unlucky anomalies, to empathize and feel another’s pain. It’s part of our evolutionary neurobiology.
So how do we treat a pig who is tearing up America, the world? And no, the “Trump is just a symptom” is not a valid argument because Trump is both a result of the cause, and chief perpetuator of its problem.
So when I sit with our president on his hospital bed, I can’t just come from my heart in the moment. I have to come from my bigger heart informed by a mind that tallies and assesses the malice one suffering man has caused and the likelihood that it will continue.
It’s easy to “leave it in God’s hands” or “pray for the greatest good” without taking a stand, which is why taking a stand, or a seat, at his hospital bed is such a good exercise of the imagination (hopefully you will embody this scenario and see how it feels in you, not just how you think)—because when push comes to shove, which is where the rub is—who are you and how uncomfortable are you willing to be to exact justice in the face of your heart and mind that have considered all the facts, including your compassion for everyone and everything?
If you were on the streets, present at a more empty dinner table due to deaths in the family, a parent who lost her child to the squalor and torture of a concentration-like camp at the border, or someone on the verge of losing your own life or home, do you have the privilege, ease, or convenient distance to leave it up to God?
We can’t have it both ways. So, what do you choose, if you are to take a stand for mercy, justice, and perhaps, the biggest bang for your compassionate buck? Do you pull the plug on behalf of everything or do you do nothing and let the president live because you feel for him, even though you might dislike or despise him?
Or do you make no conscious choice because you can’t stand to suffer even enough to take a stand for justice, either way, and so you walk away defaulting to “out of sight, out of mind” so you don’t have to get too close to your own pain and the pain of others?
