The Big Wait

The waiting is always the hardest part.

It is the season of waiting on the Christian calendar. Advent. Even for non-believers who celebrate a more culture-current Christmas, this is a time of waiting for the big day. A day into which people pour a lot of effort, hoping to make that one day a glorious respite, an oasis of joy interrupting the day-after-day routine.

And then, this year, we are all waiting for the vaccine, waiting for lockdowns to end, waiting for a new president, waiting for a chance to visit family, waiting for faces to blossom into view again on the streets, at the grocery store, on buses. 

I don't recall another time when the entire nation seemed to be coping with a bad case of delayed gratification, from the commander-in-chief on down. 

Some of us aren't handling it well. Some of us aren't really used to delayed gratification, the president being a case in point. He has been getting what he wants for most of his adult life, and even when things didn't work out for him in the past, he was always able to move the goal posts and come away with a score after all (or at least appear to).

That's not happening this time, and according to numerous reports it's making him crazy (for examples, this and this). They say that he's distancing himself from his more rational and cautious advisors, surrounding himself instead with the crazy ones. What this means is that every prominent Republican, whether senators, congresspersons, or staffers, will have to make the choice: which group do you want to belong to? The Rationals or the Crazies?

According to virtually everybody, Trump's orchestrated plan to contest the Congressional ratification of the Electoral College results, which is set to take place on January 6, is doomed to fail. But that, of course, is missing the point. Success and failure for Donald Trump have always been largely a matter of appearances. "Appearances" is what January 6 is all about.

One of the reasons I think that Trump is going to run for president again, either he or a hand-picked successor, is that he seems to be setting things up in such a way that in the end he will have subjected every Republican to a kind of loyalty test. He will know by the vote on January 6 who is really for him, a loyal minion, and who is not. In other words, he's once again separating the Rationals and the Crazies.

And speaking of the church calendar, January 6 is also Epiphany, which is the 12th day of Christmas and the day associated with the visit of the Magi, bringing their gifts to the Christ child. All eyes will be on Congress that day, but we would be wise to turn and look to Bethlehem as well. In that place, at as specific moment in time, the day-after-day routine was rent asunder by the coming of a child.