This Is Why You Always Listen to Samuel

Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah, and said to him, “You are old and your sons do not follow in your ways; appoint for us, then, a king to govern us, like other nations.” But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, “Give us a king to govern us.” Samuel prayed to the Lord, and the Lord said to Samuel, “Listen to the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. Just as they have done to me, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so also they are doing to you. Now then, listen to their voice; only—you shall solemnly warn them, and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them.” So Samuel reported all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking him for a king. He said, “These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots; and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his courtiers. He will take one-tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and his courtiers. He will take your male and female slaves, and the best of your cattle and donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the Lord will not answer you in that day.” But the people refused to listen to the voice of Samuel; they said, “No! but we are determined to have a king over us, so that we also may be like other nations, and that our king may govern us and go out before us and fight our battles.” When Samuel had heard all the words of the people, he repeated them in the ears of the Lord. The Lord said to Samuel, “Listen to their voice and set a king over them.” Samuel then said to the people of Israel, “Each of you return home.”  (1 Samuel 8: 4-22).

President Trump's court prophets in the evangelical world assert that he is like the Kings of Israel.  David is often cited as a comparable, especially in light of his less-than stellar track record with regard to women.  Having read through the entirety of the Books of Samuel and Kings recently, I have come to the perhaps surprising conclusion that they are right.  President Trump is very much like the Kings of Israel, and the people that follow him are very much like the people of Israel who cheered for them.

The people (or, at least a minority of them clustered in certain key states) wanted a king to rule over them, to go before them and fight their battles.  That's the key, really--battles.  We should never underestimate the emotional power of someone who promises you that they will kick your enemy's ass.  But even that, really, is too specific, and giving too much credit for foresight to the people making the request.  "Kicking your enemy's ass" implies that there are some clearly delineated enemies with whom you have some long-standing beef.  It doesn't have to be that specific or that coherent.  At the end of the day, any available ass to be kicked works just fine.  That's the most important lesson of Girard--don't get sucked into trying to figure out why some particular scapegoat is being chosen, or why today Group X is suddenly everyone's enemy, because at the end of the day all of this is arbitrary anyway.

In any event, Trump promises to kick the ass of Latinos trying to immigrate to America and those already here, and African-Americans, and women, and LGBT people.  You know, the standard American playbook of convenient scapegoats.  That's the other thing about all of this--none of this is new.  It may be worse, and more blatant, but none of this is new.  Perhaps the most obscene charlatans in all of this are those who have spent a lifetime doing the very same things Trump and his crew are doing, if with more subtlety and panache, who are now clutching their pearls and decrying the break down of civility.  Yes, I am looking at you, "Never Trump" Republicans.  Never forget, Trump is an apocalyptic figure, in that he exposes things that have always been here.  He creates nothing new.  He's incapable of it; he is entropy, the Void.

But, hey, that's what people want.  And the lesson of the Book of Samuel and the rest of the story of the Kingdom of Israel is that the people will get what they want.  They wanted a king, and they got a king.  And the king will do precisely what Samuel tells you the king will do.  It's not clear whether they just didn't listen to Samuel, or didn't believe him, but in the end it doesn't matter.  They were given plenty of warning, just like people in this country have received plenty of warning.

If there is a single theme running through the Bible, both Old and New Testaments, that theme would be shitty political leadership and its consequences.  The overwhelming majority of political leaders identified in the Biblical text are horrible, horrible rulers.  Even the ostensibly "God ordained" leaders like David and Solomon, are horror shows--especially David.  There are basically no positive models of political leaders in the Biblical story.  All of them suck to one degree or another.  Throughout the Biblical story, people cry out to God for deliverance from this or that tyrant.  And there are times that happens.  But God's default posture seems to be the one shown in 1 Samuel 8--"don't look at Me, you are the ones who wanted and picked these horrible leaders."

No nation in the history of the world lasts forever, especially those in power.  Some slowly fade away, with relatively little disruption and fan-fare--honestly, the sixty or so year slow dissolution of the British Empire was remarkably free of chaos and bloodshed (at least internal to Britain--the colonies they left behind are a different matter).  But, most of the time, the historical record is that the end of powerful empires comes in the form of whatever the current incarnation of Babylon happens to be.  If you were to put money on it, the track-record of history suggests that Babylon is on the horizon for America, and Exile is coming.

If so, that will be horrible, because it always is.  But it will be hard for anyone to complain.  After all, we could just listen to Samuel.

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