Our Presidential campaigns have begun in earnest, with the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries under our belts. In other words, silly season in America has begun.
On the Republican side, Donald Trump, as bombastic and crude as he’s ever been, is gobbling up delegates like a famished Pac-Man. On the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders, promising a socialist utopia, high paying jobs, free health care, free college education, and a chicken in every American pot, won the night in New Hampshire. Pete Buttigieg, who promises everything to everyone except the right to life for the unborn, is nipping at Sanders’s heels. In a surprise, Amy Klobuchar sprinted past Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden into third place. Interestingly, she is the only Democrat who has told pro-life Democrats they can still be part of the familty and function as cigar store indians when the rubber really meets the road.. Elizabeth Warren finished a distant fourth. For quite a while now she’s been imitating another famouse citizen of Massachusetts, Lizzie Borden, who chopped her mother and father up back in 1892. While the good Senator from Massachusetts hasn’t given her mother “40 whacks” or her father “41,” she has all but cut up her chances of being nominated. Voters tend to shy away from candidates who flit from place to place in a private jet railing about fat cats or sport a deer in the headlights look on the stump. Joe Biden, the presumptive front-runner when all of this started, left for South Carolina as the polls in New Hampshire were closing. Knowing he was in for a brutal beating in the Granite State, he decided that pandering to the African-American vote in South Carolina was a far better option. Andrew Yang decided he’d had enough and took his thousand dollar bills back to Silicon Valley while Tulsi Gabbard and Tom Steyer are still hanging by a thread. I suppose I should mention that Deval Parrick and Michael Bennett have also dropped out. The tell-tale clue that this was their best otpion was the three tenths and four tenths of a percent of the vote they garnered in New Hampshire. That leaves the Democrats with only one other candidate worthy of mentioning – Michael Bloomberg. While he wasn’t on the primary ballot in New Hampshire, he did manage to pull off a coup of sorts by getting two Democrats and one Republican in Dixville Notch to write him in. It’s a humble start for sure, but with billions to spend, he is just getting started. In fact, I think he deserves a good deal of attention and I’m going to give it to him.
Here in the Kansas City area, Bloomberg is spending money on campaign advertising like a drunken sailor. I remember when he first started talking about running, everyone seemed to know him as Michael Bloomberg, It’s a good name for a Presidential candidate. It has a dignity to it and I think it may even have a hint of wealth as well. But, with the Kansas City area advertising something has changed. He wants us to call him “Mike.” In one splashy ad he makes it plain with his closing worlds – “I’m Mike Bloomberg and I will get it done.” Why, shucks. He’s just one of us old hayseeds. If you put a straw hat on his head and a blade of grass in his teeth he’d be a dead ringer for Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn.
Mike, as he is now known, seems quite confident. He’s got a lot of money and he doesn’t mind spending it by the boatload. But, even the most confident campaigner can occasionally engage his mouth before the “better angels” of his nature kick in. And, wouldn’t you know, it actually happened…..twice. The news media found something he’d said in an interview back in April of 2014.. It was a classic Freudian slip. This is what he said in that interview as he touted his gun control and healthy eating campaigns in New York City: “I am telling you if there is a God, when I get to heaven I’m not stopping to be interviewed. I am heading straight in. I have earned my place in heaven. It’s not even close.” A few years after that interview, he decided it was time for another Freudian slip in an interview with CBS News: “I like what I see when I look in the mirror….We’ve probably saved millions of lives, and certainly we’ll save tens of millions of lives going forward,” referring to the causes he has supported and funded for the future. “There aren’t many people that have done that. So, you know, when I get to heaven, I’m not sure I’m going to stand for an interview. I’m going right in.”
There you have it, from Mike’s lips to God’s ears. In our midwestern vernacular it will probably sound something like this whenever he gets to the gates of the Celestial City and sees Jesus for the first time. “Hey big man in the sky, I’m comin’ through so get outta’ the way. Ain’t got no time to answer no questions. I earned the mansion. Now, where is it?
Mike’s megalomania was in a class by itself, but the candidates who had actually campaigned in New Hampshire were suffering from their fair share as well. Did they catch it from Mike? It made me wonder whether megalomania might be contagious. I think it is.
This all reminded me of a trip Nancy and I took to Russia back in 2013. We spent a few days in Moscow. One night we did a tour of the city, which was beautiful. Our guided mentioned seven tall skysrapers as we passed them. Josef Stalin had them designed as Soviet showpieces and had them named, appropriately, the Seven Sisters. One of them was to be a building designed to honor Vladimir Lenin, the true architect of the Russian Revolution that began in 1917 and ended in 1923. When Lenin died in 1924, plans were undertaken to construct a 1,624 foot tall skysrcaper with a statue of Lenin festooned on the top of the building, with his finger pointing skyward. It was to be called the Palace of the Soviets. The project began with the demolition of the Christ the Saviour Cathedral, a huge Russian Orthodox Church. The symbolism of the proposed new scraper was almost impossible to miss. God was dead and he was being replaced by Vladimir Lenin. Interestingly, the skyscarper never got built. The Second World War put the kibosh on it.The hole remained in the ground until 1958 until Nikita Krushchev transformed it into “the world’s largest open air swimming pool.” We visited the site while we were in Moscow. It had been re-transformed back into Christ the Saviour Russian Orthodox Cathedral. It’s an absolutely stunning structure.
Lenin is, of course, dead. He died in 1924 from a hemorrhagic stroke. His statue never made it to the top of the Palace of the Soviets. He never did become God. You can, however, see his corpse on display in Red Square. He’s decked out in a nice dark suit, a pink dress shirt and a matching tie. His beard is neatly trimmed. You can pass by his body if you’re ever in Moscow. I understand it’s free, except for the five cents it will cost you to store your valuables. Neither Nancy nor I did, figuring that gawking at a soul on ice was a bit too much. But, lots of American tourists do pass by his body and shell out the nickel. I asked one of the locals if the Russians ever pay homage to him and pass by. He laughed and in impeccable Engllsh said, “Nah, he’s dead and so is communism.”
History can be quite interesting. The megalomania that’s plaguing our political candidates has wreaked havoc on quite a few tyrants over the ages. Pharoah had the Red Sea and Moses. Alexander the Great thought there weren’t enough worlds to conquer. He died when he was only thirty-two from typhoid fever before he could find the ones he’d missed. Caesar had too much Gaul and Napoleon had his Waterloo. They all may have thought they were God incarnate, but the grim reaper came for them and that was that.
Thankfully, I’m glad that in the end we don’t have to put our trust in megalomaniacs to save us. There was a man who lived over two thousand years ago who is the only person who can truly lay claim to that lofty position. He was an itinerant Nazarene preacher. His name was, and is, Jesus. He walked the Judean hills and the streets of Jersualem. He brought sight to the blind. The crippled and lame could walk again when he touched them. He cleansed lepers. He brought hope to the hopeless. His words turned the world upside down then and they still do today. I thought about our current crop of megalomaniacs and the empty promises and proud boasts they make as I considered some of the things Jesus had to say during his short earthly life. For instance, there’s the account recorded in the twenty first chapter of Luke of Jesus’ observations of the temple treasury in Jersualem. He saw the rich offering their money out of their wealth. Was he impressed with them? It doesn’t seem so, because his eye caught something else, a poor widow putting “two very small copper coins” in the treasury. Then he made a stunning observation – “Truly I tell you,” he said, “This poor widow has put in more than all the others. All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.” On another occasion he told a parable to a group of self righteous people who “were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else.” (Luke 18:9) The parable went something like this. Two men, one a Pharasee and the other a tax collector were praying in the temple. The Pharasee prayed, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.” (Luke 18:11-12). The tax collector, on the other hand, “Stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and prayed, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” (Luke 18:13) Jesus then concluded the parable with these amazing words – “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
Some of our current crop of candidates may think they have the power to save us, but the reality is far different. They think they may be able to hide their megalomania with their talk of paradise on earth and justice, but they can’t. Michael Bloomberg may think that his wealth and so called good works have earned him the right to just barge right though the pearly gates, but they haven’t.
Someday, in the end, “Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain.” When that day comes, I find myself wondering what the megalomaniacs might say to Jesus. Would they try to justify themselves in the same manner they did here on earth? I wonder if Jesus might answer them with these words as he stands between a poor widow and a repentant tax collector – “I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.”
While I pray there is still hope, the course the megalomaniacs are on is perilous. Heaven is not the place for megalomaniacs. It’s the place for the humble and contrite. I truly do pray they will see the light and change course.
You make proud that I can call you a friend.