I’m ashamed to say it, and even more ashamed to have thought about it, but if I wanted to be completely honest with you, my text today should have the unflattering but accurate title: “Why didn’t god save the fireman?”. But how many of us would read a post about the wrongful death of a firefighter? How many of us, hand on heart, even bothered to learn the fireman’s name? I’m not pretending to be superior: I, too, searched and learned it just for the need of today’s post.
Corey Comperatore was one of those countless fellow human beings who follow the admonition of Epicurus, even if they have never heard and/or read anything about him in their lives: “Lathe viosas” – “Live secretly”. If they are truly lucky – and if such a thing, of course, can be considered … luck – they only manifest themselves when they leave the planet.
But let’s take things in order. A few days ago in Milwaukee, Donald Trump officially received the Republican nomination for the November 5 presidential election. During his preliminary speech he stated among other things: “I shouldn’t be here today. I had god on my side.” He asked those in attendance to observe a moment of silence in memory of firefighter Corey Comperatore, one of two people killed last week in the attempted murder of him in Pennsylvania; for the other dead, the 20-year-old assailant, it is understood that he did not ask for a minute of silence. He then bent down and embraced the dead firefighter’s helmet as a sign of respect, which, along with the rest of his uniform, had been carried and deposited on the stage earlier.
Now back to the title question: why did god save Donald Trump? Why was he “on his side,” as he assured us? If we want to insist even more disturbingly: why did god choose to save Donald Trump and condemn Corey Comperatore? Did he have no alternative? Of course, he had. He could nail the bullet to the platform without hurting anyone. He could, at least, hit Comperatore in a non-vital part of the body, so as to allow him to reap the fruits of his heroism alive afterwards, for the fireman at that moment did not think of himself at all, all he thought of was to bend down and protect his family members with his body. Is it not worth sparing the life of someone who exhibits such self-sacrifice?
The disgusting idea that god saved Donald Trump but ignored the fireman because, like a naive groupie, he looks out for the “famed” and doesn’t give a damn about the “anonymous” is inconsistent with the idea of an all-powerful and all-good god (which, on its own, if you think about it, it’s a logical oxymoron). Donald Trump did not declare anything different from Adolf Hitler, who in July 1944, immediately after the failed assassination attempt against him, spoke of Divine Providence intervening in favor of his salvation (by the way, Jay D. Vance, his running mate, also compared Trump to Hitler at the time when he apparently had little or no regard for him).
If we still want to far-fetch it and say that god saved Trump because he “deserved it”, let’s remember the words that the Nazarene is said to have uttered in the Book of Matthew: “You filter out a gnat, yet swallow a camel!”. Well, if Christ meant someone in particular (Velopoulos* will explain it better to you), he meant Donald Trump.
Petros Tatsopoulos is a writer and former Member of the Greek Parliament.
Adaptation to English of the original article published in “The TOC”, July 23, 2024.
* Greek populist politician who sold photocopies of Jesus’s supposed handwritten letters.
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