“Children, Drunks and the United States of America Have a Guardian Angel”
That’s what German chancellor Otto von Bismarck once said. He had a lifelong sweet spot for the US and thought that the country was blessed with outrageous luck in all its endeavors. Bismarck allegedly made this remark in 1898 after the Battle of Santiago de Cuba where the American fleet came under heavy fire from the Spanish and still managed to pull off a victory with a miraculously low casualty count (one sailor killed, another one injured).
I wonder where America’s guardian angel is these days. Called up to the top floor for reporting? Redeployed? If yes, you can’t blame the heavenly boss for stripping America of its most favored nation status. What would you do in His place if someone strutted around on Earth as messiah impersonator and stole the limelight from your only son? I am of course talking about Donald Trump who claims that his trial for financial fraud makes him a martyr of Christ-like proportions.
I am actually pretty sure that God is sick and tired of the extreme right(eous) and uber pious. I don’t even think he is keen on surrounding himself with religious people right now. Why do you think he lets Jimmy Carter break the record for time spent in Earthly hospice care? My guess is that He has plenty of saints to talk to up there and no urgent need to add another one. Honestly, how much daily praise does one need? Even the Holy One must get tired of all that public flattery today.
Back in the more secular sixties, John F. Kennedy never paraded his Catholic faith so visibly. And yet, people were very much afraid that he would get his orders straight from the Vatican as if he were a parish priest. Ironically, the only priestly thing about Kennedy was his appetite for secret sexual adventures. And they remained secret because journalists were busy covering the Cuban Missile Crisis instead, which back then, for reasons hard to understand in the #MeToo era, was seen as the bigger existential threat.
Today’s political discourse is far from secular and God’s inbox full with requests from legislators at both the federal and state level. Some requests are stranger than others. I can’t imagine that the Almighty enjoys being spoken to in tongues — particularly not by ecstatic lawmakers who are losing it on Arizona’s Senate floor and need professional help from their exorcist.
I bet He prefers calls from plain-speaking folk like George Bailey who each Christmas in Bedford Falls and on TV kicks off the conversation with his creator by letting Him know that he is “not a praying man.”
This must be music in His ears since the number of prayers He has to deal with has skyrocketed in recent years. I doubt He is comfortable with the fact that people no longer just send thoughts but routinely attach more or less empty prayers. It must be particularly annoying when they come from today’s emotionalized TV anchors who sound and behave like graduates from the empathy academy rather than journalism school. God must get an earful each night from Walter Cronkite lamenting that viewers are no longer exposed to serious journalism and taken on sentimental journeys instead — trigger warnings included.
I am not even sure if He appreciates flashy proclamations of religiosity like “In God We Trust.” Divided as we are, He’d rather see us actively work on making “E Pluribus Unum” a reality. Besides, the only other country on the planet that uses “In God We Trust” as a state motto is Nicaragua — and yes, if this wasn’t such a serious essay, now would be the time for jokes that include the terms “republic” and “banana.”
George Bailey got his guardian angel right on time to prevent him from committing suicide. Hopefully the United States will get theirs back before the November election.
Henning Schroeder is a professor at the University of Minnesota and currently teaches in the Department of German, Nordic, Slavic & Dutch. His email address is schro601@umn.edu and his Twitter (X) handle is @HenningSchroed1.
An earlier version of this article appeared in MinnPost.
