The Tragedy of Trump and the Coronavirus – The New York Times

Many of the people making those jokes dont believe that history really has an Author. But I do. And the aspects of our circumstances that seem ridiculously scripted to the atheist are, for religious believers, a reason to meditate on what is being revealed, how were being tested and what lessons and examples we can draw from watching tragedies unfold.

Our president does not, to put it mildly, resemble the tragic heroes familiar from Aeschylus or Shakespeare. But he has a little more in common with some of the flawed, arrogant, appetitive figures from the Hebrew Bible figures who are given opportunities to do something important in spite of their flaws, who are placed at crucial turning points in history notwithstanding their weaknesses and sins and who have the capacity to achieve things that amaze the wise and powerful.

In Trumps arc in 2020, its possible to see a more tragic version of these kind of biblical narratives, in which Providence grants a flawed old sinner a unique chance at heroism, even greatness and he chooses badly, and lets it pass him by.

The presidents coronavirus diagnosis bends that tragic arc a little further. The idea that an illness and speedy recovery might help him win re-election on a wave of sympathy seems well, lets just call it unlikely. Rather, his illness just seems to emphasize that were inside the falling action of the play, the working out of choices and themes that were established months ago.

You cant pray to a writers room, but you can pray to God. And so we should pray for the presidents swift recovery, that all those infected around him recover soon as well, and that the falling action of 2020s drama would spare as many lives as possible.

But to pray is also inherently to behave as though life isnt just one accident after another, as though narrative lines in history actually exist, as though our choices are woven into patterns and not just left to unspool randomly. And the presidents affliction, in this sense, is woven intimately into the larger story of 2020 and his administrations rendezvous with pestilence a story whose might-have-beens could have redeemed his vices, but whose realities have sealed his presidencys transformation from a dark farce into a tragedy.

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The Tragedy of Trump and the Coronavirus - The New York Times