JEKYLL, HYDE, TRUMP, YOU AND ME

It doesn’t happen often often, but when it does it’s very unsettling. I wake up somewhere in the lower 48, and for a moment, I have no earthly idea where I am. I bolt upright in the bunk and tear open the privacy curtain in the sleeper of my rig and survey my surroundings in order to figure out my location. It’s not pleasant and can be disorienting to say the least.

In the macro this is where we find ourselves. For the last four years (and for many of us, it has been quite a bit longer than that) we are daily asking, “Where are we?”, “How did we get here?”, and “What now?”

The specific dismay over the election of the least fit candidate in the history of the US politics and the mesmeric worship he enjoys from a third of the country is only a part of it. For me it’s a matter of "‘existential geography’ - we are not who and where we thought we were.

We thought we were living in a place where patriotism along with love of country and the constitution upon which it is built are bedrock values for a considerable majority of Americans. We thought we were living under Superman’s banner: Truth, Justice and the American Way. In spite of significant failures, we believed ourselves nevertheless to be a shining city on the hill whose greatness was its diversity of citizens and its ability to maintain civilized cohesion in the midst of tremendous pluralism. We thought we had triumphed over the social ills that have been fatal to other nations. We thought we were exceptional. We thought we were done with the Nazis, the fascists, Jim Crow, the Flat Earth Society and the host of nutbags whose stock in trade was global conspiracy fantasy and pseudoscientific race theory.

Maybe not. My naivete is no one’s fault but mine, and I must admit that that naivete was on steroids after Obama’s election.

After dozens of books, hundreds of articles and thousands of social media posts, I returned recently to a classic tale is search of solace and insight.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was written by Scotsman Robert Louis Stevenson and published in 1886 in Victorian England’s heyday. We know the story. I reread it, listened to the audiobook, and even have surveyed a few of many film adaptations. Beth and I enjoyed the 1941 film with Spencer Tracy, Ingrid Bergman and a virginal 20 year old Lana Turner last night. I watched the 2008 adaptation with Dougray Scott, Krista Bridges and Tom Skerritt. In a minute I’ll return to the den and finish the 1957 production starring Jack Palance (which for my money is probably the best of them all). The story of the struggle between the dual nature of us human beings and the societies we inhabit is provocative and wonderful fodder for horror stories, love stories, mystery stories and thrillers.

But the best take on TSCODJAMH is that of Steven Padnick. Padnick persuasively and succinctly argues that Jekyll and Hyde were not two distinct entities living inside one man:

“I think the original is a much more complicated take on the nature of evil, society, shame, and repression than any that have followed it, and I’d love to see a version that really explored the appeal of Hyde to Jekyll. What would you do if you could be someone else for a night, do whatever you wanted to do, commit whatever sins you wanted to commit, without fear of consequences of any kind? Are we good because we want to be good, or are we good because we just don’t want to be punished?

The idea of evil as “that guy, over there, who takes over my body sometimes against my will” is too simple, and dissociative, and irresponsible. It’s the mistake Jekyll himself makes. Hyde is not someone else who commits Jekyll’s sins for him. Hyde does not exist. Jekyll commits all of his sins on his own.”

Trump is the draft we consume that permits us to indulge our base nature - to be tribal and hateful when we know better; to be prejudiced when we get tired of doing the hard work of communication and bridge building; to chant ‘USA! USA!’ and ‘Make America Great Again!’ and, of course, ‘Lock her up!’ rather than face our failures and shortcomings as communities and as a nation

Many protest and object: ‘This is not who we are!’ Well … it is who we are. We’ve a long way to go, further than we thought four years ago. Perhaps Jekyll wouldn’t have disintegrated had he simply acknowledged and accepted ownership of his Hyde part. The theologically inclined call this repentance.