I’ve been spending time with the short stories of Flannery O’Connor this week. And finding it devastating, as usual. A series of emotions flooded me after reading, “The Displaced Person.”

First there’s embarrassment over being born in the South. Then there’s embarrassment over being born so ignorantly, shockingly-entitled-white. Then there’s horror that the basic premise of this story, written in the 1950s, is still shockingly relevant, can in fact still be found occurring everywhere in the USA today. In 2020.

But after I’ve paced the house a few times a larger picture begins to come into focus. The displaced person in this story met with ridiculous suspicions, fantastic prejudice, and eventually murder at the hands of his Southern hosts. But what was his family fleeing? Concentration camps in Poland. Even worse persecution.

This isn’t about my personal history or Flannery O’Connor’s personal history. This is about the human race. Hating itself, fearing itself, persecuting itself… all over the world. All throughout history.

This is about the human shadow. About how human beings have become so stuck in the unconscious loop of finding others to hate, others to blame, others to persecute, that they never have time or energy left to examine their own flaws. Much less correct them.

This is a warning. A warning that gets more shrill as the years go by, not less.

What do you suppose O’Connor would have to say about Trump, and the apparatus keeping him in power?