Jubilee Hope

One of my seminary professors used to refer to hope as the characteristically Christian virtue. This special salience of hope has been highlighted by Pope Francis in his Ascension Thursday Bull of Indiction of the forthcoming Jubilee Year, entitled Spes Non Confundit, which is a quote from Saint Paul, "Hope does not disappoint" (Romans 5:5). The "Ordinary Jubilee" of 2025 will begin with the Opening of the Holy Door at Saint Peter's on Christmas Eve and its final closing on January 6, 2026. A particular feature of this Jubilee Year will be a special celebration in every diocese on the Sunday after Christmas (December 29). A pilgrimage to the local cathedral, the Pope proposes, "can serve to symbolize the journey of hope that, illumined by the word of God, units all the faithful" [Spes Non Confundit, 7].

Hope is clearly the leitmotif of the papal bull and presumably of the observances being planned for the Holy Year. Pope Francis has explicitly identified hope as "the central message of the coming Jubilee," and calls Holy Year pilgrims traveling to Rome "pilgrims of hope" [1]. Spes Non Confundit is a contemporary call-to-action regarding the virtue of hope and also "a virtue closely linked to hope," patience. "In our fast-paced world," warns Pope Francis, "we are used to wanting everything now. We no longer have time simply to be with others; even families find it hard to get together and enjoy one another’s company. Patience has been put to flight by frenetic haste, and this has proved detrimental, since it leads to impatience, anxiety and even gratuitous violence, resulting in more unhappiness and self-centredness" [4].

The part of the Bull which I found most immediately inspiring was the section on Signs of Hope. Here, Pope Francis emphasizes the "need to recognize the immense goodness present in our world, lest we be tempted to think ourselves overwhelmed by evil and violence. The signs of the times, which include the yearning of human hearts in need of God’s saving presence, ought to become signs of hope" [7] One such sign is a desire for peace. Another is "enthusiasm for life and a readiness to share it." Here, he recognizes and warns against "the loss of the desire to transmit life," reflected in a number of countries' "alarming decline of the birthrate." (This is especially a problem, of course, in contemporary Europe, but is also increasingly in evidence here in the U.S.) In contrast, Pope Francis cites "the desire of young people to give birth to new sons and daughters as a sign of the fruitfulness of their love ensures a future for every society. This is a matter of hope: it is born of hope and it generates hope" [8-9].

The Holy Year also calls us "to be tangible signs of hope for those of our brothers and sisters who experience hardships of any kind" [10]. Among these, the Pope particularly mentions prisoners, the sick, migrants, and the elderly. Esteem for the elderly, for "their life experiences, their accumulated wisdom and the contribution that they can still make, is incumbent on the Christian community and civil society, which are called to cooperate in strengthening the covenant between generations" [14].

Providentially, the coming Holy Year coincides with a very special anniversary of significance to all Christians, the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, which first met on May 20, 325. Pope. Francis rightly recognizes Nicaea as "a milestone in the Church's history," the upcoming anniversary of which "invites Christians to join in a hymn of praise and thanksgiving to the Blessed Trinity and in particular to Jesus Christ, the Son of God, 'consubstantial with the Father,'  who revealed to us that mystery of love" [17]. Nicaea also famously addressed the indue of the date of Easter. The Pope notes that 2025 will be one of those years when all Christians will celebrate Easter on the same day.

One important aspect of any Holy Year is. the Jubilee Indulgence. So Pope Francis here takes the opportunity to reflect upon death, "a painful separation from those dearest to us, [which] cannot be mitigated by empty rhetoric" [20], and God's judgement, which brings about "a definitive encounter with the Lord." Relating this to the Jubilee Indulgence Pope Francis continues: "The evil we have done cannot remain hidden; it needs to be purified in order to enable this definitive encounter with God’s love. Here we begin to see the need of our prayers for all those who have ended their earthly pilgrimage, our solidarity in an intercession that is effective by virtue of the communion of the saints, and the shared bond that makes us one in Christ, the firstborn of all creation. The Jubilee indulgence, thanks to the power of prayer, is intended in a particular way for those who have gone before us, so that they may obtain full mercy" [22].

Indulgences remain one of those historically neuralgic issues which unnecessarily separate Christians and cause unfortunate arguments even to this day. What matters most, however, is precisely those aspects which the Pope has emphasized in the essential underlying teaching about the human need for purification from the lasting effects of sin and our solidarity in intercessory prayer. My sense is that we live surrounded by the unfortunate effects of human sinfulness - our own individual sins and those of others - and are all desperately in need of the feeling of forgiveness and experience of mercy which the Jubilee indulgence celebrates. It "is a way of discovering the unlimited nature of God's mercy," the Pope reminds us [23].

Finally, as has increasingly become customary among many modern papal pronouncements, the Bull of Indiction concludes with a meditation on Mary and hope. In her, "we see that hope is not naive optimism but a gift of grace amid the realities of life." Hence, "piety continues to invoke the Blessed Virgin as Stella Maris, a title that bespeaks the sure hope that, amid the tempests of this life, the Mother of God comes to our aid, sustains us and encourages us to persevere in hope and trust" [24].

Photo: Holy Door at Saint Peter's Basilica, which will be solemnly opened by the Pope on Christmas Eve to inaugurate the Ordinary Jubilee year 2025.

Ascension Thursday

 

I woke up this morning to the happy news that “Alternate Side of the Street Parking” is suspended in New York City today. It’s even better in Europe – in the Netherlands and Germany, for example, where this is still a legal public holiday! 

St. Bernard of Clairvaux [1090-1153] is supposed to have described the Ascension as “the consummation and fulfillment of all other festivals, and a happy ending to the whole journey of the Son of God.” But I think we can just as correctly characterize the Ascension as the continuation of that journey – now by means of his Church, through which all of us are now joined together on the same itinerary.

Belief in Jesus’ Ascension is, of course, one of the key components of our Creed, which we recite regularly - if maybe at times a bit absent-mindedly. After professing our faith in Jesus’ resurrection, we add: he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.

As the words of the Creed suggest, the Ascension actually involves several things. Most obviously, it expresses the fact that the Risen Christ no longer lives among us on earth in the way that he once did. The Risen Lord lives now the new life of the future, of which his resurrection is a foretaste for us. The New Testament tells us that the Risen Christ presented himself alive to his disciples, appearing to them and speaking about the kingdom of God. After a certain period, those appearances ended. It was time to move on to the next stage in salvation history – our time, the time of the Church, the time appointed for us to Go, and make disciples of all nations.  Historically, therefore, the Ascension refers to the end of that period of the Risen Christ’s appearances to his disciples.

That being the case, one obvious question is: well, where exactly is he now? Again, the Creed contains the answer: he is seated at the right hand of the Father. Of course, as Son of God, the Divine Word, has always been with the Father. Theologically speaking, what the Ascension celebrates is that his human body (and thus our shared human nature) is now with God. 

In Jerusalem, in the Church of the Ascension on the Mount of Olives, pilgrims get to see a footprint-like depression in the rock, which purports to be the exact spot from which the Risen Lord ascended to heaven – a bit fanciful, perhaps, as if Jesus sprang upward with such force as to leave a physical impression in the rock. The footprint may well be fanciful, but it does highlight the point that it was Jesus’ human body (and thus our shared human nature) that ascended – and that is now with God.

Thus, the Ascension anticipates what the resurrection has made it possible for us all to hope for. In the words of the liturgy: where he has gone, we hope to follow.

Meanwhile, in this interim between Easter and the end, though absent, he is still with us, as the Gospel says, confirming his word through accompanying signs [Mark 16:20].

Hence, his instruction to his disciples: to wait for the Holy Spirit, the promise of the Father.

As individual disciples and as a Church community, we too are invited – in this interval time between Ascension and the end – to recognize and respond to the Holy Spirit’s action in each of our lives and in our life together as God’s People. 

Homily for Ascension Thursday, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, May 9, 2024.

Photo: The Ascension, watercolor ceiling painting, early 20th century, at Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN.

Lost In Ideology (The Book)

 

"Whenever we inhabit such siloed towers and make no effort to leave them - not even in the imagination and through dialogue - we do not understand the point of view of our neighbours who are aloft in a nearby tower of their own." So writes Political Scientist Jason Blakely near the end of his Lost In Ideology: Interpreting Modern Political Life (Agenda, 2024). Our "experience of being disconnected from an alien culture is now nearly universal in our society, as we struggle to understand not a foreign tribe but our own neighbours, fellow citizens, colleagues and family members." In Blakely's masterful analysis of contemporary ideologies, we see reflected much of our own present political experience, through the competing worldviews which map our perception of human nature and society and the purpose of politics.

Blakely's procedure in this book is to treat several major (and less major) ideological traditions, attempting in each case to achieve what sociologist Clifford Geertz called a "thick description," an account "nuanced enough to be recognized by its own adherent as faithful to it." 

An important premise of his study is that "ideological maps," as he calls them, "conjure forth and help build social reality." Thus, "ideological means and symbols" become "embedded in practices, institutions, laws, economies, regimes, and forms of self." One becomes "lost in ideology" whenever "everything in a social world reflect it back as natural." So, for example, the familiar Louis Hartz thesis linking Lockean liberalism and the American way of life is to be interpreted "as an artifact of liberal ideology itself." Thus, "where natural-rights liberals like Locke claimed to simply describe a state of nature, they in fact helped create a world in which such things as rights and liberal postulates appeared natural and commonsensical."  Likewise, for the utilitarian variation of liberal theory, such a political culture produces "people who have a utilitarian conception of their own pleasures and pains," a "self-confirming" psychological theory.

Blakely starts with classical liberalism - both in its Lockean and utilitarian formulations - as the ideology most widely associated with the American founding. He complements classical liberalism, however, with two other ideologies also associated with the U.S. from its founding. the first is the tradition of "civic republicanism" - a more anciently rooted tradition of political thought than classical liberalism, which fosters "a communal and participatory form of democracy," which "continued to inspire heterodox politics on both the left and the right." This alternative to classical liberalism was associated by Alexis de Tocqueville with Puritan New England. "Unlike natural-rights liberalism, civic republicans ascribe freedom not primarily to autonomous individuals but to the entire community and specifically cities.  Such freedom is a cooperative accomplishment and not a natural, individualistic given."

Both classical liberalism and civic republicanism have long been acknowledged and celebrated in the history of American political thought. But Blakely also calls attention to a third claimant, "White supremacist ideology," which he suggests "represents a possible rival mutation and abuse" of Enlightenment rationalism and scientism. Analogous to the construction of other ideologies, e.g., natural rights, White supremacy did not discover "the factual basis of race," but rather helped to "create it as a sociopolitical category." He highlights the historical importance of John C. Calhoun, not only for his theory of "concurrent majorities," but also as "an important source of the argument that the conflict between the North and the South was a dispute over state versus federal rights and not the abolition of slavery."

The second part of the book explores "the hyperpolarization of left and right, including progressive liberalism, right libertarianism, conservatism, fascism, socialism and communism." The first two are twentieth-century variations on classical liberalism. The left variant, progressivism, "pursues individual liberty but in a way that experiments with new practices and allows for communal cooperation and a greater role for government." This "progressive ideological map led to the construction of the New Deal welfare state as well as a political culture emphasizing social solidarity." at its extreme, it tends toward "a political ethos of ceaseless modernization" and risks assuming politics to be "developmentally linear," such that progressivism erroneously seems to progressives to be self-evident. Opposing progressive liberalism, "neoliberalism advances a species of right-wing libertarianism that asserts individual autonomy and anti-statism but targeted at the realms of economics and wealth distribution" In contrast to progressive libertarianism in the areas of traditional morality, "neoliberals assume that to survive in the competitive world of markets, individuals and families are best served by moralities or personal responsibility, frugality, sobriety and self-control." these two competing variants of liberalism are easily recognizable as mapping onto the ideologies most popularly associated with the our two political parties for much of the post-war period.

According to the normative (e.g., Louis Hartz liberal)  interpretation of American history, apart from the southern exception in its racial hierarchy, ther is no true conservative tradition of American thought. In fact, to a considerable extent American conservatism is a twentieth-century invention. To find a true conservative tradition, one must go back to Europe. Accordingly, the author considers the legacy of Edmund Burke, whose Reflections on the Revolution in France "remains a fountainhead for nearly all forms of this ideology."Such traditionalistic conservatism favors limited government not because of liberal principles, "but because no one person can or should be trusted with a power that exceeds then infinitely." Conservatism opposes "the degradation of tradition by the modern world. Disenchantment and alienation are experienced by conservatives as products of secularization and radical innovation."  Conservatism struggles with the internal dilemma that, while hoping  for a "return or revival of a sacralized past," it has "an underlying sense in which truly premodern, traditional political belonging is no longer available even on conservatism's own terms."

I think this section is particularly relevant for Roman Catholics, because so much of historic Catholic political thinking - at least until relatively recently - resonated with this conservative tradition. In the U.S., of course, conservatism was fused by mid-20th-century thinkers like William Buckley with the very untraditional, quite unconservative "libertarianism of Wall Street elites, entrepreneurs and economists." The Cold War was the catalyst for this peculiar alliance. Absent the Cold War, the alliance has proved much more fragile, and "one way to understand twenty-first century upheavals on the American right is precisely to see that religious conservatives no longer think of capitalist markets as straightforwardly an ally to their politics."

Fascism is a particularly difficult ideology to analyze "as it appears disguised and diluted by more familiar ideological traditions." But Blakely recognizes a feature which is, I think, central fascism and fascist-like contemporary phenomena: "Fascists tell stories about a world gone catastrophically wrong," and they "believe in the need to liquidate existing institutions and leadership." Something else that is very characteristic of fascism and fascist-adjacent movements is the discarding of Judeo-Christian "compassion and mercy as signs of weakness and morbidity" and the aestheticizing of "violence, masculinity, military-ready bodies, weaponry, marshal uniforms, camouflage, and so forth." We don't have to look too far today to find these features alive and well in our midst. Blakely's treatment of MAGA ideology in relation to the fascist paradigm highlights, for example, "the injection of fascist motifs into Christianity" and it "takeover of traditional Christian imagery."

From conservatism, the book moves to socialism, which "expanded the emancipatory projects of the Enlightenment beyond liberalism and individualistic rights." Marxism, the author argues, "is liberalism's ideological alter ego. It appears a rival claimant to rational universalism touting its own competing account of liberty, equality and enlightenment." But "a cultural view of ideology makes clear that there is nothing automatic or structurally fated about revolution," and Blakely highlights how democratic socialists need "to forge alliances across different sectors of society," and how this form of socialism has "retained liberalism's emphasis on political compromise as well as respect for individual rights of assembly, speech, voting, and so on."

The third section of the book considesr newer, "liquid" ideologies "that scramble the  whole notion of a clean split between left versus right, such as nationalism, multiculturalism, feminism and ecologism." It concludes with a discussion of how to argue critically about ideologies.

Lost In Ideology is a perceptive introduction to the principal currents of contemporary political thought that should be a useful resource for anyone struggling to comprehend competing versions of political discourse, which increasingly simply talk past one another uncomprehendingly. accessible to the ordinary reader and intellectually comprehensive at the same time, it should help everyone to make sense not only of the strengths and weaknesses of his or her own ideology but also its relationship place to other ideologies currently on offer on the wider spectrum of contemporary American political thought

Expanding the Church's Horizon

 

One of the distinctive features of the Easter season is the daily reading of the Acts of the Apostles, which takes us back to the earliest Christian communities and their unique experience of the ongoing presence of the Risen Christ in their midst. Reading Acts, we get to experience vicariously the inspiring internal life of those apostolic Christian communities, living their own kingdom as a religious alternative to the empire in which they remained enmeshed.

 

I felt some of that inspiration during last month’s Paulist Summit on Polarization, ambitiously subtitled Bridging the Divide, Seeking Reconciliation. Participants included Paulists and Paulist Associates, academics, Catholic media figures, and others involved in various initiatives directly or indirectly aspiring to reduce the toxic affective polarization which is poisoning secular society and infecting even our life together as Church. The conference created opportunities for us to learn about how we experience one another and how to navigate through and around our differences, the obstacles which the ways we experience our differences create that hinder opportunities for conversation, and the human and religious resources we can draw upon to attempt those challenging conversations. The weekend was a powerful experience of Christian community, not unlike (it seemed to me) the communal reinforcement and encouragement those early Christians must have experienced in their local Churches. 

 

Primarily, however, Acts recounts the Church’s growth and expansion from a small group huddled together in one room in Jerusalem to larger and increasingly more diverse communities throughout the Mediterranean world. It’s the wonderful story of how, transformed by the Risen Christ’s parting gift of the Holy Spirit into a missionary movement that spread from Jerusalem to Rome, the Church changed from a small Jewish sect into a world-wide Church with a universal mission.

 

To us, who already know the story, all that seems obvious and inevitable. For the first Christians, however, it must have seemed like one new learning experience after another. Today’s 1st reading [Acts 10: 25-26, 34-35, 44-48]recounts one pivotal point in that process. Peter, as the official leader of the community, had visited the disciples in a town called Joppa (near today’s Tel Aviv). While there, he had a dream of various animals and heard a voice tell him to eat them. When he responded that he had never eaten non-kosher meat, he was told, What God has made clean, you are not to call profane - another example of something the meaning of which may seem obvious to us, but which at the time must have seemed completely perplexing. Meanwhile, as Peter pondered this perplexing dream, emissaries from a Roman centurion, Cornelius, came and asked Peter to accompany them back to Caesarea, which he promptly did. That is where today’s reading picks up the story.

 

Cornelius was a Roman pagan, an uncircumcised Gentile! Normally, no devout Jew would enter his house, but these were not normal times. Already “prepped” by his perplexing dream, Peter crossed that boundary, and proclaimed the Good News of Jesus to a house full of Gentiles. Suddenly what had happened to the original disciples on Pentecost happened to Cornelius and his household – a “Pentecost for pagans,” as it has been called.  So, Peter asked, “Can anyone withhold water for baptizing these people, who have received the Holy Spirit even as we have?”

 

Thus began the momentous change that enabled Christianity to spread throughout the wider world. I say “began,” because, of course, the full implications of something so unexpected took time to sink in. Had Cornelius become a Jew and then acknowledged Jesus as the Messiah, he would have been like the other early Christians, who were, of course, also Jews who acknowledged Jesus as the promised Messiah. Cornelius, however, did not become a Jew. He “jumped the line,” so to speak, directly into Christianity. Eventually, the Church would have to debate whether this was proper, and Peter would cite this transformational event as the key to understanding God’s will for his Church – that it be the vehicle for conversion and repentance for all, without exception and without restriction.

It was God who took the initiative in all this – directing Cornelius to invite Peter, prepping Peter with his dream, and then dramatically demonstrating God’s plan to include the Gentiles by giving them the Holy Spirit. For his part, Peter, as the official leader of the Church, recognized God’s action and accepted its implications, baptizing the first Gentile Christians and incorporating them into the community.

 

This story speaks volumes about the very nature of the Church – not just the first century Church of the apostles, but the global Church of the twenty-first century, which is, if anything, more diverse than ever before. The Church is not a club, a fraternal association, a social networking group, or even a prayer group, though it may have elements of all those things. As Pope Pius XI put it, almost a century ago: “The Church has no other reason for its existence than to extend over the earth the kingdom of Christ and so to render people sharers of his saving redemption.” 

 

As a practical matter, of course, we experience the Church largely locally, as part of a locally defined parish community that nourishes and supports us in our faith. It brings us together to hear the Good News that makes our lives different from what they would otherwise have been. It brings us together to respond to that Good News with worship and prayer, support for one another, and service to others in the day-in, day-out dying and rising that defines a disciple’s life. 

 

But it doesn’t stop there. In the movie Civil War, there is a strange interlude when the journalists drive through a town that seems to be pointedly ignoring the civil war being fought all around them, weirdly separated from the experiences and concerns of their fellow citizens. The Church does not enjoy that option, but rather has been appointed, as Jesus says in today’s Gospel [John 15:9-17] to go and bear fruit that will remain.

 

The parish is never just about itself, but in some sense is challenged take in the entire world, today’s world - to expand our horizon, just as the apostolic Church had its horizon expanded, to understand our own local experience of Church as one with that of the young, emerging Church in Africa, the aging Church in Europe, and the even more ancient Churches in India and the Middle East, along with newer Catholic Churches in Asia and elsewhere, to understand how our own middle-aged American Church is being rejuvenated and revitalized by many new immigrants, and in other unexpected ways, to understand our own local experience of Church in the wider terms of God’s great plan for the salvation of the world.

Homily for the Sixth Sunday of Easter, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, May 5, 2024.

 

1968 Redivivus?

Campus violence is in the news, all over the news. Of course, most young people of college age are not students at four-year colleges or universities. And most of those who are do not attend elite institutions like Columbia. Even so, the media has focused intensely on this issue. And many of those who think or write about what is happening on our campuses cannot resist recalling 1968.

I was 20 years old in 1968, now widely regarded as the most tumultuous year in modern American history, and I remember it well. That miserable year began with the Tet Offensive at the end of January, then Eugene McCarthy's surprisingly good showing in New Hampshire in March, which provoked RFK's entry into the presidential race and LBJ's unexpected withdrawal. In early April, Martin Luther King was killed, and cities erupted in riots.  Then, later in April, Columbia University suddenly experienced a week of campus disorder, which presaged a pattern of campus disorders that would characterize 1969 and 1970 (including as I well remember at my own City College campus one subway stop north of Columbia). In June, RFK was assassinated. Then, in August, the Democratic Convention in Chicago was disastrously overshadowed by unprecedented street violence, all of which combined, unsurprisingly, to elect Richard Nixon in November of that year.

In 1968, the U.S. was mired in a losing war in Vietnam. Hundreds of thousands of young Americans were being killed. The LBJ-haters, who disrupted campus life and then brought their hatred of him and the Kennedy-Johnson Administration's war to the convention, undoubtedly had a variety of motivations - among them in at least some cases actual support for North Vietnam and the Viet Cong. Whatever their motivations, the one clear consequence was the election of Richard Nixon, who gave us another four years of war, Republicans on the Supreme Court, and eventually Watergate. What a proud roster of accomplishment!

And now we appear to be at it again! The U.S. is not actually at war this time, but our ally Israel is. The Biden-haters, who are currently disrupting campus life, again undoubtedly have a variety of motivations - some of them genuine humanitarianism but among them in at least some cases expressions of outright anti-semitism and support for Hamas. Whatever their motivations, the one most plausible political consequence will likely be the election of Donald Trump, which promises at least another four years of "American carnage," and maybe MAGA Forever!

Meanwhile pundits and professors are falling all over themselves to defend free expression and the right of student activists to protest on campus. One wonders if the object of the protesters' hatred were some group other than Jews whether as many pundits and professors would be so libertarian - or whether they might instead revert to the (until recently) obsession at many universities with censoring hate speech and guaranteeing "safe spaces" for students. 

Of course, freedom of expression is an important American value, and students should have ample opportunities to participate in peaceful protests which are non-violent and do not disrupt other students' rights to receive an education and participate in campus life. That said, college and university students do not obviously enjoy any particular privileges in this matter, more than the rights to free expression and peaceful protest enjoyed by other, ordinary citizens in other public and private places. This latter point is often lost amid laments about the role of the police. There is, in fact, a reasonable and legitimate argument to be raised regarding the over-militarization of contemporary policing. That said, being a student at an elite institution should not, a priori, exempt one from legitimate policing activity, to which other, ordinary citizens are also subject. It is not "academic freedom" to block access to public spaces, classrooms, and libraries and to threaten Jewish students with the result that they are afraid to access those spaces (thereby losing their "academic freedom").

One side story in this larger saga, which has received much less attention, is what this tragic turn of events reveals about the current state of higher education in the U.S. - especially at elite institutions. As one who spent several formative years at an elite institution of higher education, on the margins of and aspiring to become a part of that academic world, I am increasingly saddened by what seems to have befallen the collective life of the academic community.  What would it take for faculty to reclaim their role and recommit their institutions to become again genuinely intellectual communities committed to a more coherent educational purpose?

That is all another issue for another day, however.  Likewise, the war in the Middle East is obviously an important issue that deserves political discussion and debate. A terrible atrocity was committed by Hamas. on October 7. Since then, thousands of Gazans - many of them presumably civilians - have died, been injured, made homeless by the subsequent war, while some 132 Israelis remain hostages of Hamas seven months into this conflict. Like the wider war, the underlying Jewish-Arab conflict of which this is a part, the issues seem so intractable. That said, it is incumbent upon the Biden Administration to be as pro-active as possible in facilitating a settlement, however limited and temporary. 

Meanwhile, however, I have little doubt that the primary accomplishment of the Biden-hating campus demonstrators - especially if they continue and take their street show to Chicago - will be helping Donald Trump get elected, much as their predecessors in 1968 helped guarantee Richard Nixon's election. 

Photo: Columbia University, NY Times.