Robert Mueller, Failed Messiah

Robert Mueller

I felt a certain harkening familiarity in the recent revelation that the long-awaited Mueller Report wouldn’t unseat the President. For around two years, Blue Facebook and Blue Twitter impatiently awaited the magic text that would depose the usurper, reverse injustice, embolden the keepers of truth, and make everything good again. I kept my yap shut, trepidatious about upsetting people already on edge, but we’ve seen this before: True Believers disappointed in yet another secular Messiah.

As religion has drifted from modernity, the impulse for moral clarity and deliverance remains ruggedly persistent. Émile Durkheim described this in 1912, that though faith in transcendence was dwindling, human-scale forces had stepped into the gap. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were displaced by Liberté, Egalité, et Fraternité. Gilded saints’ icons gave way to heroic portraits of Washington, Lafayette, or bare-breasted Liberty On The March. The justification was worldly, but the language was clearly religious.

But just as the Second Coming keeps not happening, so does salvation through philosophy or politics. Neither Utilitarian happiness nor Neitzschean power have made anyone one whit better human beings when they get hungry or angry enough. During the Cold War, the language of Capitalism versus Communism took on undeniably eschatological trappings, as both promised some measure of salvation. But both proved disappointing, terminally inept Messiahs, forcing True Believers worldwide to continue the frustrating search.

Robert Mueller becomes the latest in whom Americans invested a Life of Brian-like zeal which he didn’t court or accept. He was predicted to save, or damn, the nation, depending on one’s political viewpoints. Progressives likened him to Dr. King; conservatives, to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Nobody seems to have considered him a professional, simply following the evidence where it leads, and permitting actual jurists to indict or dismiss, which seems the role he preferred.

Progressives are responding to the disappointment surrounding Mueller in two ways. Serious lawyers and legal smile benignly and say they knew this all along, that they never really promised one simple investigative report would overturn an election and impeach a President. Anyone who’s watched the news during the last two years knows this is buncombe, of course. Like Cleopas on the road to Emmaus, they’ve dejectedly forgotten their former messianic fervor and returned to drudgery.

More numerous, especially among late-night comedians and the punditocracy, are those doubling down on what they previously believed. Release the actual report, they demand, insisting that if they see the original text, gnostic wisdom will descend and everyone’s eyes will be opened. Like the religious devotees Leon Festinger investigated in his classic When Prophecy Fails, the mere absence of the foretold incarnation doesn’t dim their belief. If anything, it makes True Believers believe even harder.

“Liberty Leading the People,” Eugène Delacroix, 1830
Political revolution presented as undisguised secular religion

The religious qualities of both responses are telling. The disappointed return to awaiting the next Annunciation, while the fervorous resume evangelizing. Audiences familiar with religious history, however, can already predict what happens next. Occasional religious innovators like Jeremiah, Jesus, Mohammed, or Joseph Smith create movements that live after them. Most, however, burn out quickly, leaving adherents looking for another prophet to alleviate their despondency. Dwindling numbers of faithful dedicate their lives to evangelizing the converted.

Certainly I understand this impulse. Progressives imbue Robert Mueller with their moral aspirations, because if he can reverse the perceived injustice of a racist, misogynist also-ran in the Oval Office, then obviously we live in a righteous universe. Like the apostles, progressives wanted Mueller to overthrow tyranny and lead the Chosen People into a Golden Age, in this life. They don’t want to live forever with God, or whatever God substitute we’ve chosen this week.

Theologians debate why Jesus needed to die ignominiously—scorned, humiliated, and naked. Whatever reason, though, it surely outstrips the fate awaiting Robert Mueller as disgraced Messiah, returning to anonymity, a government careerist plagued by a government that no longer wants him. Meanwhile, his would-be apostles are already scrambling for the next Messiah who they hope will deliver them from this evil and restore moral certainty. It would be hilarious, if America weren’t on the line.

Unfortunately, this cycle will repeat itself infinitely, as long as humans perceive a gap between their conceptions of justice, and the visible world around us. In former generations, we believed a literal God would restore harmony someday, or perhaps that centrifugal force would pull everything apart in a catastrophic Ragnarok. Now we seek recompense between political salvation and Armageddon via global warming. The impulse remains the same. Only the name we give salvation ever changes.