SELLING AMERICA’S BIRTHRIGHT FOR A BOWL OF BEANS (OR A DOZEN EGGS)

“And Esau said to Jacob, ‘Feed me, I pray, with that red pottage. . . for I am faint.’  And Jacob said, ‘Sell me this day thy birthright.’”—The Bible, King James Version, Genesis 25:30-31

If you grew up like I did, dutifully following my mother each week to a Southern Baptist church, you couldn’t help but soak up bible verses like a sponge.

Go ahead, cover your ears if you want, clamp your eyes shut.  After a while, it still creeps in by osmosis.  I once won a prize for reciting the books of the bible.  Forward and backwards.  

Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers. . .

Revelation, Jude, Third John, Second John, First John. . .

And so it goes. All 66 books. 

At least that’s what I was taught.  My Catholic friend next door insisted there were really 73.  But I didn’t bother to learn the other seven, because someone else claimed Catholics thought Baptists were going to hell anyway.

The stories themselves were fascinating.  Moses and the parting of the Red Sea.  Jonah and the Great Fish.  Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in Nebuchadnezzar’s fiery furnace.  They all seemed a little far-fetched, but I could at least imagine each one happening.

The only one that simply made no sense was Jacob, Esau, the bowl of beans, and the birthright.  Basically, the story goes like this.

Jacob and Esau were twins.  Because Esau technically dropped out first, he got the “birthright,” that is, he pretty much inherited everything.  Apparently, that was how things worked back then.

One day Esau came back home from hunting, hungry as all get out.  Jacob was by the fire, stirring a pot of beans.  Esau, in full stomach-growl mode, asked for some of the beans.  Jacob said fine, but first you have to give me your birthright. 

Esau said, in essence, “sure, I’m hungry as hell.  What good is a birthright if your starving?  You’ve got a deal.  Give me the beans.” 

Esau wound up with a full stomach, and Jacob wound up with everything else.

As a kid, I thought this sounded crazy.  How could anybody be as stupid as Esau or as big of an asshole as Jacob?  How could this happen?

At first, I tried to rationalize.  Did Esau have some mental deficiency, like a couple of the kids I knew?  Did he just not understand?

It wasn’t until much later that the story’s power hit me (I say story, because you’re free to believe it or not, that’s your business).  I suddenly saw it playing out every day:  people throwing away the future for some immediate satisfaction.

I want this?  I’ll buy it, whether I can afford it or not.  I don’t want to do this?  Then I won’t do it, regardless of how it might affect my future.

Will this make me feel better now?  Fine.  I’ll worry about the future later.

Forget the birthright.  I’m hungry.

Which brings us to the recent election.

According to pollsters, America voted with its stomach.  Inflation had increased overall costs, and food prices were out there for everyone to see.  As one person put it, “Here’s a suggestion.  Drop by a grocery store before you vote.”

And the posterchild of all such items were eggs.  In 2022, national egg prices topped out at $4.25 a dozen (I checked at Hy-Vee today, and they’re $3.99, but that’s here in Omaha).

The price of groceries had people pissed.  And that’s how they voted.

Of course, this wasn’t the highest price we’d seen for eggs.  Adjusted for inflation, they were $4.49 in 1975, during the Nixon/Ford years, before hitting a low of $2.42 in 1992.  Looking at inflation in general, it peaked at 8% in 2022, and is now running just under 5%.  Still too high, but a far cry from the 11% of 1974, and the whopping 13.6% of 1980.

What’s wrong with casting a vote against high prices?  Nothing.  But of course, there was a lot more to it than that. 

Voting for Trump meant not only protesting higher prices, but also sticking a middle finger in the face of the current government, a female mixed-raced candidate, anyone who doesn’t think or look like you (that is, an “elite—never mind that we haven’t had a President with Trump’s sort of gilded-wealth since Roosevelt), or anyone open to any sort of immigration policy other than sealing off the country from the rest of the world.

Fine.  But all of this came at a price.  It’s not just who you vote out, it’s also who you wind up getting in return.  (At this point, let me add another paradox, since this post has a religious theme.  I’m often stunned by Christians who go on mission trips to Central America and come home talking not only of the love and kindness they saw on their journey, but the abject poverty of those they met.  They speak about sharing the love of Christ with these poor souls.  Yet if those same people showed up at the border seeking refuge and a chance for a better life, the same loving Christians scream “rapists and murderers!  Build a wall!  Keep ‘em out!”  Sounds pretty hypocritical to me, but what do I know?).

Esau was hungry, and all too willing to blow off the future by giving up his birthright for a bowl of beans.  Is that what we just did in this election?

Our recent anger over the price of eggs caused us to relinquish the leadership of our nation to a convicted felon, a man who encouraged rioters he supported (on January 6) and supported the killing of rioters he opposed (during the George Floyd protests), a former president who’d been twice impeached, who’d cozied up to dictators (“Kim and I, we fell in love”), who called veterans suckers and losers, who denied science, peddled conspiracy theories, sold himself and the nation to the highest bidder (yes, I’m talking to you, Elon Musk), who’d abused women, taken away women’s choice across much of the country, and was too cowardly and self-centered to acknowledge his electoral loss four years earlier.

A man who stood by and did nothing while a mob threatened to kill his own Vice President.  A man who was called a fascist and unworthy of the presidency by his own military leadership.

A man who told lie after lie after lie without regret, remorse, or apology, no matter who it hurt.

America, this is what you got in exchange for that dozen eggs. 

Or maybe we should ask it this way.   What did we give up?  What was our birthright?

Parse the Constitution all you want.  I’m not a constitutional scholar, and will leave that to those who are.  But I know what I was taught growing up at home, at school, and even at that Baptist Sunday School.

America’s birthright was truth.  It was justice.  It was opportunity for all, and not just the billionaires (when I was growing up, you could count all of those in the world on one hand).

It was a system of laws that was respected and envied the world over. 

Today, our economy is the world’s strongest.  But that’s about it.  Around the globe, nation after nation is turning to religious nationalism (pick any religion you want, they’re all out there), if not outright fascism.  For America, democracy seems less a glowing flame than a dying ember.

But that’s not important.  It was all about the economy, right?  All about the price of those dozen eggs.

Never mind our birthright.

Once Esau agreed to the bargain, the deal was done.  The birthright was gone, and there was no going back.

But we have another opportunity, if we’re willing to grasp it.  Another election will come, and with it a chance to reclaim that birthright.  Until then, we can only work to regain the trust America has lost.

There’s an old saying, “fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice shame on me.”

Perhaps we should consider a modification to that old adage when looking at our current situation:  put a bullet in the chamber and spin it once playing Russian Roulette, and you’re lucky.  Pull the trigger twice, and you’re downright stupid.

And for all of those waiting for prices to fall, I have bad news:  economist after economist, from liberal to conservative, are warning us about Trump’s proposed tariffs.  They foresee rising prices, shortages, and job losses.  Be careful what you wish for.

Because much as I try to be optimistic, a troubling memory keeps emerging.  In amongst the childhood recollections of a thousand hay-bales that need to be hauled in before the rain starts, the clatter of dry leaves across a gravel road, the smell of ham curing in the smokehouse, the shock of seeing all those spiders in my grandmother’s outhouse, the rush of pushing my way into the endzone against a nose-tackle that outweighed me by a hundred pounds, yes, even arguing with that Catholic kid next door, who always was and always shall be one of my dearest friends, one memory stands out.

It’s of a frightened 8-year-old sitting wide-eyed in a Missouri church on a Sunday night, listening to the dark words coming from the mouth of a Baptist preacher as he glared out at the congregation and uttered the text from Genesis 41:31.   “And the abundance in the land shall not be remembered, because the famine that follows it will be so severe.”

The coming years will be among the harshest and most difficult this nation has ever experienced.  Please do all that you can to help one another, now and in the future.  Hold true to your values.  By starting there, perhaps we can begin once again to reclaim our birthright.