An Imaginary Passover 2025

This weekend is the Jewish holiday of Passover, which is based upon an event described in Chapters 11 and 12 of the book of Exodus in the Torah in which God kills all first born males, human and animal, in Egypt on an appointed night, except in homes where the lintel is marked with a lamb's blood as the members of the Jewish community were instructed by their leaders to do.

Benchmarking the date of this event in the Biblical story in a manner consistent with the appearance of the Philistines in the Levant (which historically happened around 1200 BCE at the time of the Bronze Age collapse), this story would be taking place something like 3200 to 3300 years ago.

Imagine the impossible scenario that another miracle is called for now, in the United States, to smite the wicked and protect those who are less wicked. Suppose that this time around, on Passover evening starting after sundown on April 12, all 77.3 million people who voted for Trump, who are still living, died, a bit more than 20% of the population of the United States, so an event of similar magnitude.

Image how that would change the world. Almost all of the Republican elected officials and judges would die. Children would be almost completely spared. Some states, like West Virginia, Wyoming, and Utah would take particularly hard hits, as would most rural areas and small towns outside New England and Hawaii and college towns. Very few people would be left in predominantly white Evangelical Christian churches and Mormon temples the next morning. Predominantly white Protestant churches and Catholic parishes would likewise take strong hits. Jews celebrating Passover and predominantly black churches would barely notice a difference. The old, men, and people without college educations would be disproportionately hit, as would blue collar small business owners and farmers. The impact in big cities would be quite modest. The U.S. military office corps would be very hard hit, and the enlisted ranks would experience a milder impact. The LGBTQ community would be almost all spared. Schools, colleges, and universities would have only modest impacts. Non-religious people and non-Christians generally would see a quite modest toll. Many billionaires would be no more.

There would still be a crunch. Prompt arrangements would have to be made for many children left without parents. Figuring out how to keep farms running would be particularly challenging. But it would probably set the country back only a few years as the people who were passed over returned to the path of decency and responsibility and competence.

The hostile stance of the U.S. towards the rest of the world would promptly fade away. Those remaining wouldn't have a single set of political views, but the crazy and mean spirited elements would be gone.

The victims wouldn't all be horrible, horrible people, but they would be much more personally culpable than the victims of the Biblical Passover, who just had the bad luck to be non-Jewish subjects to the Pharaoh, and were often innocent children or animals.