Renegade Nation

Renegade Nation

Our mantra as a nation has always been E Pluribus Unum or “Out of Many, One.”  Our new mantra might be more accurately changed to Quid Dicere, Quid Faciunt , which translates to “Say anything, do anything.”  The recent news from Washington is that as Congress moves to enforce its constitutionally-given obligation to balance back against the Executive Branch of government, the President has decided that he’s not having any of it.  He has declared open warfare on Congress and the constitution by saying that he will fight against any and all attempts to question his authority.  He does not like being investigated or challenged or unmasked (his taxes).  He does not like being questioned, laughed at or reigned in by anyone and in any way.  This is no longer a jump ball.  This is now crystal clear.  Our nation is under siege by the man in the White House.

We are at war with ourselves.  We are coming apart at the seams.  Make America Great Again is now Take America Back at All Costs.  I feel like we will soon be seeing black caps with TABAC on the front.  Everyone is at odds with everyone else over this very controversial man and it serves us right.  We have danced around the God of Money for too long and we are now wondering why we are spiraling out of control.  Trump is Mammon and Mammon is Beelzebub according to the biblical scholars.  Mammon is one of the Seven Princes of Hell.  Let’s look at them for a moment.

• Lucifer – Pride – Mr. Trump has more pride than any ten men.
• Asmodeus – Lust – Mr. Trump has been proven to have paid-off numerous women with whom he consorted. Need I go on?
• Leviathon – Envy – Mr. Trump’s favorite person is Jeff Bezos.
• Beelzebub – Gluttony – Have you seen Mr. Trump in his golf pants and with Big Mac on his lips?
• Satan – Wrath – The reporting from multiple sources on the wrath-meter in the White House is that it is off the charts.
• Belphegor – Sloth – Not so easy to define in Presidential terms but starting your day at 11am and ending it at 2pm is an indicator.
• Mammon – Greed – Let’s ask the countless contractors who have been stiffed by Mr. Trump about this one.

Based on this analysis, I am now comfortable saying that Mr. Trump is more than just Mammon, he is Evil incarnate.  All the demons we surrender to and who prey upon us as a nation can be traced back to being present and obvious in the corporeal form that is Mr. Trump.  He is the embodiment of all our worst instincts.  We are all a little greedy, prideful, lusting, envious, wrathful, gluttonous and slothful.  I can fill a book in with those vices that I can recognize in myself at times.  Trump likes to say he is the biggest, best, smartest, richest (just a tad boastful or prideful, perhaps).  Well, he may be right on the demonization index.

From now on in my writing, I think I will no longer refer to him as Mr. President or Mr. Trump, but just Mr. Evil.  I suspect it will cause little confusion to anyone as most people will have an easy time interpreting my new pseudonym for him.  In fact, it is less a pseudonym and more an optimal descriptor.

The big question becomes what to do about it?  When I recently attended a Broadway play called What the Constitution Means to Me (replete with Chuck Schumer sitting right behind me), they ended the play with a debate between the star and a young woman over whether the constitution should be modified for modern times or just thrown out.  I found throwing it out to be a rather radical concept since I have always thought of the constitution as one of our lasting and most important guiding principles.  I tend toward being a modernist or radical rather than a traditionalist and reactionary, and still I could not understand wanting to trash the constitution.

I am beginning to wonder whether art was imitating life.  Are we as a nation deciding on whether to trash our constitution and rewrite the coda by which we have prospered and lived for 243 years? God, I hope not.  We are cast adrift from norms and conventions as it is.  Without that foundational document to guide us I fear we are adrift in a sea of all the worst attributes of mankind.

Every day I feel more and more like the guy on the street corner with the sign declaring that the end is near.  It is an unpleasant state of mind to say the least. And I attribute this all to Mr. Evil, which may not be fair, but is probably at least somewhat warranted since he at very least unleashed the demons from hell in the people of the country that count themselves as with him versus against him.  You have to be excessively defensive and partisan to not agree that a good portion of the hate crimes and domestic terrorism incidents are directly related to the level of hate and fear rhetoric being blasted through tweets and pronouncements from the White House.  The man is stoking the fires of hatred and dissent in our nation and is driving us to a place where inflicting violence on our neighbors (especially if counted in the larger humankind sense) is not just acceptable, it is encouraged.

The strangest thing is that I don’t really think Mr. Evil himself is as dark and ill-intended as his policies and pronouncements make him seem.  I’m confident in saying he is beyond an acceptable level of dark, but I suspect much of his darkness comes from the acolytes that slink around him and the purpose is less about inflicting harm and more about maintaining power.  That is the saddest part of this whole picture.  I am constantly shocked that the population (and I mean almost all of the population) cannot see that everything he does is intended to retain power and take our nation further and further into renegade and uncharted territory.