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I know where we are...

... but where were we? The genesis of our troubles becomes evident with Ronald Reagan: the first chief executive, who with public avocation, was allowed to adopt, and was willing to accept, the trappings of a divinity - Augustus as both emperor and god. George Washington had been very careful, in similar circumstances after the Revolutionary War, when he could have been crowned king, to demur. But not Ron! And who could have been more perfect and timely than he? An ex-governor of the lucky state; handsome, familiar and approachable; he was a master of the pithy but vacuous sound-bite, targeted at a TV audience with severe attention deficit and poor analytical skills. He told the citizens that they were a chosen people, whose journey to the promised land was imperiled by foolish leaders and constantly betrayed by the Pharisees in “big government”. By fiat, he would sweep away the obstacles and take them to Canaan; and the vanity of the flattered citizenry was such that it accepted ...
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Hell is empty…

… and all the devils are here. This savage fell not from a clear blue sky. He crawled out of the pit, preceded by many more like him; like him, but more charming than him. He may be vile, but he is first in nothing. Not truly a man, he is an homunculus, an alchemic expression of society’s failures, a toxic distillate of despair, distrust and selfishness. He is the embodied outcome of the delusions we hold, and the lies we tell ourselves in order to appear significant. Mistrustful of science and history, failed by religions that promote a divine transcendence, we have with a vain self-regard created him in our own image so that we could worship all that is the worst in ourselves. By definition, what we worship cannot be bad, we tell ourselves. That is begging the question and it is the rock upon which we will founder.
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Now we are divided!

Now we are divided!  But, it’s not the obvious dichotomy of the have and the have-not, or of the healthy and the ill, it’s a division of misfortune and shame. The shame accrues to those who continue to support in any way the beast in the White House slouching toward Gomorrah; the misfortunate are all the rest. There is, and can be, no moral or ethical justification for that support. The shamed are unmoored from any principle, they are without recourse. But, he’s for small-government, some say. But, he's for lower taxes, some say. But, he supports Israel, some say. But, he puts the right people on the supreme court, some say. But, he’s a christian, some say. But, he’s tough on China, some say. But, he’s against abortion, some say. But he’ll keep all the nasty foreigners out, some say. As if any of those individual rationalizations can, in the balance, possibly outweigh his deficiencies - glaringly obvious deficiencies - his moral bankruptcy, solipsism, avarice, venality, vanity...
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