Exit at the Apogee

… 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.

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...