Television has been the ruination of America, I fear. This is not an original thought with me, certainly. If you read Neil Postman’s amazing book in the 80’s, Amusing Ourselves To Death, it told of the power of television to change the way we think and feel. Our attention spans are shorter, we need spectacle, we need circus to get our attention at all. We’re no longer a serious people. That is the reason that a reality TV fraud is headed back to the White House. And oh, how he is being heralded now, as literally God-sent. The image above is from a Substack article by Paul Ingrassias.
It depicts Trump as not only a constitutional fundamentalist but a cross between Moses and Superman, if we are to believe the outfit. This looks more like Mad Magazine than America, but that’s who and where we are in 2024, I guess.
For the litany of new people entering the next Trump administration, they each have a special obligation to follow the Constitution’s text and mandate. Undoubtedly, the political mandate afforded by this year’s election results is a clear signal that the American people want change from their political institutions. Change, in this context, most accurately means restoration: and the restoration – or revival – so many Americans desire is the Constitutional tradition: faithful adherence to the text of the Constitution and its original meaning with respect to lawmaking.
Every government official is therefore compelled to reread the text and take its commands to heart. It is not as though they really have any choice in the matter – as there is no alternative to the founding Law. Having said that, the Constitution provides, even today, as clear a roadmap as such exists for ruling and navigating America’s labyrinthine political institutions in the best way possible. It is the handbook for administering an increasingly complicated, bureaucratic, and historically anomalous imposter government, with its counterfeit institutions – the deep state and Military-Industrial Complex – that have no real binding authority because of these institutions’ manifest absence from the original text.
The courage of conviction that comes with faithful interpretation is exceptionally rare in our government today, almost nonexistent. However, such conviction will be necessary to restore some semblance of coherency, if not integrity, to the rule of law to America, as those terms have been rendered effectively meaningless by how far we have deviated as a society from that which gives all laws any authority at all: the Constitution. Constitutional understanding runs hand-in-hand with civic engagement – and enlightenment. Without the latter, lawmaking in the American context is like operating an airplane with no experience: a doomed endeavor.
It’s not like Trump or anybody at MAGA would take charge of any instrumentality or agency that they didn’t have gobs of experience with right? Not like any of them are flying blind, right?
This is truly a cult, with clear religious overtones and now the Constitution has been roped into it. Fine. We already have the Trump Bible, we have Trump on the cross depicted in a painting, why not Trump as Moses/Superman? it certainly seems to be the next logical development.
How I long for an age where entertainers were entertainers and politicians were politicians. Not that I have anything against entertainers legitimately entering politics. Ronald Reagan did. His first political job was president of the Screen Actors Guild. Al Franken was a comedian and then he ran for office. I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about Mr. Reality TV from The Apprentice, who created a persona and then ran it for office.
And America is stupid enough to buy it twice. Buckle up. As Barack Obama cautioned, “the sequel is always worse.”
Oh my stars and garters! This is beyond ridiculous and is making a laughingstock of the Constitution AND the Bible. Interesting combination there. It’s disgusting. YMMV.
It looks like in that picture, he’s heading off somewhere, where he can rip it up and scatter the torn pages to the wind.
From the highest aspirations of all religions, ‘God’ represents truth, light, justice, and love; sometimes we must choose the light no matter how dark it becomes. In the end, this too shall pass, and, I believe, God, by any name, is eternal, and ‘desires only good and not evil’, according to Scripture. I think of all the brave souls who also stand with me who’ve endured more darkness than I presently face. This is a time to remember Jesus’s greatest commandments, often said as the two greatest is, in reality, THREE commandments. Love God. Love your neighbor. Love YOURSELF. A tough ask in this world but good to remember this is a time to first take of yourself and then the others can be dealt with. Good luck and God bless.