On the Imitation of the Antichrist

On the Imitation of the Antichrist

 

          Trump is not Hitler. Nor is he Stalin, nor Mao, nor Mussolini, nor Franco, nor Pinochet, nor Putin, nor Xi. That’s the good news. The bad news is that he is Trump; and Trump admires those dictators. He’s a wannabe. He wants to imitate them.

And not only them. Trump passes himself off as a Christian, and Christians are urged to imitate Christ: but he thinks he is special, so instead he imitates the Antichrist.

The religious right should have said so by now. Their own teachings require them to witness against anyone who resembles an Antichrist. The orange-faced felon fits their checklist. Pride? Check. Wrath? Check. Envy? Check. Avarice? Check. Gluttony? Check. Lust? Check. Sloth? Check. How anti-Christian of him, yet the loudest Christians are silent.

Trump practices the Seven Deadly Sins, and he summons the Four Horsemen. Conquest, i.e. Oppression? Ask any Hispanic, or any Black, or any Moslem, or any woman, or anyone of alternate gender, or the sick, or the poor. Famine? He’s working on that, with economy-tanking tariffs and by terrorizing farm workers. Prices will rise, and the poor will go hungry. Plague? Covid proved that he’s pro-plague. War? He has targeted Panama, Greenland, Canada, and now Gaza.

You would think that the religious right would hasten to call such a freak the Antichrist. But no, they’re in his cult. Perhaps the religious right is practicing “proselytizing by counter-example”: that is, being such vile wretches that even skeptics like myself are moved to admire the virtues that they violate.

I confess that this essay indulges in an ancient game: comparing a political enemy to the Antichrist. But in Trump’s case, somebody had to do it. The honor of the art of invective is at stake. I volunteer, despite reluctance and embarrassment. It isn’t even my religion. I do not believe in St. John’s fever dream; but judging by Trump’s actions, it does seem as if Trump read Revelations, along with Mein Kampf, not as warnings but as instructions.

Call this essay Trump Derangement Syndrome if you wish, but I reply that Trump is Patient Zero for TDS. He’s deranged about himself.

So in the spirit of satire, I offer you this apocalyptic screed:

 

Lo, I beheld a beast ride down a descending staircase. He was as orange as a mango, his face bore a perpetual pout, and he spoke only lies, with the voice of a whining cur.

He loved wealth, he loved power, but not his children, nor his wives, nor his mistresses, nor his followers, nor his minions, nor the law, nor his country, nor humankind, nor even himself, for his love was poison, and his given word was worth its weight in gold.

And although he was a paragon of pride, wrath, envy, avarice, gluttony, lust, and sloth; and although he called up oppression, poverty, plague, and war; and although the whole world knew that he was mad and wicked; nonetheless he seduced masses of pious hypocrites into worshiping him as a Savior.