May I Never be Exorcised of this Demon

"Oh God said to Abraham, 'Kill me a son.' Abe says, 'Man, you must be puttin me on.'

-- Bob Dylan, Highway 61 Revisited

My mind is a jumbled mess. I wake this morning to find grapefruit rinds all over my bedroom, a half-drunken bottle of Wild Turkey on my nightstand, and someone having smoked all my Chesterfields. The rain has come but at least this is expected.  My hands smell of  metallic grease and gunpowder but I own no firearms.

Men of the cloth say that one must not fool with objects of spiritualism. Ouija Boards, Tarot Cards, hell even the zodiac column in your daily newspaper could be used to bore a hole into the most innocent soul allowing in a host of malicious spirits to pollute and corrupt it. Not that I've ever claimed to be innocent, we're all sinners and I'm no exception. So why should it be any different when one tosses back a bottle of Bacardi 151, turns off the news, re-reads The Great Shark Hunt, and lights a spliff laced with the finest Moroccan hash money can buy? If Captain Howdy could grab a hold of sweet little Reagan after just a few minutes on a Ouija Board, surely the Gonzo spirit can capture the willing seeker after a night of drunken solitary despair.

But sobriety comes the next morning like Hamlet's battalions of troubles dragging you kicking and screaming into a reality only possible were someone to activate Douglas Adams' Infinite Improbability Drive just after the Cleveland Indians win the American League Pennant and go on to lose the World Series to the Chicago Cubs. Nevertheless, reality it is and we're stuck with it.

The previous decade was awash with lessons on never saying never not just from a sports angle - like when the Red Sox reversed their World Series curse - but from a national one as well. We thought our military made us invincible...until 19 mutants hijacked four jet liners turning them into guided missiles armed only with some box cutters and a few discount flying lessons. We thought our economy was strong...until Bear Stearns...then Lehman Brothers...then Merrill Lynch...AIG, HBOS, Royal Bank of Scotland, and Bradford and Bingley suddenly needed the help of the American tax payer because something they never thought could happen did. Then a first-term Senator from Illinois with a funny sounding name won the Presidency. And not only was he the first senator to win the office since JFK, but a negro to boot. He went on to win a second term and managed to rebuild our economy, reform our healthcare system and kill Osama bin Laden - the king of the aforementioned mutants. He didn't fix all of our problems but did a damn sight better than any president in recent memory or any serious player thought possible.

We thought the screw-heads had learned their lesson until they began supporting politicians who, now that TARP was a done deal, could scorn the banks for taking it and believed that the countless American tax payers now unemployed were moochers for applying for Food Stamps. They debased their fellow Americans in the name of patriotism and shamed those not fortunate enough to be born into more lucrative circumstances.

And now, here we are having gone not just through the looking glass, but through an event horizon into a black hole and are about to learn what a singularity is all about. Will we come out the other end into some better parallel universe or be squeezed into ever smaller proportions until one of our atoms bursts into an explosion that starts the whole damn 14 billion year trip all over again?  No one can say. Our next president was chosen because a small contingent of weasels and screw-heads wanted their country back and managed to con almost 60 million Americans into giving it to them. As railroad developer and professional screw-head, Jay Gould once said: "I can always hire one half of the working class to kill the other half." This rings a painful truth today.

When the black guy with the funny name took the Presidency, the stated policy of the opposition was to oppose everything regardless of merit. Some of us who believe in the best of people are trying to avoid taking such a stance now. Some of us still believe in the system and that the nation has spoken regardless of how we feel about it as individuals. It's a disciplined, noble, and admirable position to be sure. But some of us see a different light. Some of us fear how the graciousness of decent folk can be used toward the enabling of scoundrels. The one who bears this light is unable to show us anything other than the ugly reality.

I'm reminded of another light bearer. The truest of all rebels. The mythic nay sayer who rebelled against God Himself when He got too big for His britches. This fallen angel has been scorned through the ages drawing the ire of poets from Dante to Milton. But I see it differently. Lucifer saw the fundamental absurdity for a being who's brought into existence, granted the gift of free will yet instructed to blindly obey the granter of that gift without question. A cruel prank for which only the most faithful fall in the hopes of getting an unverifiable reward once they are called to account upon death.

It's noble to sacrifice one's comfort for justice. Lucifer exemplifies this for the comfort he sacrificed was not temporary but eternal. Reflexive rebellion has a place in the Universe and we shouldn't let a false sense of ethics trick us into enabling a leader who has all but promised to disgrace his countrymen in a fashion unprecedented in recorded history. Hitler never promised to disgrace the German people, he portrayed his perverted desire for conquest and mass murder as a fundamental aspect of German identity. The German people were disgraced because common decency demanded it once they saw how their blind complacency allowed an ancient evil to wreak havoc in a modern world with the machinery to rear it to maximum efficiency. They can be forgiven because they didn't have the benefit of history, but we have no such excuse. Blind rebellion was the only way Hitler's thugs could have been stopped. And for all the phony comparisons of Obama to Hitler, missing the comparison of Trump to Hitler requires an obtuseness of which only the worst among us are capable.

Rebel! And fear not. The enemy has been editing the playbook of opposition for nearly a decade and erased away any obligation of deference on our side. We need to treat the Trump presidency as illegitimate because he lost the popular vote. We need to treat him as someone with the worst intentions because he has admitted as much.  We need to objectify him as an object of derision as he's objectified those who've been the objects of his basest desires. He ought to be subject to the humiliation of being tarred and feathered. He ought to be called to account for being a pedophile, a philanderer, and a con artist. Every piece of legislation he seeks ought to be met with absolute scorn as un-American, Treasonous, and Fascist.  Every person should make daily calls to Republican legislators disguising their phone numbers as belonging to constituents to scream loudly that their slightest acquiescence shall be viewed as aiding and abetting a criminal presidency. We should promise a violence of rhetoric as harsh as his rhetoric of violence. That any use of force against those protesting his presidency will be construed as a declaration of war on the American people and will be returned because that's what the Second Amendment is for. Furthermore, those not with us...are against us.

Gandhi said "An eye for an eye would make the whole world blind." But blindness becomes irrelevant when the world is plunged into darkness. When in darkness we turn to the one who bears the light because we have no other choice. We must accept the light bearer's place in our Western mythology and use that force when decency demands it.

That wasn't me talking. It was the beast within. He's not one to argue with. He's one whose presence must be embraced because he's our only chance of survival. The war's already been declared by an unprepared enemy. A foolhardy enemy incapable of understanding their demise came long ago. They think they are the tide but they are only the sand.