Amid the uproar over Donald Trump’s indictment, I am awakened by a sudden revelation that Trump is the Dark Angel of Apocalypse sent from Hell to bring the cataclysmic destruction to America. He is the very personification of the Four Horsemen — Death, Famine, War, Conquest — all rolled into one. The legion of his followers are the minions who will help him render the final devastation to the nation.

A rebirth follows the destruction, as the lore of apocalypse has it, but what kind of rebirth is to follow the destruction is left to Providence, whose judgment on America is yet to be told. We only know that there is the grand price we must pay, perhaps in bloodshed and deaths, for our own moral failure and malfeasance as Americans, whose once “shining city on a hill” is now neither shiny nor on a hill.

When Joe Biden calls himself “the transitional president (to the young generation)” he is half correct: Both he and Trump are witnesses of this great apocalyptic transition from the end of one era to the beginning of another, but certainly not the future Biden envisions. In America’s apocalypse, Biden is the last defender of the existing (capitalist) order and Trump is the Dark Angel who brings the final (fascist) carnage to America.

Both the end and the beginning are preordained in the great apocalyptic cycle of destruction and rebirth. To complete this cosmic drama, both Biden and Trump must play out their respective roles. Just now, all the signs in the nation’s pulses and impulses point to the unfolding of events in America as written in Providence.

Apocalypse is the end of all things in a catastrophic play of what the Four Horsemen bring to our nation. Today, we in America understand the four catastrophes as our daily experiences. We live with them as the American Way of Life and the symbolic imageries of the biblical lore have become our existential, living shadows of ourselves. To wit:

“Death” is our spiritual demise in America. For several generations, our social life has degenerated into nothing but individual comfort, private convenience, and solitary pleasure, with no “society” or “community” recognized in the process. As a powerful and rich nation, but with no human souls in it, America has been a dying nation, and a dead society and community for some time.

“Famine” is manifest in what we hunger for in America — love, justice, peace and other necessary nutrients of life and humanity that no longer exist in our savage capitalism and in our own hearts. As bodies, we are grotesquely over-ed in our ubiquitous buffet of food; as souls, we are starving for spiritual nutrition in an arid lifelessness and barren wasteland.

“War” is fought everyday in the way we live with our fellowmen, competing in a every man-for-himself society for every breadcrumb thrown our way. Our weapons of war are distrust of every human motive and suspicion toward all those around us. In this inwardly fearful nation, we are constantly at war with ourselves and with our fellowmen.

“Conquest” is in our moral surrender as we have become conquered and enslaved by our worst passions and desires that recognize nothing else in our value system and nobody else in our human circles. As selfish, childish and stupefied 5-year-olds, we have long since been conquered by the evil side of ourselves. In this morally vacuous life and society, we crave and receive nothing but sugar and praise from our caretakers.

No one is more perfectly groomed than Trump for his part in the apocalyptic annihilation of such a nation: He has no moral shame, social consciousness or human feelings; he never cries and never relates to another human being, not even his children. As pure deviltry, he is designed and created by the Perfect Creator Himself to administer the final punishment for America.

He is the perfect Dark Angel for a nation in its Dark Age of death, famine, war and conquest as the last chapter of its history. His role as the darkest of all human beings has made its glorious entrance on the American stage that is equally well prepared with dying souls and dead minds to receive the coup de grace to its precarious democracy. The Great American Apocalypse could not be played out in any other way. America will not return to sanity’s normalcy on its own. It’s only from our own ashes would our rebirth come.

For Donald Trump, the stage is tailor-made: American society has become suitably corrupted — rotting and crumbling — heart by heart, brain by brain. Trump came, sneered and simply declared, “America, you are mine!” As our Dark Angel, he brought us the message of hate and narcissism in perfect harmony, and we clamor for more of him day and night. In this America, GOP is our Sodom, NRA our Gomorrah, and MAGA our great conflagration of sin and retribution. As Pogo prophesied, We have met the enemy and he is us!

God gave the American settlers wide-open land, four seasons, peace and abundance. For all such a bounteous paradise, He commanded the new Adams and Eves only to labor honestly and share their bounties with one another. But the Serpent came again, this time with the irresistible gift of selfishness, and soon imposed capitalist abomination on the new Eden. The American Adams and Eves failed again for the second time and are about to be consumed by great fire in their once promised land.

And Donald Trump, brandishing his golden hair and baring his sharp teeth, smiles and whispers: “America, I am your Apocalypse!”

Jon Huer, columnist for the Recorder and retired professor, lives in Greenfield.

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