I’ve been writing everyday lately, but not on my blog. What can I write when civilization is crumbling all around?
If I sugar-coat, people will gag. If I go negative and things get better, some will blame me for helping liberals put the country through hell.
It’s amazing to read what people write on Twitter, Facebook, and Quora during the slow unfolding of a disaster that will soon dwarf 911.
The majority of people who post seem optimistic and cheerful. Most folks I know who don’t post seem paralyzed by anxiety; some are in various stages of denial.
It reminds me of passages from a book written by a survivor of the disaster at Tenerife airport in Spain’s Canary Islands. I’m talking about the first disaster in 1977, not the second in 1980.
The book described how it happened that in 1977 a fully loaded passenger jet collided on takeoff with a fully loaded jet that was parked on the airport runway. Almost 600 people perished, but there were survivors. One of the passengers was able to write a book of memories about what it felt like to live through an event of almost unimaginable terror.
He wrote that he was surprised to see people sitting white-faced as he scrambled toward an exit where he escaped. The folks he left behind burned black in the fire — beyond recognition. Rescuers found charred bodies wrapped in locked belts. Passengers didn’t bother, many of them, to unfasten their straps.
One problem at Tenerife was the inability of those in the plane on the ground to process the reality of what was occurring all around. Folks on both planes planned to enjoy vacations, most of them, in one of the most beautiful spaces on Earth. Nothing prepared anyone to face a reality that would descend on them from above.
On one of the most exciting days of their lives, vacationers in the jet on the tarmac were struck by another jet they didn’t see coming; they burned alive while parked peacefully in the heart of paradise.
The survivor self-published his account. He wasn’t networked with the right people. He didn’t have the look and voice of celebrity that media moguls preferred to place onto the public airwaves.
Besides, it must have seemed reasonable to certain players that his story might harm the fortunes of airlines whose well-connected owners were always trying to convince the public that flying was safe. Book sellers suppressed his story by ignoring it.
The survivor, like a traveling salesman, pushed his books in churches. I attended a service where he gave a talk and sold his story. The book mesmerized me with its authenticity and lack of deference to the powerful.
Decades later, I lost my one and only copy during a move. I can no longer remember the book’s title or the name of its author.
The survivor’s tale was compelling — I remember that much. He wrote that his life was spared by a miracle performed by God. It’s another reason why he sought churches to tell his story. He said that he was grateful to Jesus for a second chance at life.
He suffered trauma from horror, yes, but he learned somehow to lean on Christ to comfort him; to calm his mind when his body shook during flights he later made to promote his saga of physical and spiritual rescue.
Today, America has a lunatic in the White House who parked the plane of state on the tarmac of the greatest civilization. His advisors in the control tower warned him repeatedly to move the plane, but he was too preoccupied with his luxury businesses and the internet to listen.
Instead, the president fired his advisors one by one and hired sycophants to reassure him that the plane of state was safe and that he, the president, was the perfect pilot.
Trump spent his time slandering the little people; he lashed out on Twitter against anyone who challenged him — in the name of Jesus presumably who he claimed to serve. Evangelicals surrounded him like angels to protect him from the demons of liberal-media bias and progressive writers like myself who threatened to undo him with fake news and contemptible stupidity.
America’s fall was ignited by the hatred of this president for the person who preceded him. The Trump crime-family hated on the Obamas like the evil step-sisters hated on Cinderella in the children’s fairy tale.
Trump spent three-and-a-half years undoing everything Obama built to protect innocents from financial and health catastrophes exactly like the two that engulfed and destroyed a country — ours — which every American fondly remembers and once loved.
Trump’s base of fellow-travelers jumped on board his band wagon of hate. They joined forces with evangelicals to form a tidal wave of racism that intended to wipe away the memory of the first “black-Muslim” president from the face of the earth.
Wolves masqueraded as sheep until their growth in sheer numbers overwhelmed anyone who dared challenge them. Some were white supremacist’s and self-denying racists. Some were descendants of the same people who attacked the USA in 1860 to start the Civil War. All were liars in bed with a man who couldn’t tell the truth.
Deaths of Americans in all its wars don’t add to the deaths of the unfortunates who ripped each other to shreds during battles started by entitled southern “gentlemen” to defend the right of thugs to own and abuse Negroes — who they believed God created to live lower than their animals.
Think about it. How evil is America? The president and his legions answer that question everyday.
His cult shrouds itself in the flag of the United States. Followers carry Bibles in one pocket and kill-sticks in the other. They defend everything the crazy-clown says; they slander, lie, cheat, and steal to make sure he always wins.
Trump is Jefferson Davis incarnate. He leads the new confederacy, which is in alliance with foreign oligarchs; they intend to break everything American.
Why?
Who knows?
When everything is broken, maybe old-man Trump plans to build from the ashes a new country in his own glorious image.
Who is able to understand why a lunatic does the terrible things they do?
I don’t understand. I can’t make sense out of any of it.
Is anyone left who still believes this monster ever really intended to “make America great again”?
Billy Lee
EDITOR’S NOTE: When civilizations collapse, conspiracy histories begin because people want to know why. Sometimes the answers are complicated.
Evangelical seers have insisted for almost one-hundred years that Bible prophets can be trusted to reveal the future. Seers claim to have the gift of discernment to enable them to decode the symbolism and hidden truths that bring financial reward. They write books and sell them for lots of money. Everyone wins, right?
These seers, some of them, describe the Biblical eagle as America; the lion is Israel; the bear is Russia; the leopard is China; the iron-toothed machine is Germany, NATO, Japan, or whatever country is most ominous at the time; and the dragon is of course the devil who brings forth a beast — it’s an alliance of the leopard with the bear — that speaks with the lips of whatever the lion becomes after its eagle’s wings are ripped away.
Billy Lee argued against including any references to the Bible in his essay because it feeds ignorant people’s delusions about the ‘’end times”, he claimed.
THE EDITORS overruled Billy Lee because we are scared about what’s coming next. Readers are demanding answers that no one seems to have. Why not look to the prophecies of the ancients who wrote their words of wisdom more than two-thousand years ago?
Here are two of the most famous:
FROM THE BOOK OF DANIEL, CHAPTER 7
The first was like a lion, and it had the wings of an eagle. I watched until its wings were torn off and it was lifted from the ground so that it stood on two feet like a human being, and the mind of a human was given to it.
And there before me was a second beast, which looked like a bear. It was raised up on one of its sides, and it had three ribs in its mouth between its teeth. It was told, ‘Get up and eat your fill of flesh!’
After that, I looked, and there before me was another beast, one that looked like a leopard. And on its back it had four wings like those of a bird. This beast had four heads, and it was given authority to rule.
After that, in my vision at night I looked, and there before me was a fourth beast — terrifying and frightening and very powerful. It had large iron teeth; it crushed and devoured its victims and trampled underfoot whatever was left. It was different from all the former beasts, and it had ten horns.
While I was thinking about the horns, there before me was another horn, a little one, which came up among them; and three of the first horns were uprooted before it.
This horn had eyes like the eyes of a human being and a mouth that spoke boastfully.
FROM THE BOOK OF REVELATION, CHAPTER 13
The dragon stood on the shore of the sea. And I saw a beast coming out of the sea. It had ten horns and seven heads, with ten crowns on its horns, and on each head a blasphemous name.
The beast I saw resembled a leopard, but had feet like those of a bear and a mouth like that of a lion. The dragon gave the beast his power and his throne and great authority.
EDITORS NOTE: Many Trump-adoring evangelicals believe that the ”horns” in the passages above are better translated ”trumpets”. Trump-ets, get it?