This is kind of wild. I wrote these two pieces at different times. They both take the position that the Empire of the United States is in it’s death throes, but they point to different reasons for that death. One bit points to Divine Retribution, from a God infuriated by our failure to follow His really very basic rule: “Don’t be a jerk.” It shouldn’t have been that hard. The other suggests human intervention – a plan conceived and implemented by selfish and evil people for selfish and evil purposes.

Then I spent a good deal of time trying to decide which should come first and which follows. One can read them in either order. In each case, one leads to the other. According to believers, God uses Earthly tools to carry out Divine desires and there is no greater tool than Donald Trump, especially when it comes to destruction. But we also know there are people and forces out there working daily to undermine the health of our nation for their own evil purposes, with our without any gods involved. The end result is the same, either way…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When it comes to moral failure, there’s a hell of an argument to be made for slavery and for what invaders did to the First Nations. America’s original sin is slavery, to be sure. We followed that up with a “war” on people who didn’t understand what we were about and who were ill-equipped to fight us – then we just TOOK what they had. But IF those two things don’t represent the lowest depths of moral collapse, a very solid case can be made that the dubious honor belongs to the Sandy Hook shooting.

More accurately, it belongs to the reaction in this country to the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012. From a moral standpoint, our collective reaction was absolute rock bottom. Americans allowed – widely enough, if not universally – the idea that an “acceptable” response to a madman with easy access to guns, who used a high-powered, military-style weapon to randomly cut six- and seven-year-olds in half, was “thoughts and prayers.”

One could readily point to that as the moment God decided to send angels again, to see if there was anybody left in the United States worth saving. Sadly, for us, it looks like the angels reported back that, no, they couldn’t find even one. Instead, the angels found MAGA. The angels found the NRA. The angels found Fox Not-News and Alex Jones. The angels found “Christian Nationalists” and all of their hatred.

The angels found people pretending the grieving parents were secretly crisis actors and the whole thing was faked. “As you have done for the least of these…” The angels found complacency and resignation. They didn’t find anybody who took any sensible action. Americans seem to have acquiesced to the idea that from time to time, children are just going to get murdered at school. The kids, the suggestion goes, should have been better armed.

So God withdrew His protection and He was right to do so. When God withdrew His protection in Sodom and Gomorrah, He wiped those cities off the face of the Earth. After Sandy Hook? God seems to have condemned us to the anti-Christ, Donald Trump, who stands poised to destroy not just a couple of cities, but an entire nation. And the same people who defended the shooting – defended the shooting – now defend Donald Trump…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I read an article the other day in which the writer observed that the Untied States is currently engaged in what he called “superpower suicide.” He pointed out that no superpower in all of history has ever voluntarily destroyed themselves – until now. I agree. ALL superpowers fall eventually, but none has ever failed by it’s own design – again, until now.

There are plenty of people who might try to argue that the US isn’t committing suicide. It’s easy enough to believe these WAY out-of-their-depth fools don’t MEAN to destroy the nation, that it’s just the inevitable result of putting complete incompetents in charge. It’s a tempting position because it’s so easy to defend. We are, after all, currently governed by fools.

Oh, but then? Then I remember. I remember these guys have a playbook and a game plan. Do you remember? It’s called ‘Project 2025.’ Project 2025 is a political manifesto published in 2023 by the Heritage Foundation. The Heritage Foundation is a conservative stink tank founded with the specific intention of disseminating false and misleading information into the world for the benefit of the One Percent.

They pretend to focus on conservative issues, but their “conservatism” somehow always benefits the One Percent the most. Look around you. Work-a-day conservatives are suffering every day, every bit as much as the “libtards” they deride. But the One Percent? They’re doing just fine, thank you very much. Superpower suicide. Project 2025. They’ve gone hand-in-glove ever since the One Percent found people dumb (with a b) enough to actually implement the sinister plan.

According to the website ‘Project 2025 Tracker’ (click here), the Heritage Foundation, through Trump and with MAGA’s support, have completed 55% of the stated goals of Project 2025 and the state of our nation already stinks. They’ve completed 141 specific objectives and they’re in-progress on 70 more. There are 110 they haven’t even started yet. Think about THAT. Their plan calls for making things worse, not better. Well, worse for the working class. The parasite class is so rich they can’t even count their effing money – and they want more, anyway.

None of what goes on in this once-great nation is an accident or the outcome of incompetence. Nor is it Divine Retribution. It’s the plan. We have millions and millions of people in this, ‘The Richest Country on Earth™,’ struggling every day with desperate poverty. Thousands more are falling every day, and the pressure is on from sunrise to sunset to keep from become the latest statistic. Yet we’re told it’s a great economy because we’ve crowned ONE trillionaire.

We’ve suddenly become untrustworthy trading partners. We betray our allies. We’ve cozied up to the worst of the worst. We’ve become an extremely powerful, extremely unstable nation voluntarily surrendering our leads in technology and science. We’ve embraced tribalism and superstition instead. A full third of this once-great nation is lost in some kind of effing “culture war.” In less than two years, Donald Trump has turned us from world leaders into world pariahs, and ALL of it is organized and defined in Project 2025…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So there you go. Take your pick. Obviously, it could be both, but I think I prefer the second possibility – basic human evil – for one reason: who can stand against a god? If it’s a “God’s will” that we fail as a nation, then fail we shall. But if it’s just a design of evil people, well, pitchforks, torches, and guillotines go a LONG way toward solutions…