BIBLE CLASS

Riot at the Gallery, Umberto Boccioni

Like the hedgehog in the fable, Donald Trump knows one big thing; He cannot win in the court of the media. If he found a cure for cancer tomorrow, Rachel Maddow and Don Lemon would be screeching about the oppression of cancer cells and reparations for carcinogens. So, in a paradoxical way, he is freer than many presidents have been in that he can choose his own optics and not have them thrust upon him. One does get the impression, regardless of what you think of the man, that he is having himself a hell of a good time. If you are going to get out of the office for a while, being President of the USA beats paint-balling.

So it was that his walkabout to St. John’s Episcopal Church in Washington caused the heads of the usual suspects to swivel round like that little gal in The Exorcist. Nothing is guaranteed to unhinged the already unhinged like Christianity, and Trump holding up a Bible was yet another of Orange Man’s thuggish strokes of genius. When it comes to optics, Orange Man badass.

Washington appears to have more bishops than a chess factory, and they all started yelling in unison like an infernal choir about blasphemy. Pandemonium indeed. These are people who would be happy to host an interfaith Eid dinner with representatives of a religion that is statedly and actively trying to usurp Christianity in America, but when a devout believer holds up the Good Book (it does drag in the middle, mind), they act as though he had stood in front of the tabernacle wearing a strap-on and a gimp mask.

But, virtue-signalling is as virtue-signalling does, and the chorus is never far from singing its discordant threnody. Trump went on to make a short speech that no one in their right mind could gainsay. But this reminds us once again, as though a reminder were needed, that we are not dealing with people of right mind, we are dealing with the sick and pathologically unbalanced. ‘The biggest victims of the rioting are peace-loving citizens in our poorest communities, and as their President, I will fight to keep them safe’. This is so clearly correct that it serves to illuminate the utter stupidity of the political Left, who must, by their own rules, take up a stance diametrically opposed to whatever Trump’s is. By his works shall ye know them.

Because many ‘peace-loving citizens in our poorest communities’ are black, we see once again what is demonstrably true; the Left see blacks as their pets. The use and abuse of an entire ethnic tranche to show the world you are on the side of the angels is just as unforgiveable as slavery. At least the slave could work towards his liberation. No such destiny awaits the American black once the Left have decided to help their cause.

And now Trump has raised the stakes and holds cards which those Leftists have not seen. If he sends in the troops, the foam which will fleck the lips of the media and the Left could fill the Potomac River. One senses still that American troops have a loyalty to their country and its people, unlike the police, who as in Britain are being groomed as a purely ideological concern. Our contact in Virginia tells of battalions of police officers aggressively marching the streets firing paintballs at those sitting on their porches rather than inside. Welcome to America.

These are indeed the times that try men’s souls, and we will see who has the cojones come the wet-arse hour. Trump is not afraid of the media and he is not afraid of the Left, something you can hardly say about, say, Alexander ‘Boris’ Johnson. Trump knows that he can beat the rioters – and how pathetic that the enemedia still refer to these shitheels as ‘protestors’ – and he knows he can strike fear into the hearts of men. It must be quite a feeling.

No one is saying that the death of George Floyd was not a barbaric abuse of power, and the American police force(s) need to be torn open so that its rotten heart can be plucked out. But Trump is a hornet’s nest someone has carelessly kicked, and he is far less concerned with the long-term opinion of media shills and the court of opinion than he is with Matthew 6:34, which tells us that ‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof’.